Marketing without trust? – Blockchain technologies in the sharing economy as assemblage and pharmakon

Paul Haynes and Joel Hietanen

Journal of Business Research, 2023, vol. 163, issue C

Abstract: Blockchain technologies are of great interest to marketers uncovering opportunities in the context of the sharing economy. The novel appeal of blockchain is that it provides an immutable audit trail of digital tokens and contracts via a peer-to-peer (P2P) network without the need for a market intermediary. It thus enables digital exchange without the need for a trusted central authority or third party, affording an infrastructure for a variety of applications. We assess how blockchain technologies facilitate sharing beyond its role as a technological protocol and how it instead operates as a social machine. We explore these implications for marketing philosophically through the lenses of assemblage and pharmakon. We identify two contradictions for marketers: (1) how marketing with blockchain technologies in the sharing economy challenges past institutional roles of marketers and seeks to eradicate them, and (2) how these technologies produce a new notion of capitalized sociality devoid of trust.

Keywords: Sharing economy; Blockchain; Assemblage; Pharmakon; Deleuze and Guattari; Bernard Stiegler (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296323002989
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:163:y:2023:i:c:s0148296323002989

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.113940

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().