Emerging Market (Sub)Systems and Consumption Field Refinement

The purpose of this paper is two-fold: firstly we introduce a (tentative) theoretical framework to conceptualize the development of market systems on a mid-range (or meso-) level; secondly, we spell out methodological suggestions for how to study such development. The paper is a conceptual paper, with no primary data used or presented. We introduce a conceptual framework, which we refer to as Consumption Field Refinement (CFR), to represent the development of a market system. Central to our framework is the idea that the market system consists of several interlinked subsystems or consumption fields, each focused on a particular consumption interest.