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

• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2017 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 317664947

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.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1288: Practices of comparisons: Ordering and changing the world
• Applicant Institution: Universität Bielefeld
• Project Heads: Professorin Dr. Antje Flüchter, from 1/2022 until 12/2022; Professor Dr. Peter Kramper, since 1/2022; Professor Dr. Thomas Welskopp (†)