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Article
Collaborative Market Driving:
How Peer Firms Can Develop
Markets Through Collective Action
Andre F. Maciel and Eileen Fischer
Abstract
Firms often aim to develop markets as part of their long-term strategies. Conventionally, research in marketing has explained this
complex process by stressing firms’ efforts to outdo their peers. While this emphasis is valuable, it overlooks the role of another
major force in market evolution: collective action among peer firms. To address this oversight, this article conceptualizes
“collaborative market driving,” defining it as the collective strategy in which peer firms consistently cooperate among themselves
and with other actors to develop markets in ways that increase their overall competitiveness. This conceptualization includes the
triggers that lead peer firms to mobilize for collective action and coalesce with other market actors; it also identifies how this
coalition converts collective resources into market-driving power. These theoretical contributions, based on a multimethod
analysis of the rise of U.S. craft breweries, offer an alternative course of action for firms interested in driving new markets when
they lack adequate resources to do so individually.
Keywords
entrepreneurship, interfirm collaboration, market development driving, market orientation, trade associations
Online supplement: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242920917982
Firms often aim to develop markets as part of their long-term
strategies. This process usually involves high risks, but it may
also bring high rewards. These rewards include generating novel
revenue streams and opportunities for firms to build sustainable
competitive advantage (Carpenter and Nakamoto 1989; Day and
Moorman 2010; Jaworski, Kohli, and Sahay 2000).
When firms set out to develop markets, they often relate to
their direct competitors as rivals. Fittingly, marketing research
has made insightful contributions to guide companies through
this approach. This literature explains, for example, why and
how firms should create technological innovations that make
them market pioneers and market share leaders (Grewal and
Tansuhaj 2001; Kerin, Varadarajan, and Peterson 1992; Lie-
berman and Montgomery 1998; Narver and Slater 1990; Sujan
and Bettman 1989). Furthermore, this literature highlights
strategies that do not hinge on specific innovations but, rather,
on the construction of powerful brands through which firms
can command premium prices and favorable media attention
(Holt and Cameron 2010; Humphreys and Carpenter 2018). In
these individualistic approaches to market development, firms
see the marketplace as a zero-sum game. Though they typi-
cally cooperate with supply chain members, they remain
strongly self-oriented concerning their competitors, trying to
develop a brand reputation that is superior to that of their
peers.
The focus of this literature on firms’ individualistic efforts
is valuable, as it offers insights on actions that single organi-
zations can take to outdo competitors. However, this focus has
occluded from view the role of another major approach for
peer firms to develop markets, namely collective action—the
purposively organized activities of a group of actors to create
what they see as a common good (Commons 1950; Rao, Mor-
rill, and Zald 2000). As both conceptual and empirical research
indicate (Jaworski, Kohli, and Sahay 2000; Lee, Struben, and
Bingham 2018; Rao 2009), many firms lack adequate means to
develop markets. In response, they often pool resources with
other actors, including those conceived of as their rivals and
consumers. This form of collective action is observable at the
origin of some major markets. For example, whereas Ford
Motors is credited as the central figure in developing the mass
Andre F. Maciel is Assistant Professor of Marketing, College of Business,
University of Nebraska–Lincoln, USA (email: amaciel3@unl.edu). Eileen
Fischer is Professor of Marketing and Anne & Max Tanenbaum Chair in
Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise, Schulich School of Business, York
University, Canada (email: efischer@schulich.yorku.ca).
Journal of Marketing
2020, Vol. 84(5) 41-59
ªAmerican Marketing Association 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0022242920917982
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market for cars, the coordinated action of multiple automakers
and consumers was vital to diffusing this innovation in the
United States (Rao 2009). Likewise, for less technological
sectors such as the now-ubiquitous organic food category,
market development relied not only on Americans’ increased
interest in healthier diets but also on the collaboration of peer
firms with consumers (Belasco 2007; Weber, Heinze, and
DeSoucey 2008).
In light of this evidence, we shift marketing theory’s usual
focus away from firms’ individualistic work concerning their
competitors; we direct attention, instead, to the collective
action of peer firms in market development. Such a shift has
been adopted to some extent in previous research. In studying
the growth of minivans and casino gambling in the United
States, Rosa et al. (1999) and Humphreys (2010b) reveal the
cumulative impact of peer firms’ coherent media messages in
shaping consumer preferences. Focusing on the growth of nou-
velle cuisine, Rao, Monin, and Durand (2003) unpack the role
of entrepreneurs’ pursuits of greater public recognition in pro-
pelling the formation of a new market. Nevertheless, such work
has rarely focused on coordinated action, leaving underspeci-
fied how collaboration among peer firms and their allies arises
and leads to market development, a gap noted by some scholars
(Carroll and Swaminathan 2000; Rao, Morrill, and Zald 2000).
To address this gap, we study a recent case of market devel-
opment that has involved peer firm collaboration: the rise of
craft beer in the United States (Carroll and Swaminathan 2000).
We use this case to conceptualize “collaborative market
driving,” defining it as the collective strategy in which peer
firms consistently cooperate among themselves and with other
actors to develop markets in ways that increase their overall
competitiveness. We address two questions about this strategy:
What triggers market actors to mobilize for collaborative mar-
ket driving? And, once mobilized, how do these actors deploy
collective resources to drive the development of a market?
Using our data, we formulate a theory highlighting that, as a
precondition to collaborative marketing driving, firms recog-
nize market opportunities that they try to seize individually,
only to realize they share systemic constraints such as limited
economic and political power on doing so. This realization,
though, does not lead spontaneously to collective action.
Before this form of action can occur effectively, these firms
must form a sense of collective identity, which can be facili-
tated by suprafirm entities that emerge as coordinators of firms’
market-driving efforts. These firms achieve this sense of shared
identity by formulating a goal they view as worthy of jointly
pursuing and by intentionally cultivating social networks. As
often happens in market development, this process also enrolls
allies out of the supply chain that can provide these firms with
critical resources to pursue their common goal. Once mobilized
as a coalition, these market actors convert their collective
resources into economic and political initiatives to drive the
development of a market that benefits these firms as a whole.
This theorizing enables us to make three contributions to the
growing literature on what Jaworski, Kohli, and Sahay (2000)
term “market driving.” As a route to market development,
market driving occurs when firms shape markets without being
primarily guided by marketing intelligence. Instead, they focus
on their internal resources and vision to create new offerings
and then work to align consumer preferences with these offer-
ings (Carpenter, Glazer, and Nakamoto 1997; Humphreys and
Carpenter 2018; Kumar, Scheer, and Kotler 2000). Our first
contribution is to identify how these resources and vision differ
in individualistic and collaborative approaches to market driv-
ing, leading peer firms and their allies to engage in various
cooperative initiatives and roles. Marking these distinctions
extends the typology of market driving strategies, a theoretical
move advocated by Jaworski and Kohli (2017) to systematize
understanding of how companies can shape market evolution.
