Consumption-Driven Market Emergence

New market development is well theorized from a firm-centered perspective, but research has paid scant attention to the emergence of markets from consumption activity. The exceptions conceptualize market emergence as a product of consumer struggle against prevailing market logics. This study develops a model of consumption-driven market emergence in harmony with existing market offerings. Using ethnographic methods and actor-network theory the authors chronicle the emergence of a new market within the motorcycle industry that develops with neither active participation nor interference from mainstream industry players. Findings reveal a process of multiple translations wherein consumers mobilize human and nonhuman actors to co-constitute products, practices, and infrastructures. These drive the growth of interlinked communities of practice, which ultimately are translated into a fully functioning market. The study highlights the roles of distributed innovation and diffusion, embedded entrepreneurship, and market catalysts in processes of market change and development.

[1]  Linda L. Price,et al.  Making Contexts Matter: Selecting Research Contexts for Theoretical Insights , 2006 .

[2]  B. Kogut,et al.  Open-source Software Development and Distributed Innovation , 2001 .

[3]  J. Schumpeter.  Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy , 1943 .

[4]  Mark S. Granovetter.  Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness , 1985, American Journal of Sociology.

[5]  M. Lorenzen.  Creativity in context : Content, cost, chance and collection in the organization of the film industry , 2009 .

[6]  Barbara Czarniawska,et al.  Weick, Karl E. , 1998 .

[7]  D. Bajde.  Consumer culture theory (re)visits actor–network theory , 2013 .

[8]  Güliz Ger,et al.  Veiling in Style: How Does a Stigmatized Practice Become Fashionable? , 2010 .

[9]  D. Dalli,et al.  Working consumers: the next step in marketing theory? , 2009 .

[10]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation , 1991 .

[11]  Gothic entrenpreneurs: a study of the subcultural commodification process. , 2007 .

[12]  P. Bourdieu.  Forms of Capital , 2002 .

[13]  E. Hippel,et al.  Lead users: a source of novel product concepts , 1986 .

[14]  F. Bass.  A new product growth model for consumer durables , 1976 .

[15]  Mark S. Granovetter.  The Strength of Weak Ties , 1973, American Journal of Sociology.

[16]  Ashlee Humphreys.  Megamarketing: The Creation of Markets as a social Process. , 2010 .

[17]  M. Callon.  Society in the making: The study of technology as a tool for sociological analysis , 1987 .

[18]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

[19]  J. McAlexander,et al.  Subcultures of Consumption: An Ethnography of the New Bikers , 1995 .

[20]  Douglas B. Holt,et al.  Constructing Sustainable Consumption , 2012 .

[21]  K. Weick.  FROM SENSEMAKING IN ORGANIZATIONS , 2021, The New Economic Sociology.

[22]  M. Callon.  Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay , 1984 .

[23]  N. Fligstein,et al.  The Sociology of Markets , 2007 .

[24]  Robert A. Peterson,et al.  First-Mover Advantage: A Synthesis, Conceptual Framework, and Research Propositions , 1992 .

[25]  Shahzad Ansari,et al.  Text Me! New Consumer Practices and Change in Organizational Fields , 2011, Organ. Sci..

[26]  S. Sarasvathy.  Causation and Effectuation: Toward a Theoretical Shift from Economic Inevitability to Entrepreneurial Contingency , 2001 .

[27]  M. Giesler.  How Doppelgänger Brand Images Influence the Market Creation Process: Longitudinal Insights from the Rise of Botox Cosmetic , 2012 .

[28]  G. Tellis,et al.  Research on Innovation: A Review and Agenda for Marketing Science , 2006 .

[29]  D. B. Montgomery,et al.  First‐mover advantages , 1988 .

[30]  B. Latour.  Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory , 2005 .

[31]  K. Weick.  The social psychology of organizing , 1969 .

[32]  R. Kozinets,et al.  ‘Gothic’ entrepreneurs: a study of the subcultural commodification process , 2012 .

[33]  Zsuzsa Gille,et al.  Actor Networks, Modes of Production, and Waste Regimes: Reassembling the Macro-Social , 2010 .

[34]  J. Law.  After Method: Mess in Social Science Research , 2004 .

[35]  Gokcen Coskuner-Balli,et al.  Countervailing market responses to corporate co-optation and the ideological recruitment of consumption communities , 2007 .

[36]  François Cooren,et al.  Organization and organizing : materiality, agency, and discourse , 2013 .

[37]  Wendell Bell,et al.  The Third Wave. , 1982 .

[38]  M. Callon,et al.  Economization, part 2: a research programme for the study of markets , 2010 .

[39]  T. Schatzki.  Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social , 1996 .

[40]  R. Kozinets.  Can Consumers Escape the Market? Emancipatory Illuminations from Burning Man , 2002 .

[41]  E. Wenger.  Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

[42]  John R. Hauser,et al.  Design and marketing of new products , 1980 .

[43]  B. Turner,et al.  The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory , 1997 .

[44]  Darren W. Dahl,et al.  Designing the Solution: The Impact of Constraints on Consumers' Creativity , 2005 .

[45]  Eileen Fischer,et al.  Frustrated Fatshionistas: An Institutional Theory Perspective on Consumer Quests for Greater Choice in Mainstream Markets , 2013 .

[46]  E. Arnould,et al.  Legitimating community supported agriculture through American pastoralist ideology , 2011 .

[47]  Diane M. Martin,et al.  Claiming the Throttle: Multiple Femininities in a Hyper‐Masculine Subculture , 2006 .

[48]  Susi Geiger,et al.  Shaping exchanges, building markets , 2012 .

[49]  M. Giesler,et al.  Conflict and Compromise: Drama in Marketplace Evolution , 2008 .

[50]  Carliss Y. Baldwin,et al.  How User Innovations Become Commercial Products: A Theoretical Investigation and Case Study , 2006 .

[51]  Richie Nimmo,et al.  Actor-Network Theory and Methodology: Social Research in a More-Than-Human World , 2011 .

[52]  Sarah Thornton.  Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital , 1995 .

[53]  Hope Jensen Schau,et al.  When Differences Unite: Resource Dependence in Heterogeneous Consumption Communities , 2013 .

[54]  E. Rogers.  Diffusion of Innovations , 1962 .

[55]  Ashlee Humphreys,et al.  Semiotic Structure and the Legitimation of Consumption Practices: The Case of Casino Gambling , 2010 .

[56]  C. Moorman,et al.  The Acquisition and Utilization of Information in New Product Alliances: A Strength-of-Ties Perspective , 2001 .

[57]  Steven D. Brown.  Actor–Network Theory (ANT) , 2011 .