Should the wheel be reinvented? Market-referencing in the electric vehicle market charging infrastructure

Bulawa, Nicole; Mason, Katy; Jacob, Frank

Abstract

Market-referencing helps market actors learn from what has gone before – saving them from reinventing the wheel. While extant studies show that market-referencing is essential for stabilising and legitimising new markets, little is known about how market-referencing is used to infrastructure consumer serving markets. This paper reveals the mechanisms through which market-referencing enactments infrastructure a new consumer market, as a stable, legitimate, functioning market. Using a theories-in-use approach, we analyse how exchange, representational and normalising practices from a referent market are picked-up, extended, and modified to transform, the Electric Vehicle (EV) charge point infrastructure in the UK. Infrastructural objects (charge points, rules, and exchange terms) manifest referent market practices in the new market, resituating and entangling them with new practices and materialities. In the process, the EV market charging infrastructure is reordered to constitute a functioning market.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 27, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Nov 1, 2024
• Publication Date: 2024-12
• Deposit Date: Jan 14, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 15, 2025
• Journal: Journal of Business Research
• Print ISSN: 0148-2963
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 185
• Pages: 114826
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2024.114826
• Keywords: Market Studies, Market-Making, Market Referencing, Electric Vehicle Charging Market, Market Infrastructures
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296324003308