Our second contribution is bringing into focus an over-
looked actor that can decisively influence market driving: trade
associations (Sine, Haveman, and Tolbert 2005). In particular,
we conceptualize this class of suprafirm entities as coordinators
of peer firms’ collaboration, thus attending to research main-
taining that some form of coordination is vital for effective
collective action in the economic arena (Commons 1950; Mes-
quita 2007; Olson 1965; Ostrom 1990). Over 4,000 trade asso-
ciations operate at the national level in the United States
(Spillman 2012), but they appear sparsely in marketing scholar-
ship (Assael 1968; LaBarbera 1983). By unpacking trade asso-
ciations’ roles in collaborative marketing driving, we answer
calls for an amplified focus in the study of market develop-
ment—one that goes beyond sellers and buyers to more accu-
rately understand this phenomenon (Carpenter 2017;
Humphreys 2010b; Kotler 1986).
Our third contribution is to extend theory on the role of
consumers in market driving. In addition to their established
importance as buyers, consumers often participate in market
driving as members of brand communities, engaging in word of
mouth and cocreating new products with a specific firm they
admire (Cova, Pace, and Ska
˚l´en 2015; Schau, Mun
˜iz, and
Arnould 2009). Conversely, research also shows that consu-
mers influence the trajectory of markets when they oppose
certain businesses, forcing them to review their practices (Gies-
ler 2008; Kjeldgaard et al. 2016; Rao 2009). Nevertheless, less
is known about how markets evolve when consumers system-
atically join forces with (vs. oppose) an entire set of firms (vs. a
single one). Here, we explain how firms and consumers form
coalitions and act concertedly to drive markets.
Methodology
Data Collection
This research is based on an extended case study (Burawoy
1998; Uzzi 1997). This method supports theory building by
exposing researchers to a broader range of data sources than
that which deductive research usually entails (Eisenhardt
1989). Furthermore, this method gives access to nuanced pro-
cesses that link the different elements of complex cases (Bur-
awoy 1998). It is thus suited to constructing theory on the
complex phenomenon of market development driving.
42 Journal of Marketing 84(5)
Our case is the rise of U.S. craft breweries. The observation
window goes from the late 1970s, when new craft breweries
began to open, to 2016, when their growth slowed down. As
Figure 1 shows, these firms had near-zero market share in
theirfirstdecade;onlyafewoperatedinanindustrydomi-
nated by a handful of corporations and their aesthetically
similar beers. Fast-forwarding to 2016, however, the market
differed considerably: there were more than 5,000 craft brew-
eries, which accounted for about 20%of sales in the $100
billion U.S. beer market and the broadening of beer products
and flavors in the marketplace (Tuttle 2016). Notably, this
growth was not based on new consumers entering the larger
beer market. Rather, craft breweries gained traction mainly by
altering the preferences of consumers who used to buy from
incumbents (Kell 2016; Molla 2014; Tuttle 2016). We studied
this rich case of market driving through interviews, partici-
pant observation, and archival data.
Interviews. The first author conducted 45 in-depth interviews
with purposively sampled participants in the craft beer market:
26 industry members and 19 consumers. Interviews lasted two
hours on average and were audio recorded and transcribed.
Half of the industry interviewees played critical roles in
craft beer’s rise by opening the first craft breweries in their
states and running trade associations for long periods. They
are both experts in the focal phenomenon and direct wit-
nesses, two main criteria to sample informants for historical
accounts (Golder 2000). In their detailed stories, these infor-
mants repeatedly pointed to the importance of cooperation
among craft brewers. To gain further insight into this area,
we collected social network data by interviewing the leading
craft brewers in a Southwestern metropolitan area that has a
burgeoning craft beer scene and was accessible to the
researchers.
1
Consumers interviewed also participated in both national
and local craft beer scenes. About half participated broadly,
attending conferences, brewery tours, and festivals in various
states, while voraciously reading craft beer publications. The
other half consists of consumers who participated mostly in
their local craft beer markets.
Participant observation. This method adds to interview data by
unveiling individuals’ actions in naturalistic settings (Arnould
and Wallendorf 1994). The first author did participant observa-
tion for three years in an 80-member craft beer and home
brewing club. This club met monthly at craft breweries to
discuss brewing techniques and beer taste. Immersion in these
sites gave privy access to the relations between avid craft beer
consumers and craft breweries.
To add variance to this geographically bound data (Wolcott
1999), the first author attended ten brewery tours and four craft
beer festivals in three states where the craft beer market dif-
fered considerably: the state where the craft beer revival began,
with over 500 craft breweries; a state with an expanding craft
beer market, with nearly 100 producers; and a state with 15
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
1958 1968 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016
Breweries
Years
Breweries Craft breweries Corporate breweries
Beer Market Size
$100 billion (approx.)
Period 1
Craft breweries: 1 to 376
Peak $ market share: 2%
Key facts: societal revaluation of mass
production; homebrewing legalization;
federal tax cut
Period 2
Craft breweries: 377 to 1568
Peak $ market share: 6%
Key facts: initial consumer traction;
corporate breweries’ entry in craft beer;
professionalization of trade
associations
Period 3
Craft breweries: 1569 to 5234
Peak $ market share: 20%
Key facts: ample collaboration;
craft breweries become economically
and politically relevant
Figure 1. The trajectory of craft breweries in the United States.
Notes: Separate data on corporate and craft breweries are only available after 1978. In addition, the craft beer market share considers only craft breweries’ sales; it
discounts corporate breweries’ sales in the craft beer category.
1
For questions used, see Web Appendix 1.
Maciel and Fischer 43
breweries. At festivals, he gathered data from different sources
by acting as a consumer and a volunteer. Finally, he partici-
pated in the main trade conference for craft brewers as a media
member, attending talks and press conferences and interacting
with participants in social events.
Archival data. We complemented data collected during face-to-
face interactions with archival data to discern the grand facts of
the focal phenomenon (Wolcott 1999) and minimize infor-
mants’ memory biases (Golder 2000). As is common for qua-
litative research, the sampling approach for archival data
collection was emergent, driven by the authors’ evolving per-
ceptions on relevant aspects of the context (Wolcott 1999). As
such, we collected these archives in a less structured way than
in studies entailing automated text analysis, an approach that
draws on predefined (vs. emergent) data sources and sampling
parameters (Humphreys and Wang 2017).
Websites of craft breweries’ national association were a key
source of archival data; they contain statistical and promotional
materials on craft beer’s recent history. We complemented
these materials with data produced by more independent
sources in trade and popular press publications
2
(Golder
2000). Finally, to examine craft breweries’ trajectories and
messaging strategies, we reviewed the websites of the top 20
U.S. craft breweries by sales.
Data Analysis
We began by identifying the central patterns and relationships
that constitute the case (Burawoy 1998). This identification
involved performing open coding on all data sources, and then
axial coding to find convergent and divergent themes that
required elucidation. As the analysis progressed, we engaged
in the dialectical tacking between data and theory through which
ethnographers form, revise, and expand their understanding of a
phenomenon. To offset possible biases that can arise in such
process, we discussed interpretations with researchers not
involved inthe study (Corley and Gioia 2004). These researchers
are seasoned marketing scholars, including one with extensive
experience as a consultant for craft breweries.
