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Now it Makes More Sense: How Narratives Can Help Atypical Actors Increase Market Appeal

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dc.contributor.authorCutolo, Donato
dc.contributor.authorFerriani, Simone
dc.contributor.rorhttps://ror.org/02jjdwm75
dc.date.accessioned2025-07-10T10:12:13Z
dc.date.available2025-07-10T10:12:13Z
dc.date.issued2023-02-06
dc.description.abstractExtensive research shows that atypical actors who defy established contextual standards and norms are subject to skepticism and face a higher risk of rejection. Indeed, atypical actors combine features, behaviors, or products in unconventional ways, thereby generating confusion and instilling doubts about their legitimacy. Nevertheless, atypicality is often viewed as a precursor to sociocultural innovation and a strategy to expand the capacity to deliver valued goods and services. Contextualizing the conditions under which atypicality is celebrated or punished has been a significant theoretical challenge for organizational scholars interested in reconciling this tension. Thus far, scholars have focused primarily on audience-related factors or actors’ characteristics (e.g., status and reputation). Here, we explore how atypical actors can leverage linguistic features of their narratives to counteract evaluative discounts by analyzing a unique collection of 78,758 narratives from crafters on Etsy, the largest digital marketplace for handmade items. Marrying processing fluency theory with linguistics literature and relying on a combination of topic modeling, automated textual analysis, and econometrics, we show that categorically atypical producers who make more use of abstraction, cohesive cues, and conventional topics in their narratives are more likely to overcome the evaluative discounts they would ordinarily experience.
dc.description.fundingtypeThe authors are thankful to Tieying Yu for guidance through the review process, two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, as well as Kara Stephenson Gehman for expert copy editing. The authors benefited from the valuable feedback of seminar participants at MIT Sloan (Economic Sociology Working Group), Bayes Business School, as well as attendees at the Wharton People & Organizations Conference. The authors are solely responsible for the errors found herein.
dc.description.peerreviewedyes
dc.description.statusPublished
dc.formatapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.citationCutolo, D., & Ferriani, S. (2024). Now it makes more sense: How narratives can help atypical actors increase market appeal. Journal of Management, 50(5), 1599-1642. https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063231151637
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1177/01492063231151637
dc.identifier.issn0149-2063
dc.identifier.officialurlhttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01492063231151637
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3832
dc.issue.number5
dc.journal.titleJournal of Management
dc.language.isoen
dc.page.final1642
dc.page.initial1599
dc.page.total44
dc.publisherSage Journals
dc.relation.departmentEntrepreneurship
dc.relation.entityIE University
dc.relation.schoolIE Business School
dc.rightsAttribution 4.0 International
dc.rights.accessRightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed
dc.titleNow it Makes More Sense: How Narratives Can Help Atypical Actors Increase Market Appeal
dc.typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.version.typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion
dc.volume.number50
dspace.entity.typePublication
relation.isAuthorOfPublication4ba355bd-1975-485d-80ed-a6912ddd686a
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery4ba355bd-1975-485d-80ed-a6912ddd686a
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