Academic literature on the topic 'Oppositional Market Categories'

Brand communities have been cited for their potential not only to enhance the loyalty of members but also to engender a sense of oppositional loyalty toward competing brands. However, the impact of brand community membership on actual new product adoption behavior has yet to be explored. This study examines the effects of brand community participation and membership duration on the adoption of new products from opposing brands as well as from the preferred brand. Longitudinal data were collected on the participation behavior, membership duration, and adoption behavior of 7506 members spanning four brand communities and two product categories. Using a hazard modeling approach, the authors find that higher levels of participation and longer-term membership in a brand community not only increase the likelihood of adopting a new product from the preferred brand but also decrease the likelihood of adopting new products from opposing brands. However, such oppositional loyalty is contingent on whether a competitor's new product is the first to market. Furthermore, in the case of overlapping memberships, higher levels of participation in a brand community may actually increase the likelihood of adopting products from rival brands. This finding is both surprising and disconcerting because marketing managers usually do not know which other memberships their brand community members possess. The authors discuss how managers can enhance the impact of their brand community on the adoption of the company's new products while limiting the impact of opposing brand communities.

Little is known about when and where hybrid organizations diffuse. We argue that neo-institutional perspectives, which stress the constraining role of market categories and institutional logics, have to be complemented with demand-side perspectives that stress the enabling force of economic incentives to explain the origins of hybrids. We develop theory to predict the country-level diffusion of hybrid forms in Islamic banking in the 1975–2017 period, during which many conventional banks invaded the domain of Islamic banking by starting to sell Islamic banking services, or so-called “Islamic windows.” Our findings underscore the relevance of simultaneously studying the impact of constraining and enabling forces. Consistent with neo-institutional theory, we find strong evidence that a lack of constitutive legitimacy of the window form—only in countries where Muslims make up a large share of the population—and the ideological polarization of local audiences reify the ideological boundaries between the oppositional banking logics, which in turn hampers the diffusion of windows in the focal country. At the same time, however, it appears that the failure of local credit markets and country-level economic globalization, the latter even more in countries with a Muslim majority, provide potent economic incentives for the diffusion of windows. By stressing the role of utilitarian incentives and material exchange as drivers of hybridization, we bridge the gap between neo-institutional and more rationalist approaches of institutional change.

We connect two distinct streams of research on categories to study the role of within-category typicality in the context of legitimacy shocks. We argue that, following a legitimacy shock, member organizations of the tainted, focal category suffer equally, irrespective of their typicality. However, only the typical members of the newly favored, oppositional category benefit. Therefore, the effects of legitimacy shocks are asymmetrically influenced by typicality. We argue this pattern is the result of a two-stage process of categorization by audiences, whereby audiences prioritize distinctions between organizations in a newly favored category and spend limited efforts considering distinctions in the tainted, focal category. We examine our theory in the context of the U.S. financial services industry, where four different kinds of organizations engage in competition: traditional commercial banks, community banks, single-bond credit unions, and multibond credit unions. Consistent with our theory, we show that both traditional commercial banks and community banks suffer in terms of deposit market share following the legitimacy shock of the 2007 financial crisis, but the relative gains to credit unions are strongest for single-bond credit unions.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of brand community participation on new product adoption when the new product is the one which clearly under-performed compared to industry standards. Design/methodology/approach The data on participation behavior, membership duration and adoption behavior of 5,893 members of three different online communities (two brand forums, one general product forum) were gathered and assessed using a Cox PH model. Findings Results show that higher participation in a brand community leads to a greater likelihood of adopting objectively under-performing products, while also reducing the likelihood of purchasing rivals’ products. This occurs despite the higher levels of product knowledge possessed by these consumers. The findings also identify a key limiting condition for oppositional loyalty, that it is driven by membership duration, rather than by active participation in the brand community. Originality/value Prior research on the impact of brand community participation on product adoption has tended to focus on the adoption of products that are objectively superior to competing products. Unfortunately, only one product can be the performance leader in a given market at any time. Thus, managers do not know if brand communities are powerful enough to enhance the likelihood of adopting objectively under-performing products. This manuscript thus provides important insights for managers wishing to launch new products in categories where there are active brand communities.

