The “augmented market” of energy, transport and digital industries through the example of ChargePoint, an electric mobility operator.
Résumé
This article focuses on the way in which barriers between the energy, transport and digital industries are currently breaking down, whereas previously these industries were organised in separate compartments. It follows the literature on connected objects, Internet objects and “big data”. The specificity of this paper is to propose an original interpretation in terms of an “augmented market strategy”. This refers to a strategy of expanding the boundaries of a market through the networking of industries that mobilise concomitantly the same immaterial (knowledge, information, etc.) or physical (infrastructure, technology, etc.) foundations, at various levels of the value chain. The aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to contribute to the exploratory analysis of such strategies, to characterise them and to illustrate the way they manifest themselves presently. On the other hand, we strive to demonstrate the lack of a suitable concept (or concepts) available in the toolbox of industrial economics to understand these trends. Thereafter, we try to measure the value added of interpretations provided by an “augmented market strategy”.