Thus, the research design relies on several procedures to
move from data to theory. Figure 1 “brackets” (Giesler and
Thompson 2016) craft breweries’ trajectory in the United
States into three periods that parallel its major inflection points.
For each period, we identify the change in the number of these
firms, their peak dollar market share, and key facts related to
their market-driving efforts.
We use these inflections to abstract collaborative market
driving as a three-stage process, as shown in Figure 2. In stage
1, “dispersed peer firm actions,” peer firms enter a market and
try to develop it individually for the most part. They do not
engage in collective action, onlylaterrealizingtheyshare
systemic constraints that limit an individualistic approach to
market driving. In stage 2, “mobilization of peer firms and
allies,” producers transition into a collective ethos. This
change hinges on specific triggers that coalesce peer firms
around a common goal while recruiting other market actors,
such as consumers, as their allies. These triggers are facilitated
by suprafirm entities that emerge as coordinators of collective
action. In stage 3, “concerted action of peer firms and allies,”
the coalition formed by these entities, peer firms, and allies
deploy collective resources into economic and political power
to drive the development of a market.
For each stage, Figure 2 shows the core processes, their
outcomes, and the central tensions that emerge from market
actors’ joint work (stage 1 does not have an emerging tension
Core processes
Firms recognize environmental
opportunities and try to drive a
market individually without
adequate resources
Outcomes
Peer firms recognize shared
constraints
Firms and avid consumers form
suprafirm entities to coordinate
collective action
Stage 1:
Dispersed Action
Core processes
Suprafirm entities promote a shared
cause and institutionalize bonding
opportunities
Outcomes
Peer firms develop strong collective
identity
Consumers become allies
Emerging tension
Group boundaries
Stage 2:
Mobilization
Core processes
Suprafirm entities and peer firms
engage in economic and political
conversions
Consumers act as volunteers,
cocreators, and activists in
conversions
Outcome
Increase of peer firms’
competitiveness
Emerging tensions
Opportunistic economic behavior,
political underrepresentation
Stage 3:
Concerted Action
Collaborative Market Driving
Figure 2. Theoretical elements of collaborative market driving.
2
Sample exemplars include The New Brewer, the leading trade journal for U.S.
craft brewers; The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, a central book for the
diffusion of brewing techniques in the United States; Crafting a Nation,a
documentary on U.S. craft beer; and The Audacity of Hops, a book detailing
the history of this market.
44 Journal of Marketing 84(5)
because their actions were not collective yet). To be clear, these
stages are conceptually distinct but interdependent; this inter-
dependency is represented by the gradually filling circles above
each stage of collaborative market driving.
Stage 1: Dispersed Peer Firm Actions
Stage 1 refers to peer firms’ dispersed actions to drive a market
and their gradual realization of their systemic constraints on
doing so. We begin with the environmental opportunities that
paved the way for market drivers. Then, in line with research
on individualistic market driving (Gatignon and Xuereb 1997;
Johnson et al. 2003; Kumar, Scheer, and Kotler 2000), we
specify market-driving firms’ main internal and external con-
straints. We place both sections within craft breweries’ histor-
ical context for analytical precision.
Environmental Opportunities
After World War II, the U.S. beer industry went through a period
of sharp consolidation, with ten breweries controlling nearly all
domestic sales by the mid-1970s (Elzinga 2013). Large firms
like Budweiser had saturated the market with mass-produced,
low-price products by using high doses of flavor-lightening addi-
tives—namely corn and rice (Burns and Novick 2011).
Amid this process, some cultural and legal changes started
paving the way for what would later be called “the craft beer
revival,” as flagged in Figure 1’s period 1. In the cultural realm,
social movements were reshaping the country’s ideological
scene, including that on food. Some of these movements vili-
fied mass-production practices that increased shelf life in foods
and beverages at the expense of flavor, as with beer (Belasco
2007). This public reproach led many Americans to valorize
foods and drinks that are produced in small batches to retain
freshness and create aesthetic complexity (Maciel and Wallen-
dorf 2017). In the legal realm, an excise tax that affected small
breweries was cut by 22%through a law enacted in 1976.
Furthermore, home brewing, an activity that serves as an incu-
bator of craft breweries, was legalized in 1978.
These cultural and legal shifts create what Shane and Venka-
taraman (2000) term “environmental opportunities” (Figure 2,
stage 1, core processes): these opportunities can benefit many
entrepreneurs though other actors and events bring them about.
Many beer consumers noticed these opportunities; they then
began brewing beer of varied flavors as a hobby, and some turned
this activity into a business. They joined the only two recognized
craft breweries of that time, Anchor Steam and New Albion. This
consumer-led origin makes craft beer a market that grew from
amateurs’ entrepreneurial deeds (Martin and Schouten 2014).
Internal and External Constraints
Despite these environmental opportunities, craft breweries
struggled for another decade to gain traction with mainstream
consumers, mainly because of two internal and two external
constraints they later came to recognize they had in common.
The first internal shared constraint was limited financial
resources. Most pioneering craft brewers were amateur consu-
mers who had little cash to invest in the capital-intensive busi-
ness of commercial brewing; furthermore, most banks refused
to give them loans due to the risks associated with new business
forms. This constraint led many to start their firms through
some financial improvisation, a condition that remains true
today, as when craft brewers buy used materials and work other
jobs to make ends meet.
The second internal shared constraint was limited know-
how. While home brewing allowed would-be craft brewers to
test beer recipes, it did not expose them to the difficulties of
building and running industrial facilities. Many had trouble
finding reliable information to help them scale up their hobbies.
In a craft beer pioneer’s words:
There weren’t brewing schools or people to teach you. We barely
knew what we were doing. What is the break-even point of a small
brewery? What is the commercial process to brew this new beer
style? How to choose a location? How do I avoid bacteria in
commercial brewing?
As with financial resources, many craft brewers presently
face know-how limitations, often lacking extensive training in
business and technical areas of brewing such as chemistry.
Beyond these internal constraints, two external ones con-
fronted these underresourced craft brewers. The first was
adverse regulations. Most states prohibited these brewers from
having brewpubs where they could sell food, a key strategy to
introduce their products to mainstream consumers through
cross-selling. Furthermore, many state laws mandated that
small breweries could sell beer only through distributors, even
though most of these distributors were (and still are) controlled
by industry incumbents through massive commercial incen-
tives and direct ownership.
In addition to restrictive finances, know-how, and regula-
tions, these underresourced firms dealt with adverse consumer
preferences, the second major shared external constraint our
data foreground. Craft brewers’ initial clientele consisted
mostly of other beer enthusiasts; these peer firms both educated
these avid consumers and followed their tastes. In this way,
craft breweries’ market-driving strategy had a market-driven
genesis; it responded to some manifest customer needs (Day
and Moorman 2010; Kohli and Jaworski 1990). But main-
stream consumers tended to reject more flavorful beers, pre-
cluding a larger-scale version of such approach. Incumbents’
light-flavored beers had homogenized their tastes, as this craft
beer pioneer reminisces:
Our IPA and Hefeweizen [beer styles], our bestsellers today, didn’t
sell anything in the 1980s. I still remember this one guy who
walked up to the bar and said, “You got any new beers?” My
bartender goes, “We have a Hefeweizen.” The customer looks at
it, takes a big sip, and says, “That’s the worst beer I’ve ever had. It
tastes like bananas!” So, here’s a guy that orders a Hefeweizen and
didn’t even know that it actually should taste like bananas.
