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Studies of the social construction of markets have not determined which social environments, which we refer to as proximate social space, are most likely to trigger social construction processes. We find that U.S. nonprofit fiscal sponsors respond to greater potential for category emergence when proximate social space is defined by geography but not by market segment. Further, in addition to responding to potential claimants based on geographic peers, organizations also respond to actual claimants based on peers in the market segment. The pattern suggests that geographic social proximity triggers initial label claiming, which in turn triggers responses from market segment peers.

Entrepreneurs frequently tout how their ideas and innovations will become the “next big thing.” Yet, many such innovations – after the initial excitement and an upsurge in expectations – may experience a bust following the initial boom. We develop a conceptual framework to theorize how entrepreneurs may attract attention and garner support from wider stakeholders through the use of framing strategies. Yet, these framing activities will also invite more diverse participants and lead to an increasingly incoherent and imbalanced frame at the collective level, making it challenging to maintain resonance among key stakeholders, in turn hampering the healthy development of the nascent market in the long run. Looking beyond just the positive and short-term effects of cultural entrepreneurship on market emergence, we offer a more balanced view by examining the potential downsides of entrepreneurial legitimacy-building strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the growing marketing literature that investigates markets as “configurations”, i.e. networks of market actors engaged in market-shaping practices and performances. As this pioneering work has been largely focused on established mainstream markets and industries driven by large multi-national companies, the present article extends practice-based market theorizing to countercultural market emergence and also to unconventional market practices shaping it.

Insights are drawn from a four-year multi-sited ethnographic study of a rapidly expanding electronic music scene that serves as an illustrative example of emergent countercultural market.

In contrast to mainstream consumer or industrial markets, the authors identify a distinctive dynamic underlying market emergence. Countercultural markets as well as their appeal and longevity largely depend on an inherent authenticity paradox that focal market actors need to sustain and negotiate through ongoing market-shaping and market-restricting practices.

From a practitioner perspective, the authors discuss the implications for market actors wishing to build on countercultural authenticity. They highlight the fragility of countercultural markets and point out practices sustaining them, and also possibilities and challenges in tapping into them.

The study contributes by theorizing the tensions that energize and drive countercultural market emergence. In particular, the authors address the important role of market-restricting practices in facilitating countercultural appeal that has not received explicit attention in prior marketing literature.

The ubiquity of digitally intermediated interactions is changing the ways in which social interaction creates the cognitive and institutional underpinnings of new markets. Logics that define markets used to be localized, but they now emerge from crowds that span – and persist – across time and space. This article builds a theory of how crowds emerge and evolve in a way that influences the emergence of shared logics and helps explain why some markets are viable while others are not. What is revealed is that a crowd has a hidden niche structure that determines the fate of a new market.

Research on cultural entrepreneurship has explored the role of language in making and giving sense to novel ventures and market categories and in legitimating them. We analyze how an emerging de novo market category, quantum computing, is constructed through the use of analogies and metaphors. Through a multimodal analysis of interview and newspaper data, we find that in addition to using analogies and metaphors to highlight familiarity, actors also use such tropes to expound the weirdness of the new category, thus marking it as profoundly different and novel. Such tropes have a dual function; they draw the boundaries between science and laypeople but also arouse awe and curiosity among the audiences. Our study thus casts light on the cultural work during de novo category emergence.

We examine how the organizational identity of established firms affects their strategic outcomes during the emergence phase of a new market. Drawing on cognitive theories of analogical learning, we build theory about how the established identities of producers influence the fluency with which consumers make sense of novel products, and hence affect valuations. We illustrate this theory through an empirical study of consumer evaluations of de alio entrants during the emergence of the digital camera industry.

The purpose of the paper is to explain how and why strategic alliances, in the form of clubs and consortiums, played an important role in the internationalisation of banks.

A longitudinal analysis, commencing in 1964 with the emergence of the Eurocurrency market and culminating with the creation of the European single market in the early 1990s, is used to provide an insight into the creation of clubs and consortium banks. The authors adopt the Lawson realist methodology and identify broad structural changes in the markets in which banks operate, i.e. “mechanisms” and relate these to major trends, i.e. “events” such as the creation of strategic alliances.

It is generally recognised that banks became international in response to the globalisation strategies of their multinational customers. However, the paper reveals that banks were also internationalising in response to structural changes in the financial services markets.

A criticism of the Lawson methodology is that it is not always possible to discern causal linkages between mechanisms and events. This explains why research of this kind is typically retrospective because it is only with the benefit of hindsight that the causal linkages can be fully understood.

The study provides new insights into the emergence of international banking and the role of clubs and consortiums in this process.

The paper aims to examine Karl Polanyi's view of market evolution in the context of the emergence of a national grain market in China's transition economy.

The dataset used includes information about inter‐provincial grain trade on China's grain market from November 1999 to October 2000. A priori blockmodelling method is used for hypothesis testing.

This paper finds that a partially integrated national grain market had emerged at the beginning of the twenty‐first century in China in spite of local protectionism. Additionally, the emergence of this market is found to be partly a result of the reform‐oriented state's attempt to create national wholesale grain markets.

The findings of the paper might have implications for market development in both China and other transition economies.

Despite ample research on the topic of business model innovation, little is known about the cognitive processes whereby some innovative business models gain the status of iconic representations of particular types of firms. This study addresses the question: How do iconic business models emerge? In other words: How do innovative business models become prototypical exemplars for new categories of firms? We focus on the case of Airbnb, and analyze how six mainstream business media publications discussed Airbnb between 2008 and 2013. The cognitive process whereby Airbnb’s business model became the iconic business model for the sharing economy involved three phases. First, these publications drew on multiple analogies to try to assimilate Airbnb’s innovative business model into their existing system of categories. Second, they developed a more nuanced understanding of Airbnb’s business model. Finally, they established it as the prototypical exemplar of a new type of organization. We contribute to business model research by providing an elaborated definition of the notion of the iconic business model which is rooted in social categorization research, and by theorizing the cognitive process that underpins the emergence of iconic business models. Our study also complements research on the role of analogical reasoning in business model innovation. Finally, we complement the market categorization literature by documenting a case of the emergence of a prototypical exemplar.