Laurel V. Hankins, “The Art of Retreat: Salmagundi’s Elbow-Chair Domesticity” (pp. 431–456) James Kirke Paulding and William and Washington Irving’s literary periodical Salmagundi; or, the Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq. and Others (1807) has been incorporated into accounts of Washington Irving’s protoromanticism that define American romanticism through an oppositional relationship between the aesthetic retreat of the artist and the consensus-driven consumerism of a feminized reading public. This essay argues that through the self-conscious assumption of bachelor pseudonyms, the Salmagundi editors’ aggressively masculine domestic retreat can be read as a reaction to the insufficiently reductive categories of a literary culture increasingly organized by gender difference. Even as the Salmagundi bachelor-editors mock the performative virtue of feminine domesticity, their own humorous social critique works to reestablish the possibility of making reform feel in tune with natural impulses. The bachelors locate the source of their imaginative whimsy within the domestic sphere’s supposed transcendence of social artifice and market pressures, but they also claim authorship by distinguishing their imaginative output from the termagant’s domestic labor. Because the editors’ reformative project depends on readers recognizing the alienated bachelor as a humorous literary type, the hostile relationship to its readers that has earned Salmagundi a place in narratives of Irving’s protoromanticism actually signals a collaborative relationship with readers who are repeatedly forced to acknowledge the editors’ authorial design.

The article sheds light on certain peculiarities of immigration to France, which has become a multicultural country. The authors explain how the destinies of two categories of “immigrant” youth differ. The first are the “beurs”, children and grandchildren of migrants who arrived in France during the 1960s and 1970s, generally from the Maghreb. The second are the “blédards”, who migrated themselves from these countries during adolescence with their parents or in the framework of family reunification. After a short description of the successive waves of migration which have regularly reached France and a terminological clarification on the meaning of the words “foreigner” and “migrant”, the authors show how the trajectories of those who are French citizens, know the language and have attended the school system from the start differ from those of newcomers, although the two groups are often confused. The article presents analysis from the theoretical works devoted to the study of different waves of migration, in the USA and in other countries, then focuses on a presentation of the educational trajectories of the new arrivals and those of the descendants of migrants. Particular attention is paid to migrants’ adaptation to the labor market. Newcomers have less difficulty finding an internship than their classmates born in France. They are also more easily exploited, because they compensate their poor French language adopting a deferential attitude towards employers. When unemployed, they often find a job more easily than the descendants of migrants by relying on ethnic niches and networks of fellow citizens. The article underlines the role of the social environment in determining adaptation paths which can lead to acculturation and social mobility, to assimilation within a marginalized urban environment, or to economic integration into ethnic niches. The more hostile the environment and the less the migrants are adapted to the country’s economic and cultural codes, the more the ethnic community tends to rely on itself in order to protect its children from a form of assimilation seen as harmful. Finally, the authors present the different attitudes of young people from the two groups towards the host society. For the descendants of migrants, it is common to assimilate to groups of young people in low-income neighborhoods and to copy the behavioral pattern characteristic of the inhabitants of these neighborhoods with a high concentration of immigrant and minority populations. When they are victims of stigmatization because of their ethnic origin or their neighborhood of residence, these young people become very critical, sometimes adopting oppositional attitudes to the French society to which they belong. On the other hand, newcomers struggle to find their place, as they still feel in transit, are not necessarily sure to stay in the country which they see as a haven comparing to the difficult living conditions of their native country.

The goals of this paper are to present, first, a featural analysis of the inflectional system of oppositions which are explicitly marked on Leggbo verbs, specifically, aspect, mood, polarity and clause type; and second, an account of how this system of oppositions is realized in morphological terms. It will be seen that the inflectionally marked categories are organized in terms of a fixed hierarchy of privative features or "particles" which compete for expression within the Leggbo verb paradigm.

A monosexual configuration of sexuality assumes that sexual desire is directed at either men or women. Bisexuality resists a choice between oppositional categories and is often theorised as having a transgressive potential to destabilise binary logic, not only in relation to sexuality but also to gender. There is, however, a lack of empirical work exploring how this potential might be realised in the accounts of bisexual individuals. Drawing on interviews with South African bisexual women, we use a narrative-discursive lens to examine the discursive resources employed by participants to trouble or resist hetero-gendered norms. Our findings demonstrate how resistance to the gender binary hinges on citational politics that are fundamentally gendered and linked to sexuality. Instead of entirely destabilising hetero-gendered norms, participants draw on gendered scripts that simultaneously expand norms to accommodate their sexual difference and, through processes of othering, function to reiterate hetero-gendered norms. While complete subversion of gender binaries is not possible in participants’ discursive contexts, what does occur is a ‘slow bending’ of norms. Theorising bisexuality as transgressing oppositional categories closes off opportunities to interrogate the pervasive influence of gender binaries in contexts that remain marked by pervasive heteronormativity and heterosexism. Significantly, it also obscures more modest improvisations of gender scripts that hold potential for destabilising gender binaries.

