Citation Link: https://doi.org/10.25819/ubsi/11129
Consumers’ Information Systems: Managing Consumption within Households and in Interaction with Digital Firms
Alternate Title
Informationssysteme der Verbraucher: Management des Konsums innerhalb von Haushalten und in Interaktion mit digitalen Unternehmen
Publication Type
Doctoral Thesis
Author(s)
Subjects
Information Systems
Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
Household Management
Household Production
Market Coordination
DDC
330 Wirtschaft
GHBS-Clases
Date Issued
2026-05
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the information systems underlying consumption by shifting the analytical focus from firms to private households. While traditional Information Systems research has extensively examined how digital technologies support organizational processes within firms, the complementary domain of consumption—where individuals coordinate, manage, and enact market transactions—has remained comparatively underexplored. Building on the premise that consumption is not a passive act but involves substantial managerial, coordinative, and cognitive effort, I conceptualize these activities as consumers’ work. This work unfolds within the household as an economic unit as well as at its boundary to the market, where consumers interact with firms under conditions of bounded rationality, information asymmetries, and an increasing digitalization driven by the platform economy and a growing “everything-as-a-service” subscription paradigm.
The theoretical foundation integrates perspectives from sociology, (New) Home Economics, as well as New Institutional approaches, and synthesizes them to be examined through a socio-technical IS lens. Sociological research highlights the often invisible, unequally distributed, and cognitively demanding nature of household labor, particularly its managerial and administrative dimensions. Economic perspectives reconceptualize households as productive units and emphasize the costs of coordination inherent in market transactions. Complementing these views and following prior empirical research on money work within the CSCW and HCI communities as well as theoretical considerations on technically intermediated markets, IS research provides a newly socio-technical understanding of consumers’ work systems and mechanisms.
Methodologically, the dissertation follows a retroductive design inquiry grounded in critical realism and abductive reasoning, moving iteratively between a problem space (consumers’ work) and a solution space (emerging work-supporting technologies). It combines inductive empirical exploration with theory-building across four interrelated studies conducted in Germany, each addressing a specific research objective. Study 1 follows the artifact “invoice” through 17 households to reconstruct domestic accounting as a spatio-temporal practice. Study 2 develops a taxonomy of twelve administrative task categories and quantifies temporal workload, mental workload, and satisfaction in an online survey with 617 socio-demographically distributed participants. Study 3, drawing on the same dataset, maps the devices, tools, specialized software, and physical workplaces consumers appropriate for this office-like work at home. Study 4 employs interviews and a week-long field study with five intermediary firms in finance, insurance, utilities, health, and general administration to investigate how intermediaries mediate and partially take over consumers’ work in market coordination. Together, the studies provide a mixed-method, multi-level, and multi-perspective understanding of consumers’ work across different tasks involving different kinds of technologies.
The dissertation’s outcome advances both theory and practice by conceptualizing consumers’ work as a boundary practice situated between households and markets, articulated through a socio-technical framework that captures the interplay of structures, people, tasks, and technologies. Empirically, the findings demonstrate that consumers perform substantial, often underestimated and unseen labor in managing consumption. Invoice handling, for example, unfolds as a fragmented spatio-temporal practice across paper-based and digital media. The identified twelve administrative task categories differ considerably in mental workload and satisfaction, with tax affairs, problem management, governmental affairs, long term contracts, and insurance emerging as priority pain points for design. Emerging digital services, from financial management tools and contract managers to intermediary platforms, already intervene in and reshape these work practices.
Conceptually, the dissertation contributes (I.) an integrated chain of consumption management that links intra-household administration with market-directed activities across five phases (anticipating, identifying, deciding, monitoring, and modifying); (II.) the introduction of heteronomy imposed by external institutions as a design variable that work supporting technology must explicitly address rather than ignore; and (III.) a reframing of intermediaries as a socio-technical infrastructure of market cooperation that bridges social and technical interoperability gaps through its own socio-technical measures, such as “adversarial” or “backward” interoperability. In doing so, the dissertation provides an empirically grounded conceptualization of theories such as intermediation or Vendor Relationship Management while also generating new empirical evidence and concepts.
