Stylistic Differentiation in Cultural Markets: The Benefits of Conspicuous Category Spanning

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.18354

References

  • Ashforth BE, Gibbs BW (1990) The double-edge of organizational legitimation. Organ. Sci. 1(2):177–194.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Askin N, Mauskapf M (2017) What makes popular culture popular? Product features and optimal differentiation in music. Amer. Sociol. Rev. 82:910–944.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Askin N, Mauskapf M, Koppman S, Uzzi B (2019) Are women more creative than men? The gendered effects of networks and genres on musical creativity. Working paper, University of California Irvine, Irvine.Google Scholar
  • Barlow MA, Verhaal JC, Angus RW (2019) Optimal distinctiveness, strategic categorization, and product market entry on the Google Play app platform. Strategic Management J. 40:1219–1242.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Barroso A, Giarratana MS, Reis S, Sorenson O (2016) Crowding, satiation, and saturation: The days of television series’ lives. Strategic Management J. 37:565–585.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Becker HS (1982) Art Worlds (University of California Press, Berkeley).Google Scholar
  • Berger J, Le Mens G (2009) How adoption speed affects the abandonment of cultural tastes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 106:8146–8150.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Bornstein RF (1989) Exposure and affect: Overview and meta-analysis of research, 1968–1987. Psych. Bull. 106:265–289.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Bourdieu P (1993) The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (Columbia University Press, New York).Google Scholar
  • Campbell J (2008) The Hero with a Thousand Faces, vol. 17 (New World Library, Novato, CA).Google Scholar
  • Carroll GR (1985) Concentration and specialization: Dynamics of niche width in populations of organizations. Amer. J. Sociol. 90:1262–1283.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Carroll GR (1993) A sociological view on why firms differ. Strategic Management J. 14:237–249.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Cattani G, Deichmann D, Ferriani S (2022) Novelty: Searching for, seeing, and sustaining it. Cattani G, Deichmann D, Ferriani S, eds. Research in the Sociology of Organizations (Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, UK), 3–23.Google Scholar
  • Caves RE (2000) Creative Industries: Contracts Between Art and Commerce (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA).Google Scholar
  • Chan TH, Lee YG, Jung H (2021) Anchored differentiation: The role of temporal distance in the comparison and evaluation of new product designs. Organ. Sci. 32:1523–1541.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Chandler D (1997) An introduction to genre theory. Accessed August 11, 1997, http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel//Documents/intgenre/chandler_genre_theory.pdf.Google Scholar
  • Clarke AC (1972) The Lost Worlds of 2001 (Signet-New American Library, New York).Google Scholar
  • Conaway B, Ellis D (2015) Do MPAA ratings affect box office revenues? Acad. Bus. Res. J. 1:64–88.Google Scholar
  • Coombs CH, Avrunin GS (1977) Single-peaked functions and the theory of preference. Psych. Rev. 84:216–230.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • de Figueiredo JM, Kyle MK (2006) Surviving the gales of creative destruction: The determinants of product turnover. Strategic Management J. 27:241–264.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • de Vaan M, Vedres B, Stark D (2015) Game changer: The topology of creativity. Amer. J. Sociol. 120:1144–1194.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • De Vany A (2004) Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry (Routledge, Oxford, UK).CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Debruge P (2020) The new mutants review: Orphaned X-men spinoff an off-brand remix of 1980s teen and horror movie cliches. Variety (August 28), https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/the-new-mutants-review-x-men-1234752077/.Google Scholar
  • Deephouse DL (1996) Does isomorphism legitimate? Acad. Management J. 39:1024–1039.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Deephouse DL (1999) To be different, or to be the same? It’s a question (and theory) of strategic balance. Strategic Management J. 20:147–166.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • DiMaggio P (1987) Classification in art. Amer. Sociol. Rev. 52:440–455.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • DiMaggio PJ, Powell WW (1983) The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. Amer. Sociol. Rev. 48:147–160.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Einav L (2007) Seasonality in the U.S. motion picture industry. RAND J. Econom. 38:127–145.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Elberse A (2007) The power of stars: Do star actors drive the success of movies? J. Marketing 71:102–120.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Firinguetti L, Kibria G, Araya R (2017) Study of partial least squares and ridge regression methods. Comm. Statist. Simulation Comput. 46:6631–6644.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Fleming L (2001) Recombinant uncertainty in technological search. Management Sci. 47:117–132.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Glynn MA, Navis C (2013) Categories, identities, and cultural classification: Moving beyond a model of categorical constraint. J. Management Stud. 50:1124–1137.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Goldberg A, Hannan MT, Kovács B (2016) What does it mean to span cultural boundaries? Variety and atypicality in cultural consumption. Amer. Sociol. Rev. 81:215–241.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Goldman W (1983) Adventures in the Screen Trade (Warner Books, New York).Google Scholar