One of the most crucial discussions within water resource management is the debate between those who defend the concept of economic efficiency and those who privilege notions of social equity. This tension is located at the core of binary categories that currently constitute the public debate within comparative water law and policy. These categories are commodity/human right, private property/common property, free-market/state regulation, and market value/community value. This paper explores this tension by studying how neoclassical economics understands efficiency and tracing its rise as a key hegemonic principle for water resource management. I also present equity as a conceptual opposition to efficiency and describe its institutionalization through the human-right-to-water frame. A problematization of both the equity approach and the human-right-to-water frame follows. Finally, I propose a political ecology approach to better understand the tension between efficiency and equity and offer recommendations for informing the water research agenda on efficiency/equity.

Abstract:A significant effect of China’s rejection of a planned economy for a free market is the stimulus this has given to discussion of the relationship between morality and the market. Some Chinese believe that the introduction of a market economy has had a negative effect on public morality. Others disagree and maintain that it has had only a positive effect. Besides this particular debate there are two others. In the first of these debates, it is maintained on the one side that conduct in the market is amoral and essentially contractual or transactional in nature: a boundary must be drawn between economic conduct and conduct in other spheres of social life. Against this it is argued that ethical norms apply equally to all aspects of social life including the economy. In the second debate one side holds that the market engenders its own “ethical” norms. In opposition it is argued that the moral categories articulated in moral philosophy are applicable to behaviour in the market.

Cette étude examine le rôle de la proposition de valeur dans la construction d'une catégorie de marché oppositionnelle, l'interaction stratégique entre le propriétaire d’une plateforme et ses complémenteurs, et la dynamique des catégories dans l'émergence des plateformes digitales. Une recherche qualitative abductive est menée à travers une étude de cas enchâssée qui explore l'émergence de Not Just A Label, une plateforme digitale pour des créateurs de mode émergents visant à être un « mouton noir ». Des entretiens, des articles de journaux, des archives web et du web-scraping ont été utilisés pour recueillir des données sur le management de la proposition de valeur par la plateforme et les perceptions des audiences internes et externes au fil du temps. Le cas est celui d'une plateforme avec une approche duale de la proposition de valeur, multiforme et qui s'étend sur plusieurs catégories, mais avec une identité cohérente utilisée comme un « covert prototype » qui rassemble des complémenteurs hétérogènes. La valeur intrinsèque et les externalités sociales, ainsi que la résonance de la proposition de valeur de la plateforme sont clés pour la formation d'une catégorie de marché oppositionnelle. L'étude motive de nouvelles recherches pour affiner notre compréhension des stratégies des plateformes digitales et de l'émergence des catégories de marché, et contribue au développement d'un management plus efficace des propositions de valeur et des complémenteurs
This study investigates the role of value proposition in building an oppositional market category, the strategic interplay of platform owner and complementors, and category dynamics in digital platform emergence. Abductive qualitative research is led through an embedded case study that explores the emergence of Not Just A Label, a digital platform for emerging fashion designers aiming to be a “black sheep”. Interviews, newspaper articles, web-archive and web-scrapping were used to collect data about the management of the value proposition by the platform and the perceptions of internal and external audiences over time. The case is one of a platform with a dual approach of the value proposition, multifaceted that spans categories, yet with a coherent identity used as a covert prototype that gathers heterogeneous complementors. Intrinsic value and social externalities, as well as the resonance of the platform value proposition are key for the formation of an oppositional market category. The study motivates further research to refine our understanding of digital platform strategies and market category emergence and contributes to the development of more effective management of value propositions and complementors

Abstract Many children show troublesome behaviours at some point in their development. For a minority, defiance, disruptiveness, and aggression become so severe that they impair other aspects of functioning, compromise relationships, and risk conflict with parents, teachers, and peers. Disruptive behaviours of this kind are among the most common reasons for referral to child mental health services; they are also some of the most challenging to treat. The psychiatric classification systems define two categories of antisocial disorders in childhood: oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), marked by irritability, temper outbursts, disobedience, and negativity; and conduct disorder (CD), characterized by rule-breaking, verbal and physical aggression, lying and stealing, and violation of others’ rights. Both categories are recognized to be heterogenous, and also to shade into one another; especially among boys, the oppositional young child often develops more severe conduct problems or delinquent behaviours as time goes on.

Through a critical analysis of UNESCO’s instrumentalization of culture, this chapter describes how culture, often defined as a third way between states and markets, functions as a utilitarian cash-nexus for policing the limit on useful and non-useful cultures. The author calls this utilitarian humanism, with utility measuring what forms of life are recognized as human. With an extended engagement of utilitarianism, the chapter outlines how oppositional cultural critics and realpolitik figures like Samuel Huntington share the same notions of culture as ontologically given that instrumentalizes life and generates a hierarchy of life based on utilitarian categories. This chapter ends by delineating a type of immanent ahuman agency through Giambattista Vico, Deleuze and the stoics notions of “haeccity,” or “thisness” as an antidote to cultural normativity.

