Abstract
This paper examines the notion of value and valuation as it has been developed within the IMP Market Studies tradition. Our key argument is that little attention has been paid to valuation processes and that valuation can be performed using a wide variety of scales. But rather to bring together all these scales under one rubric – e.g. the economist’s concept of utility – we propose that economic actors routinely engage in translations of value from one scale to another. We use the term derivation-conversion to show how these translations are performed using illustrations from a case study in the medical nutrition field. We conclude that derivation-conversion is a useful concept to understand how economic actors deal with the profusion of valuation alternatives in markets.