The Point of Selling: Capitalism, Consumption and Contradictions

Abstract

Although the point of selling is one of the key moments of exchange where the latent contradictions in capitalist social relations may become manifest, there is a gap in our knowledge about exactly what form of consumption takes place within sales interactions. The key contribution of this paper is that it offers an original conceptualization of the form of consumption that is promoted within the sales interaction. It argues that sales management and sales workers tend to promote not only rational information exchange and trust-building but also enchantment. There is a contradictory relationship of instrumental empathy between the capitalist firm and the customer, and sales management and sales workers attempt to manage this contradiction by promoting the enchanting myth of customer sovereignty. Here consumption involves the customer experiencing a sense of sovereignty but in such a way that space is also opened up for the sales worker substantively to influence the behaviour of the customer. Managerialist sales research and critical ethnographic studies of sales work are drawn on to support the arguments. The paper also considers the systematic likelihood of customer resistance to the forms of consumption promoted.