This chapter looks at targeting as an essential and insightful step in the policy solution formulation process. By studying how people are classified and categorised as target groups in Dutch immigrant integration policies this chapter illustrates how the formulation of policy solutions is constrained by the taboos on the political and public agenda. By avoiding group-based policies for immigrants and applying indirect or generic policies instead policy makers anticipate the public and political approval in the pre-decision stage of policy solution definition. The analysis of targeting as part of the policy solution process contributes to this book’s aim of a constructivist understanding of the policy formulation stage. In support of the editors’ claim that, like the policy stage of problem definition, the construction of policy solutions too, is marked by conflict, critique and opposition, this chapter illustrates how policy makers cope with the ‘conflictual nature’ of solution definition through different discursive strategies and taboos for targeting.

The article explores semantics and the use of two lexemes: periphery and margin. Both lexemes in dictionaries are explicitly or implicitly defined in opposition to the center and denote the surface, the area, the space that is away from it, which is ‘outside’. The first part analyzes their definitions in Croatian language dictionaries, primary and secondary meanings and similarities and differences in meanings. The second part covers the study of contexts in which they have been recorded and the correspondence of lexical meaning with a specified situation. The analyzed lexemes have similar range of meaning, so the article also questions their possible substitutability. Both lexemes are of foreign origin and in the original languages they refer to neutral categories, they have a denotative meaning. However, in the Croatian language, they also have a secondary, marked meaning, therefore the research takes into account (in)direct evaluation that indicates how these lexemes work in the mind of language user. The searching covers the problem of their marking and tries to answer the question whether they are always stigmatized as a negative sign of concepts that indicate what Croatian phrases can suggest (for example to be on / at the periphery of something, to be on the margins) or they can also be relied to positive features and affirm certain phenomena. The analysis is carried out on examples from the Croatian Language Corpus and the Croatian National Corpus, which allowed an overview of different types of discourses and texts.

My speculation in this paper is to consider, in short, what if art history is a system? In other words what does it means to think about art through the systems-thinking. To do so would mean understanding both art as a system and how art is also a part of other systems. It is my overall claim that to do so would require a rethinking of particular ideas about art and art history in ways that are both radical and effective. I begin by introducing some key feature of the systems-thinking approach. In short, systems thinking emerged in the mid 20th century along with related theories such as Cybernetics and Information Theory. Recently it expanded to incorporate the developments of 2^nd order cybernetics (Bateson) and dynamical systems theory (von Bertalanffy); examples of such developments include the Social Systems Theory of Niklas Luhmann and the use of systems by Bruno Latour and Gilles Deleuze. Whilst often very different these theories share an interest in: self-organizing systems; their behaviour and how they are defined by their interactions with their immediate environment. Systems-theory understands phenomena in terms of the systems of which they are part. A system is constituted by a number of interrelated elements that form a ‘whole’ different from the sum of its individual parts. When applied to art discourse it means considering not only works of art but also art museums, art markets, and art histories as systems that are autonomous, complex, distributed and self-organising. Examples of these types of speculations are offered. I conclude with two key speculations as to what the adoption of the systems-theoretical approach within art history might entail. Firstly, I argue that it is particularly effective in dealing with art after modernism, which is characterised by, amongst other things: non-visual qualities; unstable, or de-materialised physicality and an engagement (often politicised) with the institutional systems of support. By prioritising the systems of support over the individual work of art, or the agency of the individual artist such an approach is not tied by an umbilical cord of vision to an analysis based on traditional art historical categories such as medium, style and iconography. Secondly, I identify a tradition within art historical writing – Podro called it the Critical Historians of Art – that is known in the German tradition as Kunstwissenschaft (the systematic, or rigorous study of art.) I do so both as a means of clarifying what I mean when I say art history; but also as a means of identifying a tradition within art history of self-reflexivity and systematic investigation of methods and limits. From a systems-theoretical perspective it is an interesting question in its own right to ask why model of Kunstwissenschaft has become the dominant mode of historiography (since the 1980s at least). As a discourse it has become, in systems-theoretical terms, ‘locked-in’ (via positive feedback). It is my view that the systems theoretical approach to art discourse places it within the art historical tradition of Kunstwissenschaft, and is not in opposition to it. In summary, it is not my intention to either attack or defend a straw-man, or flimsy stereotype of what art history is. I am rather, seeking a body of work, a canon, or discursive system, with which to engage. Overall my claim is that the systems theoretical approach to art discourse is a continuation of this rich and worthy heritage (of finding historical models to match the art under scrutiny)—not a break from it.