Maciel and Fischer 45
We conceptualize collaborative market driving as a coordinated
response to the recognition of these systemic constraints by peer
firms (Figure 2, stage 1, outcomes). However, this response is
not inevitable. As social movement scholarship shows (for a
review, see Meyer [2007]), shared constraints do not translate
spontaneously into collective action to change the status quo. In
fact, for most of the 1980s, these firms dealt with their obstacles
in a dispersed manner, as when they sporadically visited one
another to discuss beer making. These brewers describe this
period of relative isolation as one of self-absorption and discov-
ery: “We were pretty much on our own, teaching ourselves how
to run a small brewery, trying to make a living. ...Somewhere
along the way, it seems we realized [emphasis added] we
couldn’t grow this thing by ourselves.”
This realization followed the emergence of suprafirm enti-
ties. These entities, namely trade associations, gradually
formed around these firms to grapple with a core barrier for
collective action: organizing (Commons 1950; Ostrom 1990).
A few of them began in period 1, when some craft breweries
(e.g., Sierra Nevada) and avid consumers (e.g., home brewer
Charles Papazian, considered the father of the craft beer revi-
val) stepped up to found and run them in their spare time with
nominal budgets (Figure 2, stage 1, core processes). These
actors did not shun the prospect of individually benefiting from
craft beer’s growth. Still, they also desired to alter the broad
conditions of a market for the advantage of other actors, a
motive that often guides entrepreneurs and avid consumers
(Maguire, Hardy, and Lawrence 2004; Scaraboto and Fischer
2013). However, these rudimentary associations only orga-
nized few events, with little sway over other producers and
consumers. Period 2 was when they grew in number and pro-
fessionalism, incorporating paid staff and directors. Late in
period 3, they consisted of a vast web, with an umbrella orga-
nization working at the national level and about 60 others,
called “guilds,” operating at nonoverlapping localities. These
organizations act like labor unions, representing members’
interests while being legally autonomous. In the next section,
we analyze how these trade associations, as they became pro-
fessionalized, triggered the mobilization of multiple market
actors for collaborative market driving.
Stage 2: Mobilization of Peer Firms and Allies
Mobilization refers to the process of both marshaling actors and
making them ready for action (McCarthy and Zald 1977).
Effective mobilization is essential for achieving long-term
goals such as developing a market, mainly when actors are
individually underresourced to pursue this goal. Though impor-
tant, market development research has overlooked the concrete
initiatives that lead firms to coalesce around a specific goal and
form a strong sense of collective identity (Carroll and Swami-
nathan 2000; Rao, Morrill, and Zald 2000).
Using our data, we abstract these initiatives into two triggers
of collective action: (1) promoting a shared cause and (2) insti-
tutionalizing bonding opportunities (Figure 2, stage 2, core
processes). These triggers, spearheaded by craft breweries’
trade associations, led craft breweries to transition from an
individualistic to a collective ethos while enlisting critical
allies. Of these allies, we focus on a type of actor that remains
undertheorized in market driving: consumers.
3
Promoting a Shared Cause
This mobilization trigger refers to the diffusion of a compelling
goal to guide market actors’ efforts in market development. We
explicate this trigger by drawing on research that suggests that
collectively compelling goals include two core dimensions: (1)
the diagnosis of a problem and (2) the prognosis of certain
actors as the solution (Benford and Snow 2000; Rao 2009).
In period 2, craft breweries’ national association promoted a
shared cause through a set of books, magazines, and websites
targeted at both producers and consumers. In the 2003 edition
of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, a best-selling book that
this association published for home brewers and aspiring craft
brewers, the introduction states: “Our beer world is so much
better than it was in the 1980s and early 1990s. But don’t forget
for a moment that the large brewing companies of the world
continue to ‘squeeze’ the market with their lighter-flavored
product, always trying to minimize choice” (10). Later, as this
association set out to expand craft beer’s appeal to mainstream
consumers, it created several variants of this message. An
exemplar is this rhythmic excerpt from a pamphlet circulated
in many local bars:
We hail the bold brewers who have built paradise/Saving beer from
dilution by corn and rice .../May our passion for quality never be
stopped/In the land of the free and the brave and the hopped/We
salute with this glorious beer in our hand/Let the true taste of
freedom clink out ‘cross this land.
Industry incumbents use high levels of corn and rice in their
flagship brands to sell beer at lower prices and deliver mild
flavors to mainstream consumers. In the post-WWII era, these
practices cohered with the democratic ethos that backed the
diffusion of mass-produced consumer goods in the United States
(Cohen 2004). But messages such as the preceding one invert the
meaning of these practices, diagnosing them as yielding low-
quality products and reducing market choice. Furthermore, such
messages contain a prognosis: they advance “bold brewers” as
market protagonists imbued with a “passion for quality” that will
“save” beer from the dilution and homogenization caused by
market antagonists, namely corporate breweries.
Craft breweries echo this message at their consumer touch-
points. Rather than touting their products’ quality, they focus
on asserting that light-flavored beers are a problem created by
corporations, as in this brewer’s speech during a brewery tour
with consumers: “You are not going to find corn or rice in our
beers. Do you know why corporate breweries put a blue
3
Although media members are also allies in our context, we choose not to focus
analytic attention on them because our data only confirm previous research on
their importance in market development (Humphreys 2010a; Rao 2009).
46 Journal of Marketing 84(5)
indicator on their cans to show the beer is cold? They don’t
want you to drink these beers when they are not cold. Corn and
rice are cheaper but taste terrible at higher temperatures.”
The emphasis on the motives of a set of peer firms contrasts
with advertising focused on the benefits of a single firm’s
offering, which typifies individualistic approaches to market
driving (Giesler 2012; Rosa et al. 1999). To make these
motives more meaningful, trade associations tie craft brew-
eries’ activities to certain cultural ideals, as in this point-of-
sale material:
I declare the beer I choose to enjoy is ...an artistic creation of
living liquid history made from passionate innovators ...[and that]
American craft brewers provide flavorful and diverse American-
made beers in more than 100 distinct styles that have made the
United States the envy of every beer-drinking nation for the quality
and variety of beers brewed. ...Craft brewers represent the purest
form of the American spirit and are dedicated to nurturing and
enriching their communities.
This parody of the U.S. Declaration of Independence offers
another prognosis: it glorifies craft brewers as producers who
want to revive Americans’ dear ideals of entrepreneurship,
independence, and idyllic communities. Much like the rheto-
ric of social movements, this messaging links up these
brewers’ market goals with noble purposes, a strategy that
serves to broaden the appeal of a change project and increase
its potential to attract allies (Rao 2009). We argue that in
collaborative market driving, these links do more than that.
