Testing Samples in the Commercialization of Food

This article examines the way in which mass distribution groups select their products from manufacturer’s offers. Ethnographic studies of meetings between suppliers and distributors show the tests which exist between “collections of products”: the manufacturers’ ranges and the distributors’ assortments. The author describes the various operations in which collections of products are created, and shows how the logics of dividing up and redefining them help to explain the circulation of products in markets and the implications of value sharing in commercial relations.