Question

Compare and contrast the importance of social relationships and networks in production versus consumption.

Answer 1

Social relationships and networks in production play an important role to grow the business in the future. This acts as the backbone to grow a business and potentially increase the number of contracts in the future. Any fallback in handling this leads to businesses getting impacted to a severe extent as business has to be conducted in a cordial manner. In production one has to determine what are the sales of the competitors, how will their production levels trend be, without some sort of networking they cannot survive in the market.

In contrast social relationships and networks do not play such an important role in consumption unless the product is essential/luxury which consumers are buying. If consumers are buying essential goods they try to minimise the costs and try to network and research as to what are the ongoing prices. If the good is a luxury even then networking and looking at discounts plays an important role in determining consumption. But consumers can survive and consume even if the they don't network, it is not a necessity as in the case of production.