They partially eclipse this strategy’s self-serving economic
benefit, which could otherwise undermine the sense of disin-
terestedness that is vital to the credibility of a cause and its
leaders (Hoffer 1951).
Craft brewers do not uniformly buy into these idealistic
messages. Since the 1990s, dozens have sold their businesses
to the corporate breweries their associations have disparaged.
Yet these messages foster an ethos that guides the relations of
the firms that remain committed to developing a market
through collective action. As with this craft brewer, many oth-
ers refer to this ethos as “a rising tide floats all boats”:
There’s a common clich´e, “a rising tide floats all boats,” and that
sentiment has been around. There’s competition in that we’re all in
the [craft beer] industry ...[but] Budweiser, Coors, and Miller,
regardless of the growth of our industry, still stand for most beer
consumed in the U.S. right now. We’re the small guys, with our
arms locked together.
The same ethos patterns the experiences of many craft beer
consumers, who come to see themselves as craft breweries’
allies.
4
This influence comes through when they reflect on their
trajectories as beer drinkers, as in this excerpt from one of the
first author’s many in situ interactions with craft beer festivals’
attendees:
I used to drink Bud Light, Coors, and Miller. Now, I keep thinking,
“Damn! They [corporate breweries] made me waste all these years
drinking awful beer (laugh)!” And then you get to know what craft
brewers are doing, creating neat spaces for people to hang out ....I
see myself more than a consumer; I’m kind of a supporter [empha-
sis added], actually.
When developing a new market, competitors often use
coherent messages to signal to external audiences (e.g., con-
sumers) what the market stands for (Kjellberg and Olson 2016;
Navis and Glynn 2010; Rosa et al. 1999). In addition to this
role, promoting a shared cause serves to mobilize stakeholders
for collective action. Rao (2009) notes the role of this trigger at
the start of many markets, such as that for personal computers,
when retailers and early adopters claimed to be promoting
technological democratization. This type of mobilization
hinges on neither direct coercion nor measurable incentives;
thus, it differs from the processes that explain collective action
in mainstream economic theory (Lee, Struben, and Bingham
2018; Olson 1965). Instead, the promotion of a shared cause
works by offering a long-term goal that peer firms and potential
allies consider worthy of jointly pursuing.
Promoting a shared cause is, therefore, foundational for
mobilizing actors for market driving. However, it alone has a
limitation for setting collective action in motion: it does not
automatically create the social networks that enable the trans-
lation of abstract goals into pragmatic doings (Meyer 2007).
The next subsection sheds light on how craft breweries’ trade
associations cultivate these networks, which include consumers
as critical members.
Institutionalizing Bonding Opportunities
This mobilization trigger refers to the purposive creation of
occasions for market actors to develop social cohesion; such
occasions are primary for collective action, mainly when this
involves a large group of actors (Ostrom 1990). Using our data,
we conceptualize two dimensions of bonding opportunities: (1)
those within locality, which serve to forge a series of clusters
among local actors, and (2) those across locality, which focus
on connecting these clusters into a wider and more diffuse
social grid.
Within specific localities, local guilds take great responsibil-
ity for cultivating clusters. For example, they organize regular
meetings that facilitate sociality and genuine communication
among local brewers, as this craft brewer discloses:
We’re all super busy running our businesses. Brewers are kind of
jack-of-all-trades. ...If we were to try to coordinate just our own
sort of meetings, it’d never happen. The guild is community build-
ing, so we don’t become a bunch of jerks. It’s a forum to air any
grievances that we have and work together to solve them.
4
See Maciel and Wallendorf (2017, p. 731–34) for details on why these
meanings resonate with so many avid consumers, who are usually male.
Some meanings (e.g., entrepreneurship) have been historically associated
with notions of middle-class masculinity, along with beer itself.
Maciel and Fischer 47
Professional meetings can be a source of distress, but they can
also be bonding events when organized around a regular set of
participants and presumed goodwill (Kunda 1992). Through
such meetings, the web of local guilds forms an apparatus of
social cohesion that prevents craft brewers from drifting apart
due to misunderstandings and individual business demands
that could run counter to the formation of a strong collective
identity.
While opportunities like regular meetings foster local pro-
ducer bonds, others such as trade conferences foster these
bonds across localities. In the leading conference run by the
national trade association, craft brewers from many places
engage in the usual activities of business conventions, such
as visiting a trade show (Pen
˜aloza 2000). Distinctive about it
is the volume of activities designed to connect brewers. Every
conference day, they join in foosball tournaments, brewery
tours, and parties lavishly supplied with craft beer. Sociality
happened organically in the conferences that gathered nearly
100 brewers in period 1, and it became a planned feature in
period 2, when attendance exceeded the thousands. These
events connect craft brewers who are not in regular contact,
as revealed by this craft brewer’s testimonial captured in situ at
a recent conference edition, with over 10,000 brewers:
I don’t leave the brewery very often, so once a year, I make the
time to come here. I always walk away smarter than I was, but it’s
also just this energy and camaraderie and enthusiasm. That always
reminds me of why I got into the brewing industry in the first
place ...I always hear inspiring stories from other breweries, their
struggles, how they overcame them.
These events instill in geographically distant producers a
sense of camaraderie and energy (Collins 2004) to continue
pursuing their shared cause.
To mobilize allies for this cause, craft breweries’ associa-
tions institutionalized opportunities for producer–consumer
bonding. This occurs within and across localities, too. At
the local level, exemplars of this mobilization trigger are the
craft beer festivals that happen throughout the country every
year. These festivals grew with the expansion of guilds,
their main organizers: from 5 festivals in early period 1 to
over 150 in late period 3. In their typical format, consumers
pay for tickets that they exchange for beer samples at craft
breweries’ stands, where they chat with brewers about beer
making and tasting. We also witnessed these actors min-
gling while playing lawn games and eating at communal
tables. These occasions are socially valuable because
brewers spend most of their time in breweries’ backstage,
as this consumer notes:
It’s nice to actually talk to brewers. ...Some people who like craft
beer are also interested in learning more about how beer is made.
At the festival, we can hang out and ask questions to brewers. It
makes for a more personal connection. ...When Budweiser sends
someone to beer festivals, it’s usually a sales guy or a promoter that
knows nothing about beer making.
By mixing consumption with sociality and entertainment,
these local events suspend firms’ commercial interests, stres-
sing, instead, humanized buyer–seller ties (Pen
˜aloza 2000).
To bond producers with consumers across localities, craft
breweries’ trade associations run large-scale events such as The
National Homebrew Day. Established in 1988, it now happens
every May in hundreds of different sites in the United States
(more than 400 as of 2016), when craft breweries gather with
home brewers and other avid consumers to jointly brew a beer
batch. For this day, the craft breweries’ national association
instructs participants from all U.S. states to brew the same beer
recipe. Furthermore, regardless of time zones, this association
asks all participants to raise their glasses to celebrate craft beer
and home brewing at a single time.
Emphasizing synchronicity in these events (i.e., same day and
time of activities) is not pointless. In a classic book on the
formation of nations, Anderson (1991) details how synchronic
events such as holidays cultivate a sense of identity among spa-
tially scattered people. Through invented occasions that encour-
age synchronic doings, trade associations foster social cohesion
among geographically dispersed producers and consumers.
