A Trusted Market? Construction Of Hairdressing Value In Inefficient Business Repertoire

Commercial activities,such as promotions and membership cards,have intensified in the Chinese hairdressing market,leading to an increasing number of complaints from consumers that continuously appear in media reports,which has seemed to cause the hairdressing industry to fall into a crisis of trust.On the contrast,in recent years,some hair salons that advocate “no promotions and no cards” have emerged on the O2 O ecommerce platform,opening up a high-scoring and high-profile hairdressing market.However,according to the findings of the field investigation,the hairdressing under the business repertoire of “no promotions and no cards” itself does not have a unique economic value,and as an institutional culture,the repertoire cannot guarantee the tacit trust in transaction,which makes the business repertoire seem quite inefficient.Limited to the structural perspective of production,the classical sociological paradigms of markets,such as population ecology,institutional theory and network theory,cannot effectively explain this paralyzed market phenomenon.Therefore,it is necessary to go deep into the transaction scene of “no promotions and no cards”,research why can these inefficient hair salons create hairdressings with high quality and huge sales volume.Based on a participatory observation and in-depth interviews in Hair salon CBPA,Shanghai,which is known as the originator of “no promotions and no cards”,this study found that: first,even if it started from a moral motivation,“no promotions and no cards” during the hairdressing work also functioned as a competitive strategy,which however was quite limited.Around this symbol,the hairdressers classified the hairdressing market as “quick buck” against “word of mouth”,“constrained” against “free”,and “trick” against “communication”,alleging themselves as rational,moral and sincere.Besides,relying on the company institutions,including of employment,of skill formation and of appointment,they defined a differentiated meaning of “no promotions and no cards” hairdressing which means professional technique,but this “honest subjective technique” was not enough to realize the unique value of hairdressing;secondly,as trading institution,“no promotions and no cards” cannot guarantee the production trust of hairstyle,and it is necessary to depend on “inter-subjective technique” such as communications to meet the actual needs of customers.Not only that,but due to the semantic ambiguity,the repertoire sometimes put the hairdressers' sincere recommendations at risk of breaking through the institution boundary,so that they had to be cautious in order to maintain transaction trust.It can be seen that the business repertoire not only means low economic efficiency but also maybe increase transaction costs.Therefore,the hairdressers collaborated and encouraged each other on individual,collective and institutional levels,through providing additional free services,manufacturing aesthetic experiences and performing modified styles,to achieve high customer satisfaction and create the unique value of hairdressing services.And based on this,utilizing the social resources such as class,household registration and life histories,they established close relationships with customers which may even transcend the workplace,and finally created a sales miracle by high-intensive and long-termed work.Based on transactions like gift exchange and human relations,the quality and quantity were performed in the O2 O electronic market,in the form of customer reviews,which matches the market symbol “no promotions and no cards”,but is deembedded from the real economic lives,showing an economic efficiency worth imitating.When explaining the empirical problems,this study also attempts to respond to the theoretical limitations in sociology of markets,and proposes a “competition paradigm of consumer markets”,emphasizing that in consumer markets,the differentiated products from the production structure must realize their unique value in the consumption structure to maintain their legal meaning.Active agents play a key role: on the one hand,they need to call social and cultural resources to construct the differentiated meaning of products;on the other hand,they must realize their economic value in actual exchange processes.In addition,this dissertation integrates the thinkings of new institutionalism and cultural sociology,and proposes “the dynamic mechanism between institution/culture and economic action”,pointing out that institutional culture is ontologically not only a value--including both compulsory and normative levels--or a tool-kit for economic actions,but also a building,which requires ongoing maintenance by economic actions,and can even be subverted and reconstructed.