Print2.2 Status Markets
Status order markets lack "an independent principle for evaluation" which implies that the value of the thing being traded (the commodity) can not be evaluated outside the social interactions in which they are embedded. In other words, the standards by which value is arrived at in status markets is tied to specific social relationships (interactions between buyer and seller) which determine value. This is not to say external standards are not also present, they just are not the driving force behind arriving at value and/or price.
Buyers and sellers do not often switch roles in status markets, as we see with much greater frequency in standards markets. As well, sellers are usually limited to specific brands or identities within the market. In highly competitive status markets, sellers will often carve out and occupy niche markets (think of rare sports car companies, high-end fashion designers, or even bottled waters.)
Order by Status
Order in status markets can be brought about in a variety of ways, such as the presence of branding, loyalty, trustworthy guides, established critics, and ties to social movements (going green, buying pink, etc.). Status markets can relate to the status of the buyer as well as the seller, though for the most part, buyers and sellers are unknown to each other. There is a strong degree of performativity in status markets as well, in that the value of the object is "applied" in the social display of said object.
Renewables and Status Markets
Status markets will play a role here when we begin to discuss renewables, as status can play a significant role in issues from consumer choice in the selection of "alternative" energy choices to the reputations of large scale energy and or energy technology producers competing in the renewables sector. (Ask yourself... do you have brand loyalty when it comes to buying gasoline? If you have a choice and price is the same, by what other criteria do you decide? Do you avoid certain petrol companies for any reason?) We will begin to focus on the characteristics of renewables markets in many of the following lessons. For now, though, begin to think about how reputations can play out in energy markets and how it can determine the difference between winners and losers in those markets.
Is Apple a Status Market?
Many students in this class have also previously argued that Apple Computer is a status market; however, my own experience with their computers since 1982, I think, demonstrates otherwise.I have mixed feelings about reducing Apple to a status market. First, as the biggest company in the world, Apple can hardly be able to claim "individuality" and laud the status of their products amongst its users. Second, maybe it can be argued that Apple is even a standards market, albeit internal to itself. After all, they attempt to deliver a standard experience across their products. Android and PCs are far more about customizability than Apple products, as that is one of the bigger complaints about Apple products... their lack of hackability.Here's a bit of a story about my experience with Apple, as I don't think I really ever followed a "status" market kind of behavior in being a user of their products. Full disclosure, I have been using Apple machines since 1982, and have ever since been a user of Apple machines, using them consistently throughout. Back then, the 'status machines' were the IBM PCs. I was 11 at the time, but my father and I discussed this at length, doing our due diligence in research and legwork trying to decide between the two. (You had to actually go to the stores back then.) We finally decided on the Apple IIe because of the fact that they were used by my school district (I was in 8th grade then), and that we could get a lot of educational software for the IIe. Back then, there were vibrant "Apple User Groups (AUGs)" in most major urban areas. Steve Wozniak even toured those groups, showing off the Macintosh before it was introduced on the Super Bowl that year. (We got to see the commercial before it aired.) I also was able to get the Woz's autograph that day back in Dec of 1983. We bought the Mac 1 (128K) because we loved what it could do... desktop publishing, word processing (compared to word processing on a non-WYSIWYG Apple IIe, the Macintosh was a dream. Plus, it could even play music. At that point, I would argue it was easier to get Apple software than it was to get PCs.There were a lot of early attempts at clones and alt OSes, it wasn't just Microsoft DOS, which was a bit of a latecomer at that point. Fast forward about 18 years and the Mac, after a long and drawn out internal battle, finally was moved to a BSD Unix platform, which was the first OS X. FYI OS X was something Jobs carried back with him from his NeXT startup, which wrote a WYSIWYG foundation for Berkeley System DOS Unix (BSD Unix). And, by the way, using the open-source BSD kernel is why OS X was never subject the same legal problems that were presented to Linux users and companies, which copied a key piece of the UNIX kernel source code. (I used to run Linux web and mail servers for fun back in 1997.) So, once Jobs came back and drove the move to develop and adopt OS X across their computers, there really was no need for another type of OS.Windows was, as far as I was concerned, a waste of time. I had spent about as much time reinstalling the Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.9 operating systems as I had been able to keep them running. Those OSes typically came as a stack of ~15-20 floppy disks, before they started putting the systems on CD-ROMs. Yes, Macs crashed, but you only lost the work you were working on. When Windows crashed, you typically could lose the entire system. I always felt that someone needed to bring a class-action suit against Microsoft for all of the time lost re-installing their various OSes over the years. (We're talking a couple of hundred hours for myself, alone.)Apple did not really begin to gain some kind of status (beyond the fanboys) until the release of the iPod (2001) and iPhone (2007)... when their devices formed the rules for entirely new markets (portable media players, the online music store and smartphones), they were the first products many people adopted. (Yes, there were other mp3 players out there, but none really linked in to your computer so easily, nor were they linked to iTunes store, which was yet another new market. Believe me... I tried many many different mp3 players.) Now, enter the Apple Watch and you've got what seems like a somewhat extraneous toy for techies... and for now, it is more an item to geek out on... but my suggestion here is to not pay so much attention to the Apple Watch... and pay more attention to the software that runs it... as this has been Apple's strategy all along... to control and standardize the hardware, software, and user experience across their devices.So, based on my experience, I'm very hesitant to call Apple a status market company, even though owning their products may elicit status amongst friends, like who has the newest iPhone. It seems to me that Apple's main achievement was to formulate entirely new markets, based on specific products. Apple's ability to be both first to market and then to stay on top of those markets is what propelled them to where they are now. For a long while, even though Apple introduced the desktop OS to the personal computer market, it was Microsoft that was able to beat them out, mainly due to price. It took over 25 years for Apple to gain traction back in that market... and it wasn't status that drove it... it was the formulation of new markets.