Emerging Tension
The stage of “mobilization of peer firms and allies” is permeated
by collectivism, yet it contains an emerging tension related to
group boundaries (Figure 2, stage 2, emerging tension). As craft
beer grew in popularity, it began to entice corporations and
entrepreneurs seeking a quick profit—or in one craft brewer’s
words, “a bunch of business people pouring money into brew-
eries, opening fancy brewpubs, who started cutting corners to
get higher returns.” Craft breweries feared that this type of new-
comer would undermine their quality-oriented cause.
To manage this tension, the craft breweries’ national asso-
ciation set formal standards for a brewery to be considered
craft. These standards had three pillars: a maximum production
volume, a maximum percentage of ownership by large corpo-
rations, and the types of ingredients that can be used in beer
making. This standard-setting did not aim to create technolo-
gical compatibility, as in the markets for electricity and VCRs
(Cusumano, Mylonadis, and Rosenbloom 1992; Granovetter
and McGuire 1998). Instead, it aimed to shield craft breweries’
collaborative market driving from the encroachment of corpo-
rate breweries. Through these standards, craft breweries restrict
the types of breweries that can vote and participate as board
members in their associations, two roles that may have endur-
ing effects on market development by shaping commercial and
regulatory standards (Sine, Haveman, and Tolbert 2005).
In summary, promoting a shared cause and institutionalizing
bonding opportunities are mobilization triggers that, despite
emergent tensions, explain how peer firms go from shared
constraints and dispersed action to a sense of collective iden-
tity, alongside their allies (Figure 2, stage 2, outcomes). The
next section highlights how this identity translates into a form
of collective action that departs from individualistic
approaches to market driving.
48 Journal of Marketing 84(5)
Stage 3: Concerted Action of Peer Firms
and Allies
Stage 3 refers to how a mobilized coalition of actors works
together to drive the development of a market. Essentially, this
process involves deploying collective resources in ways that
give peer firms the power to overcome constraints and bring
about enduring changes in the composition and actions of a
market’s stakeholders, including consumers, suppliers, distri-
butors, and lawmakers (Jaworski, Kohli, and Sahay 2000).
This conversion of collective resources into market-driving
power occurs within two domains that are central for market
development: economic and political (Fligstein 2001; Keim
and Zeithaml 1986; Kotler 1986). We refer to deployments in
these domains as economic and political conversions. For each
conversion, we identify dimensions corresponding to major
strands of activities and highlight the synergistic roles of our
core market actors: suprafirm entities, peer firms, and allied
consumers (Figure 2, stage 3, core processes).
Economic Conversion
The economic conversion concerns the commercial coopera-
tion of mobilized market actors to improve a set of peer firms’
ability to drive a market. This conversion has two dimensions:
(1) facilitating peers’ entry and growth and (2) building market
reputation.
Facilitating peers’ entry and growth. In individualistic approaches
to market driving, creating high entry barriers is a maxim of
competitive savviness (Porter 1980; Santos and Eisenhardt
2009). In collaborative market driving, firms suspend this wis-
dom. Instead, they exchange critical resources for promoting
the entry and growth of peers.
Limited know-how has long been a constraint for craft
brewers to enter and stay in the beer industry. In response, trade
associations and established craft breweries have devised
initiatives to enhance newer producers’ know-how. At trade
conferences, prestigious craft brewers educate audiences of
less seasoned peers on general business topics, from distributor
selection to brewpub design, without charging speaking fees. In
the annual program “Brewing the American Dream,” pioneer-
ing craft brewery Boston Beer Company covers the expenses
for a new craft brewer to visit its facilities and receive custo-
mized business advice from its executives.
Beyond cooperation between geographically distant peers,
our data show ample exchange of know-how among geogra-
phically close firms. Interestingly, this closeness does not seem
to evolve into enclosed cliques, as may happen in some indus-
tries (Uzzi 1997). Newcomers are welcomed, receiving critical
business information, as this craft brewer notes:
People who are planning to open a brewery come to guild meetings
to learn about the trials and hiccups we’ve experienced. That saves
them a lot of time; many of those guys don’t have a lot of expe-
rience as entrepreneurs, at least not in the alcohol industry. So, we
say, “these are your zoning laws.” It’s very intricate. There’s even
regulation for how many feet away from a church you gotta be.
And we are a soundboard for a new person who wants to open a
brewery. For example, two new breweries have been coming to our
meetings for the past year. We’ve helped steer them away from
locations that would have hindered their ability to grow. It’s not
easy to open a brewery. Every step of the way, you find a hurdle.
Craft breweries participate in a two-layer network, with
local and distant peers. For new firms, spatially distant peers
are useful as sources of generic know-how, such as brewpub
design; in turn, local networks give these firms access to tai-
lored information, such as how to navigate city regulation. This
information improves newcomers’ decisions about issues (e.g.,
location) that can make or break a brick-and-mortar business.
Beyond the aid from established peers, upcoming producers
consistently receive contributions from allied consumers. Spe-
cifically, consumers act as volunteers (Figure 2, stage 2, core
processes), giving money and physical labor to help these firms
deal with another of their historical constraints: limited finan-
cial resources. In crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter, many
individuals give money for craft breweries to open and expand
their operations. In our sample, consumers have made contri-
butions that, summed with others, helped these breweries raise
between $20,000 and $40,000, getting in return only mementos
or personalized experiences such as private beer tours. As to
physical labor, consumers volunteer at craft beer festivals in
positions from trash collectors to beer pourers, receiving in
return tickets to these festivals and T-shirts. Also in exchange
for some souvenirs, consumers volunteer at craft breweries’
production lines, as when a new craft brewery needed extra
hands on its canning operation’s first day.
Consumers frequently provide firms with free resources. At
times, they create products for themselves that are later com-
mercialized by firms on a larger scale (Dolbec and Fischer
2015; Dolbec and Maciel 2018). At other times, when partici-
pating in brand communities, they give away ideas for the
specific firm to which they feel attached (Cova, Pace, and
Ska
˚l´en 2015; Press and Arnould 2011a; Schau, Mun
˜iz, and
Arnould 2009). As allies in collaborative market driving,
though, consumers form a more flexible pool of critical
resources, which various firms (not just specific ones) can call
on to respond to their business needs. The operation of this pool
relies on the strong sense of collective identity between pro-
ducers and consumers—result from the mobilizing efforts ana-
lyzed previously. The result of this mobilization is also clear in
how these market actors collaborate to build a positive reputa-
tion for the collective of craft breweries. As shown next, this
collaboration impacts both newer and older peers.
Building market reputation. In individualistic approaches to mar-
ket driving, firms focus on building their own brands (Jaworski,
Kohli, and Sahay 2000). In collaborative market driving, this
individualistic focus coexists with the goal of developing a
reputation for the entire market category. This goal can hardly
be accomplished without peers’ adequate performance.
