Electronic bazaar: Social Media as a marketplace in contemporary Kazakhstan

dc.contributor.authorKagarmanova, Aigerim
dc.date.accessioned2018-05-28T08:35:46Z
dc.date.available2018-05-28T08:35:46Z
dc.date.issued2018
dc.description.abstractThis study focuses on different modalities of social media trade in Kazakhstan and how sellers create trust online using platform features, personal skills and physical locations of stores associated with social media accounts. Researching this topic in Kazakhstan locates this study in a specifically interesting intersection of trade, technology, informality and trust. Social media trade is a part of electronic commerce that is new and technologically advanced type of business, however many traders work informally as they fail to meet legal norms as business registration, paying taxes and giving receipts. Just as individual traders poured to the streets in the period of perestroika, modern day small business owners have occupied social media and turned it into an electronic bazaar. As shops located at bazaars transfer their stores online, and traders learn new technology in order to increase their sales, this study challenges the notion of bazaars being static and backward.   Driven by the question of trust building in a complex realm of electronic but yet informal trade, I focus on a concept of a “living account” that is coined by my ethnographic data (interviews, observations and social media content analysis). I explore different dimensions of trade both online and offline to understand how these realms are intertwined in the question of informality and trust. I argue that the "aliveness" of an account produced through regular contact allows sellers to create trust that results in a successful sale. So, as long as an account is perceived to be “living” the question of formal registration, taxes and receipts is not relevant to customers.en_US
dc.identifier.citationKagarmanova, Aigerim (2018) Electronic bazaar: Social Media as a marketplace in contemporary Kazakhstan. Nazarbayev University, School of Humanities and Social Sciences.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://nur.nu.edu.kz/handle/123456789/3195
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherNazarbayev University School of Sciences and Humanitiesen_US
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/*
dc.subjectinformal tradeen_US
dc.subjectsocial mediaen_US
dc.subjectonline trusten_US
dc.subjectanimationen_US
dc.subjecte-commerceen_US
dc.subjectbranden_US
dc.subjectself-branden_US
dc.subjectphatic labouren_US
dc.subjectInstagramen_US
dc.subjectpost-soviet market developmentsen_US
dc.titleElectronic bazaar: Social Media as a marketplace in contemporary Kazakhstanen_US
dc.typeMaster's thesisen_US
workflow.import.sourcescience

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