By positioning consumers as active agents who perform essential economic work, this dissertation opens a new line of inquiry for IS research and contributes to a broader understanding of digital transformation that encompasses not only firms but also the everyday practices of individuals in the economy. It thereby extends the traditionally firm-centered focus of Business Informatics with a complementary consumer-centered perspective and positions Consumer Informatics as an essential site of inquiry within IS research.
The theoretical foundation integrates perspectives from sociology, (New) Home Economics, as well as New Institutional approaches, and synthesizes them to be examined through a socio-technical IS lens. Sociological research highlights the often invisible, unequally distributed, and cognitively demanding nature of household labor, particularly its managerial and administrative dimensions. Economic perspectives reconceptualize households as productive units and emphasize the costs of coordination inherent in market transactions. Complementing these views and following prior empirical research on money work within the CSCW and HCI communities as well as theoretical considerations on technically intermediated markets, IS research provides a newly socio-technical understanding of consumers’ work systems and mechanisms.
Methodologically, the dissertation follows a retroductive design inquiry grounded in critical realism and abductive reasoning, moving iteratively between a problem space (consumers’ work) and a solution space (emerging work-supporting technologies). It combines inductive empirical exploration with theory-building across four interrelated studies conducted in Germany, each addressing a specific research objective. Study 1 follows the artifact “invoice” through 17 households to reconstruct domestic accounting as a spatio-temporal practice. Study 2 develops a taxonomy of twelve administrative task categories and quantifies temporal workload, mental workload, and satisfaction in an online survey with 617 socio-demographically distributed participants. Study 3, drawing on the same dataset, maps the devices, tools, specialized software, and physical workplaces consumers appropriate for this office-like work at home. Study 4 employs interviews and a week-long field study with five intermediary firms in finance, insurance, utilities, health, and general administration to investigate how intermediaries mediate and partially take over consumers’ work in market coordination. Together, the studies provide a mixed-method, multi-level, and multi-perspective understanding of consumers’ work across different tasks involving different kinds of technologies.
The dissertation’s outcome advances both theory and practice by conceptualizing consumers’ work as a boundary practice situated between households and markets, articulated through a socio-technical framework that captures the interplay of structures, people, tasks, and technologies. Empirically, the findings demonstrate that consumers perform substantial, often underestimated and unseen labor in managing consumption. Invoice handling, for example, unfolds as a fragmented spatio-temporal practice across paper-based and digital media. The identified twelve administrative task categories differ considerably in mental workload and satisfaction, with tax affairs, problem management, governmental affairs, long term contracts, and insurance emerging as priority pain points for design. Emerging digital services, from financial management tools and contract managers to intermediary platforms, already intervene in and reshape these work practices.
Conceptually, the dissertation contributes (I.) an integrated chain of consumption management that links intra-household administration with market-directed activities across five phases (anticipating, identifying, deciding, monitoring, and modifying); (II.) the introduction of heteronomy imposed by external institutions as a design variable that work supporting technology must explicitly address rather than ignore; and (III.) a reframing of intermediaries as a socio-technical infrastructure of market cooperation that bridges social and technical interoperability gaps through its own socio-technical measures, such as “adversarial” or “backward” interoperability. In doing so, the dissertation provides an empirically grounded conceptualization of theories such as intermediation or Vendor Relationship Management while also generating new empirical evidence and concepts.
By positioning consumers as active agents who perform essential economic work, this dissertation opens a new line of inquiry for IS research and contributes to a broader understanding of digital transformation that encompasses not only firms but also the everyday practices of individuals in the economy. It thereby extends the traditionally firm-centered focus of Business Informatics with a complementary consumer-centered perspective and positions Consumer Informatics as an essential site of inquiry within IS research.
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