  • Gracyk T (1999) Valuing and evaluating popular music. J. Aesthetics Art Criticism 57:205–220.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Haans RFJ (2019) What’s the value of being different when everyone is? The effects of distinctiveness on performance in homogeneous versus heterogeneous categories. Strategic Management J. 40:3–27.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hannan MT, Freeman J (1977) The population ecology of organizations. Amer. J. Sociol. 929–964.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hannan MT, Le Mens G, Hsu G, Kovács B, Negro G, Pólos L, Pontikes E, et al. (2019) Concepts and Categories: Foundations for Sociological and Cultural Analysis (Columbia University Press, New York).CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hennig-Thurau T, Houston MB (2019) Entertainment Science: Data Analytics and Practical Theory for Movies, Games, Books, and Music (Springer International Publishing, Cham, Switzerland).CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hertz B (2020) The new mutants will make you hate the X-men more than magneto. The Globe and Mail (August 27), https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/reviews/article-the-new-mutants-will-make-you-hate-the-x-men-more-than-magneto/.Google Scholar
  • Hirsch PM (1972) Processing fads and fashions: An organization-set analysis of cultural industry systems. Amer. J. Sociol. 77:639–659.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hirsch PM (2000) Cultural industries revisited. Organ. Sci. 11:356–361.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Hirschman EC (1980) Innovativeness, novelty seeking, and consumer creativity. J. Consumer Res. 7:283–295.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hoerl AE, Kennard RW (1980) Ridge regression: Biased estimation for nonorthogonal problems. Technometrics 12:55–67.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Holbrook MB (1999) Popular appeal versus expert judgments of motion pictures. J. Consumer Res. 26:144–155.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hsu G (2006) Jacks of all trades and masters of none: Audiences’ reactions to spanning genres in feature film production. Admin. Sci. Quart. 51:420–450.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hsu G, Koçak Ö, Hannan MT (2009) Multiple category memberships in markets: An integrative theory and two empirical tests. Amer. Sociol. Rev. 74:150–169.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Hsu G, Negro G, Perretti F (2012) Hybrids in Hollywood: A study of the production and performance of genre-spanning films. Industrial Corporate Change 21:1427–1450.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • James G, Witten D, Hastie T, Tibshirani R (2013) An Introduction to Statistical Learning with Applications in R (Springer, Berlin).CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Jia R, Lewis D, Negro G (2023) Collaborations and innovation in partitioned industries: An analysis of U.S. feature film coproductions. Organ. Sci. 34:828–850.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Kahn B, Ratner R, Kahneman D (1997) Patterns of hedonic consumption over time. Marketing Lett. 8:85–96.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Kaufman J (2004) Endogenous explanation in the sociology of culture. Ann. Rev. Sociol. 30:335–357.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Keuschnigg M (2015) Product success in cultural markets: The mediating role of familiarity, peers, and experts. Poetics 51:17–36.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Keuschnigg M, Wimmer T (2017) Is category spanning truly disadvantageous? New evidence from primary and secondary movie markets. Soc. Forces 96:449–479.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Koford K, Tschoegl AE (1998) The market value of rarity. J. Econom. Behav. Organ. 34:445–457.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Kovács B, Hannan MT (2015) Conceptual spaces and the consequences of category spanning. Sociol. Sci. 2:252–286.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Lampel J, Lant T, Shamsie J (2000) Balancing act: Learning from organizing practices in cultural industries. Organ. Sci. 11:263–269.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Lane M (1970) Books and their publishers. Tunstall J, ed. Media Sociology (University of Illinois Press, Urbana), 239-252.Google Scholar
