Practices of Comparing in Sellers’ Markets and in Target Marketing: The American and German Automobile Industries in the 20th Century (F03 [A02])

这个子项目（A02的延续）是研究自1900年以来在爆炸式增长的汽车市场中，比较作为资本主义竞争的核心要素的做法。在这一阶段的研究中，该项目将不会只关注汽车制造业的公司，这些公司的比较邀请是以特定的方式向国家和工业客户发出的。相反，个人消费者获得了特权地位。此外，机构代理人进入了使专业比较成为自己的商业模式的阶段。它将表明，它们作为市场服务的提供者，在实际构成汽车市场方面发挥了重要作用。

This subproject (in continuation of A02) is investigating practices of comparing as a central element of capitalist competition in the exploding automobile market since 1900. In this phase of research, the project will not focus exclusively on corporations in automobile manufacturing whose invitations to compare in a specific way were addressed to the state and industrial clients alike. Instead, the individual consumer acquires a privileged position. Furthermore, institutional agents enter the stage who make professional comparing a business model of its own. It will be shown that they, as providers of market services, have been instrumental in actually constituting markets for automobiles proper.