Maciel and Fischer 49
Building this positive reputation is challenging when many
producers lack the know-how to offer high-quality products reli-
ably (Rao 2009). To mitigate this historical challenge for craft
breweries, local trade associations keep an eye on members that
struggle to deliver expected quality levels, as this guild’s director
confides:
We help defray the cost of conferences for brewers .... We defray
costs for everyone, but I make special invitations to those that I
know are not doing a great job (chuckles). Part of the money we
make at festivals goes for that .... If the first craft beer I ever taste
is hideous, that forms my opinions about craft beers in general.
There’re licensed breweries in this state that the owners are enthu-
siastic about their beer, but their beer isn’t always very good. ...
And some of them have been around a while. That doesn’t help the
[craft beer] industry.
In collaborative market driving, improving quality is a col-
lective concern because peer firms seek to create a positive image
for their market. This is necessary given the knowledge schema
that informs the adverse preferences of mainstream beer consu-
mers. Because of the flavor homogeneity of U.S. mass-produced
beers, many consumers learned to expect all beers to taste simi-
larly. This schema is tacit when Americans ask one another, “Do
you like beer?” as if all beers tasted the same. In markets with a
long history of heterogeneity such as cars, the question “Do you
like cars?” makes little sense, as it is assumed that people may
well like sedans while disliking compact vehicles. In the beer
market, though, the many consumers who are unaware of the
sheer diversity of flavors among craft beers transfer the single-
taste schema they learned through their experiences with mass-
produced beers to other products. Then, if a craft brewery makes a
faulty product, they infer this product generally reflects the qual-
ity of craft beers. Given this, craft breweries’ know-how exchange
plays a nontrivial role in increasing consumers’ chances of enjoy-
ing their first craft beer experiences, a decisive step in increasing
demand for this product (Carpenter and Nakamoto 1989). This
form of deploying collective resources, thus, drives markets by
changing the economic actions of producers, which in turn
impacts the composition and typical actions of consumers.
Despite the ample exchange of economic know-how, many
craft brewers occasionally face issues in their commercial
efforts. A common one is erring in inventory forecasts in ways
that impact consumer experience and sales. In response, craft
breweries participate in another form of collective deployment
of resources that centers on production supplies. Here, local
networks are instrumental, as this craft brewer reveals:
Last month we ran out of oxygen, so I called [local brewery] and
asked, “Do you have a tank we could borrow?” And they go, “Sure.
The brewery’s keys are hidden here; just go back and grab the
tank.” It’s this sort of thing. If you’re short in anything, you can
always call other breweries.
Pooling supplies with local peers prevents craft breweries
from losing sales and failing consumers with a lack of
products and faulty services. In the long run, this economic
cooperation aids these firms in their bid for creating a positive
market reputation in their localities.
To build the reputation of a new market, firms often enlist
resources from influential market actors such as opinion lead-
ers (Humphreys 2010a; Kjellberg and Olson 2016). In our con-
text, mainstream consumers were key allies, providing
resources that were critical to the firms leading the cause they
learned to support. Specifically, allied consumers directly con-
tribute to building and sustaining craft breweries’ core compet-
itive advantage: continual product innovation (The Nielsen
Company 2016). This contribution usually happens through
home brewing contests, as this fieldnote based on the first
author’s observations describes:
In the typical format of home brewing contests, craft breweries
partner with home brewing and craft beer clubs that invite mem-
bers to send samples of their best homemade beers. These samples
are judged, and the winning recipe is commercially brewed by the
partner craft brewery—with winning consumers receiving no
financial reward. Drawing on consumers’ recipe ideas is so com-
mon that craft breweries’ trade associations have formalized a
process to do so. In craft beer competitions, craft breweries often
compete in the “Pro-Am” category (short for Professional-Ama-
teur). To participate in it, breweries can only enter recipes coming
from their collaborations with consumers.
When producers share high collectivism, as craft breweries
do, they often restrain their access to novel knowledge, a critical
factor in firms’ ability to innovate continuously (Uzzi 1997). By
turning consumers into cocreators (Figure 2, stage 3, core pro-
cesses), craft breweries and their trade association partially off-
set this tendency. These breweries do not look at the aggregate
tastes of these consumers to cater to them, as in typical market-
driven strategies, nor do they ignore these tastes, as in some
market-driving strategies (Humphreys and Carpenter 2018).
Instead, these firms rely on these consumers as members of their
innovation ecosystem who provide free suggestions. The
deployment of this economic resource supports these breweries’
market-driving goal by keeping product innovation as a compet-
itive advantage over incumbents, thereby helping them to retain
the lead in shaping mainstream consumer preferences.
To fully grasp this economic cooperation, it is worth
unpacking how it benefits established breweries. By displaying
generosity, they showcase their commitment to the craft beer
revival. In turn, the recognition of this commitment by peers
and allied consumer aids these larger players—some of which
produce millions of beer barrels—to retain the right to claim
the status of “craft.” Nevertheless, collaborative market driving
is not directed by a highly calculative mindset (Brandenburger
and Nalebuff 1997; Lee, Struben, and Bingham 2018), through
which firms foster partnerships only if they profit from these
relationships more than their partners do. Larger peers help
smaller ones better their performances even though they cannot
measure the return over their collaboration; in fact, they may
lose sales in the areas where these smaller players operate.
50 Journal of Marketing 84(5)
Emerging tension. In economic cooperation, Ostrom (1990)
argues that an inherent tension is the risk of opportunistic
behavior (Figure 2, stage 3, emerging tensions). Our data con-
tain one such case, when a craft brewer sold a bottler to a peer
for its cost value, only to learn that this firm later resold the
machine with profit to another craft brewery. The seller learned
about this at a trade conference when he incidentally met the
equipment’s second buyer. The seller stopped helping the
opportunistic peer, but without taking further action such as
telling other breweries about this violation. This case helps
us identify limitations to collaborative market driving. Peers
trust one another by default rather than as the result of dyadic
ties built over time (Ganesan 1994; Uzzi 1997), but they will
cut these ties if they realize a peer abused their initial goodwill.
It appears that opportunistic behavior is mitigated indirectly
in collaborative market driving. The multilayer social network
in which firms participate functions as a monitoring tool
against actors who want to engage in repeated free riding. In
addition, the openness of this network to newcomers plays a
symbolic role in subduing purely self-oriented behavior.
Observe how this craft brewer reflects on his adoption of the
“a rising tide floats all boats” ethos after experiencing craft
breweries’ exchange of economic resources:
When we entered into the brewing business, I thought all right, “Here
we go, this is a business. It’s gonna be cutthroat, take children out of
the living room.” When we were still in the planning phase, I was at
[craft beer festival], and I went around to all the local breweries and
introduced myself. And then, the guys from [brewery name] just sort
of said, “If you need anything, let us know.” I didn’t expect that....
And then, I needed something, and I called them, “Hey, can you help
me with this?” And they go, “Sure, just stop by.” It was yeast, I think.
Later, I wanted to know about somedistributors, and theygo, “Here’s
your answer ...” Since then, we’ve been able to help them a little bit.
I remember the first time they asked us for help. I was like, “Yay!
We’re not just asking all the time anymore.”