  • Leight E (2019) Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” was a country hit. Then country changed its mind. Rolling Stone (March 26), https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/lil-nas-x-old-town-road-810844/.Google Scholar
  • Lena JC (2015) Genre: Relational approaches to the sociology of music. Hanquinet L, Savage M, eds. Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Art and Culture (Routledge, New York), 149–160.Google Scholar
  • Lena JC, Peterson RA (2008) Classification as culture: Types and trajectories of music genres. Amer. Sociol. Rev. 73:697–718.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Leung MD, Sharkey AJ (2013) Out of sight, out of mind? Evidence of perceptual factors in the multiple-category discount. Organ. Sci. 25:171–184.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Lévi-Strauss C (1955) The structural study of myth. J. Amer. Folklore 68:428–444.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Lounsbury M, Glynn MA (2001) Cultural entrepreneurship: Stories, legitimacy, and the acquisition of resources. Strategic Management J. 22:545–564.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Mamo H (2020) Justin Bieber’s ‘Changes’ is making people rethink his grammy nominations. Billboard (November 24), https://www.billboard.com/music/awards/justin-bieber-changes-rb-pop-grammy-nomination-9489441/.Google Scholar
  • Mark N (1998) Birds of a feather sing together. Soc. Forces 77:453–485.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Marquardt DW, Snee RD (1975) Ridge regression in practice. Amer. Statist. 29:3–20.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Martens ML, Jennings JE, Jennings PD (2007) Do the stories they tell get them the money they need? The role of entrepreneurial narratives in resource acquisition. Acad. Management J. 50:1107–1132.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • McAllister M (2017) Toward a more perfect Hamilton. J. Early Republicans 37:279–288.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Mckinney J (2023) Mariah the scientist has a lot to say on her new album, Young Thug, and the Internet. Complex (October 23), https://www.complex.com/music/a/j-mckinney/mariah-the-scientist-to-be-eaten-alive-interview.Google Scholar
  • Mench C (2019) Juice WRLD thinks genre classification in the music industry is racially biased.” Genius (March 23), https://genius.com/a/juice-wrld-thinks-genre-classification-in-the-music-industry-is-racially-biased.Google Scholar
  • Mezias JM, Mezias SJ (2000) Resource partitioning, the founding of specialist firms, and innovation: The American feature film industry, 1912-1929. Organ. Sci. 11:306–322.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Mintzer J (2020) The new mutants: Film review. The Hollywood Reporter (August 26), https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/the-new-mutants-film-review-4050805/.Google Scholar
  • Navis C, Glynn MA (2011) Legitimate distinctiveness and the entrepreneurial identity: Influence on investor judgments of new venture plausibility. Acad. Management Rev. 36:479–499.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Neale S (1980) Genre (British Film Institute, London).Google Scholar
  • Negro G, Leung MD (2013) Actual and perceptual effects of category spanning. Organ. Sci. 24:684–696.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Negro G, Kovács B, Carroll GR (2022) What’s next? Artists’ music after Grammy Awards. Amer. Sociol. Rev. 87:644–674.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Oshotse A, Berda Y, Goldberg A (2024) Cultural tariffing: Appropriation and the right to cross cultural boundaries. Amer. Sociol. Rev. 89:346–390.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Peterson RA, Anand N (2004) The production of culture perspective. Ann. Rev. Sociol. 30:311–334.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Phillips DJ, Zuckerman EW (2001) Middle-status conformity: Theoretical restatement and empirical demonstration in two markets. Amer. J. Sociol. 107:379–429.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Pontikes EG (2012) Two sides of the same coin: How ambiguous classification affects multiple audiences’ evaluations. Admin. Sci. Quart. 57:81–118.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Pontikes EG (2022) Category innovation in the software industry: 1990–2002. Strategic Management J. 1:1697–1727.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Porac JF, Thomas H, Wilson F, Paton D, Kanfer A (1995) Rivalry and the industry model of Scottish knitwear producers. Admin. Sci. Quart. 203–227.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Prag J, Casavant J (2000) An empirical study of the determinants of revenues and marketing expenditures in the motion picture industry. J. Cultural Econom. (Dordrecht) 18:217–235.Google Scholar
