Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the sociology of translation, we use the example of online florists (1997-2013), one of the first industries to conduct e-commerce in China, to present a process and capitalist logic of Chinese online retailers’ constructing e-markets, which has been largely ignored in existing research.

Paper long abstract:

When social scientists focus on China's e-commerce mainly with a political economy approach, the logic of online retailers' pursuit of digital capitalism has largely been ignored. Drawing on the sociology of translation, we use the example of online florists (1997-2013), one of the first industries to conduct e-commerce in China, to present the process of constructing an Internet-based "market agencement" for remote flower delivery. Through innovative market devices in various forms of mediation, online florists have joined forces with offline florists across the country to provide individuals with floral products and commercial services of remote gift-giving. These heterogeneous and ever-changing collective entities and Internet devices have constituted increasingly complex intercity and even international techno-economic networks in which they translate each other and define their own identities through the symmetrical commercial operations of "taking" and "transferring" online bouquet orders. With the spread of the state-sponsored Internet and the rise of Taobao, an e-commerce platform backed by international capital, the online florist has been democratized from businesses or individuals in the ICT industry to ordinary people. Finally, along with the translation of the industry organization, Taobao and leading online florists on this platform, economies of scale based on exchanging orders rather than producing bouquets for profit became the primary strategic goal of online florists. This capitalist economy, departing from floristry's proximity and individuality, points out that e-commerce does not necessarily enhance the singularization of goods (Callon, Méadel and Rabeharisoa, 2002).