Extended Summary

In studies of digital economy and society, the transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises is often examined through large-scale platform integration, e-commerce infrastructures, automation, or data-driven business models. Such macro-level approaches, however, tend to overlook the gradual and low-cost forms of digital adaptation through which traditional small business owners in developing contexts reorganize their everyday work. Focusing on this neglected layer, the present study conceptualizes the WhatsApp-based digital adaptation of Turkish esnaf as micro-platformization.

Micro-platformization refers to the embedding of communication-based digital tools into core business practices—such as order taking, customer support, debt follow-up, product display, and operational coordination—without full incorporation into formal platform infrastructures. Rather than approaching digitalization as a binary condition of presence or absence, the study examines it as a set of hybrid practices through which physical and digital commercial spaces become intertwined. In this sense, the research asks how low-cost digital extensions reshape the habitus, rhythms, and capital composition of local tradespeople.

The study is grounded in a synthesis of Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field, and capital; Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis; and Castells’ notions of the space of flows and timeless time. Methodologically, it adopts a qualitative multi-case study design. Fieldwork was conducted in Rize, Türkiye, and covers nine sectors selected according to different intensities of WhatsApp use in business processes. The empirical material consists of ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews, and digital artifact analysis. This design makes it possible to capture both embodied everyday practices and the communicative traces through which digital work is organized.

The findings show that WhatsApp-based business communication recalibrates the traditional esnaf habitus around speed, responsiveness, and constant accessibility. Notification flows become embedded in daily routines and reorganize bodily attention, interactional priorities, and temporal coordination. In practice, business communication increasingly extends beyond the conventional boundaries of the shop and the working day, blurring distinctions between work and rest, commercial time and private time. This transformation produces a hybrid temporal regime marked by interruptions, simultaneity, and ongoing demands for availability.

The study further demonstrates that micro-platformization generates new rhythmical tensions between face-to-face and digital interaction. While norms of traditional shopkeeping continue to value in-person attention and relational continuity, digital notifications frequently interrupt these established patterns and require immediate response. As a result, the shop is reconfigured from a bounded physical setting into a hybrid node where physical and digital flows intersect. This process does not eliminate existing commercial norms; rather, it overlays them with new expectations and forms of coordination.

A further finding concerns the reorganization of capital hierarchies. Traditional assets such as stock capacity, physical location, and established reputation remain important, but they are increasingly revalued in relation to digital literacy, responsiveness, visual presentation, and the ability to manage networked communication flows. In this respect, micro-platformization does not simply democratize commerce. On the contrary, it may deepen inequalities between businesses that can absorb and manage digital workloads and those that cannot. For some shopkeepers, particularly those lacking adequate labor support or digital competence, this process generates invisible labor, permanent connectedness, and emotional exhaustion.

The study argues, therefore, that platformization should not be understood only as a macro-economic regime associated with large-scale data extraction and formal platforms. It must also be examined as a micro-social process that penetrates local commercial life, reorganizes temporal experience, and reshapes the embodied and relational dimensions of work. By foregrounding the concept of micro-platformization, the research contributes to the literatures on digitalization, platform economy, and sociology of work by making visible the everyday, incremental, and unequal forms through which digital transformation unfolds among local tradespeople.