  • Rao H, Monin P, Durand R (2005) Border crossing: Bricolage and the erosion of categorical boundaries in French gastronomy. Amer. Sociol. Rev. 70:968–991.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Reber R, Schwarz N, Winkielman P (2004) Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiver’s processing experience? Personality Soc. Psych. Rev. 8:364–382.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Roehm ML, Tybout AM (2006) When will a brand scandal spill over, and how should competitors respond? J. Marketing Res. 43:366–373.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Rolls BJ, Rowe EA, Rolls ET (1982) How sensory properties of foods affect human feeding behavior. Physiology Behav. 29:409–417.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Rosch E (1988) Principles of categorization, Collins AM, Smith EE, eds. Readings in Cognitive Science: A Perspective from Psychology and Artificial Intelligence (Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA), 312–322.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Rossman G (2012) Climbing the Charts: What Radio Airplay Tells Us about the Diffusion of Innovation (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ).CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Rossman G, Schilke O (2014) Close, but no cigar: The bimodal rewards to prize-seeking. Amer. Sociol. Rev. 79:86–108.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Saba M (2010) Shutter Island review: Scorsese gets his Hitchcock on. Paste Magazine (February 19), https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/shutter-island-review.Google Scholar
  • Salganik MJ, Dodds PS, Watts DJ (2006) An experimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural market. Science (1979) 311:854–856.Google Scholar
  • Segal R, Raglan L, Rank O (1990) Introduction: In quest of the hero. In Quest of the Hero (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ).Google Scholar
  • Simonsohn U (2019) Corrigendum: Two lines: A valid alternative to the invalid testing of U-shaped relationships with quadratic regressions. Adv. Methods Practical Psych. Sci. 2:410–411.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Sine WD, David RJ, Mitsuhashi H (2007) From plan to plant: Effects of certification on operational start-up in the emergent independent power sector. Organ. Sci. 18:578–594.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Sreenivasan S (2013) Quantitative analysis of the evolution of novelty in cinema through crowdsourced keywords. Sci. Rep. 3:2758.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Taeuscher K, Bouncken R, Pesch R (2021) Gaining legitimacy by being different: Optimal distinctiveness in crowdfunding platforms. Acad. Management J. 64:149–179.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • The-Numbers (2020) Biggest money losers, based on absolute loss on worldwide earnings. Nash Information Services (December 31), https://web.archive.org/web/20201231165040/https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/budgets.Google Scholar
  • Topaler B, Koçak Ö, Üsdiken B (2023) Positioning new identities for appeal: Configurations of optimal distinctiveness amid ancestral identities. Strategic Organ. 21:537–565.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Tschang FT (2007) Balancing the tensions between rationalization and creativity in the video games industry. Organ. Sci. 18:989–1005.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Tversky A (1977) Features of similarity. Psych. Rev. 84:327–352.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Uzzi B, Spiro J (2005) Collaboration and creativity: The small world problem. Amer. J. Sociol. 111:447–504.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • van Angeren J, Vroom G, McCann BT, Podoynitsyna K, Langerak F (2022) Optimal distinctiveness across revenue models: Performance effects of differentiation of paid and free products in a mobile app market. Strategic Management J. 43:2066–2100.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • van Wieringen WN (2015) Lecture notes on ridge regression. Preprint, submitted September 30, https://arxiv.org/abs/1509.09169.Google Scholar
  • Vashevko A (2023) The natural emergence of category effects on rugged landscapes. Organ. Sci. 35:1095–1109.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Wallsten S (2017) Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb reviews strongly correlated with movie revenues. Accessed July 6, 2024, https://techpolicyinstitute.org/publications/miscellaneous/rotten-tomatoes-and-imdb-reviews-strongly-correlated-with-movie-revenues/.Google Scholar
  • Ward M, Goodman J, Irwin J (2014) The same old song: The power of familiarity in music choice. Marketing Lett. 25:1–11.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Wry T, Lounsbury M, Jennings PD (2014) Hybrid vigor: Securing venture capital by spanning categories in nanotechnology. Acad. Management J. 57:1309–1333.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Zajonc RB (1968) Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. J. Personality Soc. Psych. 9:1–27.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Zhao EY, Ishihara M, Jennings PD, Lounsbury M (2018) Optimal distinctiveness in the console video game industry: An exemplar-based model of proto-category evolution. Organ. Sci. 29:588–611.LinkGoogle Scholar
INFORMS site uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some are essential to make our site work; Others help us improve the user experience. By using this site, you consent to the placement of these cookies. Please read our Privacy Statement to learn more.