The role of digital platforms in market coordination through quality valuations. The case of restaurants

Elise Penalva-Icher, Paola Tubaro () and Fabien Eloire ()
Additional contact information
Elise Penalva-Icher: IRISSO - Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire en Sciences Sociales - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Paola Tubaro: ENSAE Paris - École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique - GENES - Groupe des Écoles Nationales d'Économie et Statistique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris, CREST - Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique - ENSAI - Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse de l'Information [Bruz] - GENES - Groupe des Écoles Nationales d'Économie et Statistique - X - École polytechnique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - ENSAE Paris - École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique - GENES - Groupe des Écoles Nationales d'Économie et Statistique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Fabien Eloire: CLERSÉ - Centre Lillois d’Études et de Recherches Sociologiques et Économiques - UMR 8019 - Université de Lille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: How do digital platforms affect coordination in the restaurant market? In particular, how do they reshape firms' positions in the quality space and their dependence on both consumers' valuations and competitors' choices? Focusing on the case of a widely used platform for restaurant booking and reviewing, we analyze the dine-in services market in the city of Lille, France. In line with economic sociology's definition of markets as concrete social spaces, we frame these restaurants as a producer market in which multiple quality conventions coexist. We use sequential mixed methods and data (observations and interviews, web-scraping and business data) to show that platforms rationalize firms' practice of observing one another as a basis for making decisions on volume and quality. The rise of digital platforms provides producers with devices that amplify their view of competitors, standardize their offerings and support the stability of their business choices over time, conditional on spatial constraints and quality positioning.

Keywords: Harrison White; Digital Platforms; Quality; Valuation; Markets; Economic Sociology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05281701v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Archives Européennes de Sociologie / European Journal of Sociology, 2025, ⟨10.1017/S0003975625100052⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-05281701v1/document (application/pdf)

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:hal:journl:hal-05281701

DOI: 10.1017/S0003975625100052

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().