Buyer strategizing in continuously recreated markets: Loyalty, deviance and defection

Abstract

This article examines the daily strategizing of buyers, taking the dyad to be the elementary unit of analysis in market dynamics. The ideas are revisited that dyadic market relationships converge towards loyalty (Kirman and Vriend), and that markets tend towards social or institutional stabilization over time (Zuckerman). The phenomenon investigated is that although individuals strategize in each dyad in non-conformist ways, the stability of the market is nevertheless preserved. The empirical setting for these investigations was the Paris-Rungis market in France, one of the world’s largest wholesale markets for fresh products. Data collected through observations and interviews were coded, and a theoretical model was built on the analysis of these data. Among the main findings are that buyers’ recurrent deviance from dyadic rules maintains some level of instability, and that both sellers and market regulators exert opposing forces towards market restabilization through different modes of action.