The Hard Sell: `Patter Merchanting' and the Strategic (Re)Production and Local Management of Economic Reasoning in the Sales Routines of Markt Pitchers

Abstract

This paper proposes that selling can be viewed as essentially a social, interactional accomplishment, not an economic one. A corpus of audio-visual recordings of `pitchers' — market traders who attempt to sell their goods with a sales `spiel' — is analysed. We locate a number of rhetorical formats and interactional practices (`selling techniques') regularly used by pitchers to manage sales. We show how bargains are constituted and enhanced through a contrast between the `worth' and the selling prices of the goods offered for sale. A number of resources used by pitchers to produce mass sales are also documented. Some analytical consideration is given to the manner in which pitchers strategically exploit intersubjectively held social conventions (`economic' reasoning) in order to intervene in the purchasing decisions of audience members to elicit sales. The consequences of understanding selling and other reltedSociology May 86 4256 locally managed, social accomplishments are also explored.