Instead of holding back or monetizing critical economic
resources, the coalition of craft breweries, trade associations,
and allied consumers more often pools these resources
together, enabling firms to enter the market and build positive
consumer perceptions. The goal and scope of this economic
cooperation are broader than those in typical cases of interfirm
collaboration centered on specific, time-bound projects (Tra-
cey, Heide, and Bell 2014). This cooperation also departs from
individualistic approaches to market driving; in the latter, pro-
ducers focus on creating strong reputations for their own brands
(Humphreys and Carpenter 2018); in the former, producers also
prioritize the reputation of their peers.
In sum, economic conversion involves the pooling and
deployment of critical economic resources into initiatives that
foster the entry of new peers to an industry and alter the actions
of critical stakeholders, such as these same peers and consu-
mers. However, as the craft beer market grew in economic
import, craft breweries came into friction with regulations that
had not been designed for these players but were, instead,
aligned with market incumbents’ interests. The next subsection
analyzes how collaborative market drivers work together to
become a political voice.
Political Conversion
Political conversion refers to the regulatory work of mobilized
market actors to improve a set of peer firms’ ability to drive a
market (Figure 2, stage 3, core processes). When firms drive
markets, political action often is focal because existing legis-
lation tends to protect the status quo (Fligstein 2001; Kjellberg
and Olson 2016). In individualistic market driving, large firms
usually engage in this kind of action by using their financial
resources to hire well-paid lobbyists and make donations to
political parties (Gamson 2004; Schuler, Rehbein, and Cramer
2002). By contrast, collaborative market driving entails the
deployment of collective resources to gain political power.
This deployment has two dimensions: (1) creating goodwill
with political elites and (2) pushing a legislative agenda. As
with economic conversion, suprafirm entities, peer firms, and
their allies play synergistic roles in each dimension.
Creating goodwill with political elites. This dimension focuses on
establishing fruitful channels of communication with political
elites. New market players usually find it hard to develop these
channels (Amenta and Caren 2004). Craft breweries’ trade
associations took the lead in this regard by hiring professional
lobbyists, as this association director reveals:
We felt that we had to hire a lobbying firm .... There’s a limited
amount of publications that legislators read, and then there’s like a
subscription email service. So, this firm can place our message
there, and they know how to change it so that it makes sense to
legislators. Not to mention they knew who in the House has an
agenda of supporting small businesses like us.
For legislators, lobbyists are valuable to the extent they can
translate the often-vague claims from constituents into useful
information for policymaking decisions (Hall and Deardorff
2006). For constituents, lobbyists’ value derives from their
ability to offer reliable access to political elites.
Beyond lobbying, craft breweries’ trade associations create
goodwill with political elites by inviting them to events that can
showcase craft breweries’ quality and popularity. For example,
the national association hosts a craft beer and food pairing
reception annually to acquaint U.S. Congress members with
its executives and leading craft brewers. Also, state guilds use
the largest festivals they organize as a political tool. This
guild’s director explains:
One of our major events [6,000 people] happens across the street
from the State Capitol. It pulls in retailers, wholesalers, brewers,
and consumers. To be honest, promoting craft beer to the public is
a byproduct. The primary purposes are fundraising for the guild’s
programs and profiling craft beer and craft breweries to the state
legislature. We invite legislators and staffers to come for the expo;
Maciel and Fischer 51
some are invited to a luncheon, others are invited to speak ....We
do this event at that location on purpose, to show craft beer.
Such festivals bond producers and consumers with shared
interests. Furthermore, by showcasing craft breweries’ large
following, these events help trade associations vividly display
to political elites the electoral potential of being receptive to
their legislative agenda.
Creating goodwill with political elites is important and often
costly (Walker and Rea 2014). Craft breweries’ trade associations
have been able to achieve this goal by harnessing two collective
resources that they have fostered: the mobilization of peer firms
and consumers as well as their rising economic power. This field-
work memo, written as a summary of the first author’s interac-
tions with these associations’ directors, gives more details:
The national trade association takes funds from the dues paid by
the great proportion (70%in 2016) of brewers affiliated with it and
the registration fees they pay for trade conferences. This combina-
tion has enabled this organization to step up from doing intermit-
tent lobbying until the mid-2000s to allocating nearly $200,000
toward government affairs per year in the 2010s. Guilds, in turn,
take funds primarily from the proceeds of the popular craft beer
festivals they organize. Further, about 1/3 of them run membership
programs in which consumers pay annual dues (e.g., $30) in
exchange for perks (e.g., glassware).
Though the individual values of these dues are minor, they
demonstrate the importance of cultivating a sense of collective
identity among collaborative market drivers (Figure 2, stage 2,
outcomes). When properly done, this cultivated identity can
even lead market actors to behave in politically committed
ways that are quite puzzling when compared with the waning
civic engagement that has recently characterized many areas of
social life (Putnam 2000).
Put succinctly, the dimension of creating goodwill with
political elites focuses on cultivating a sentiment of endear-
ment with this powerful group to increase their receptivity to
the claims of the peer firms. However, this may not translate
into specific votes—and thus the need to work on the more
pragmatic dimension of political conversion.
Pushing a legislative agenda. This dimension focuses on getting
specific bills passed rather than on enhancing lawmakers’
receptivity to an interest group. As with creating goodwill with
political elites, it also relies on market drivers’ collective sense
of identity and aggregate economic power.
Since the late 2000s, one critical policy issue has been the
federal excise tax on beer. In the program “Climb the Hill,”
trade associations sponsored fly-ins for craft brewers to discuss
the impact of this tax with legislators in Washington, D.C. For
these meetings, craft brewers suspend their antagonism to cor-
porate breweries. Trade associations instruct them to focus on
how the excise tax hindered their potential to create the man-
ufacturing jobs that have become so electorally relevant in the
United States. In 2015, nearly 180 craft brewers met with their
Congressional representatives to garner their support for a bill
that passed in 2017 to lower said tax.
Beyond producers, consumers also participate as activists
(Figure 2, stage 3, core processes) to push specific bills. The
national association runs the program “Support Your Local
Brewery,” with over 1.5 million registered consumers who
receive calls to action about policy issues. These calls include
instructions that also emphasize a moderate tone that consu-
mers should use:
Please identify yourself by name and say you are a constituent and
in which city or rural area you live. Ask the Representative to
please oppose [bill number] because it will limit the ability of craft
brewers to get their beer on the shelves of retailers and hence your
ability to access [state] craft beer.
While the number of consumers contacting representatives
is unavailable, guild directors often reported this program’s
role in amplifying their political clout, as in this interview:
“More than once, I’ve walked into a Congressman’s office to
talk about an issue, and they go, ‘Okay, okay, I know what’s
going on. I’ll support your agenda. Just ask your people to stop
calling me. I’ve got it.’” This consumer political engagement is
another point of distinction between collaborative market driv-
ing and typical cases of brand community, which center on the
cocreation of products and services rather than on shaping
policy (Schau, Mun
˜iz, and Arnould 2009).
Pushing a legislative agenda has been vital in craft brew-
eries’ struggle to access more mainstream consumers. In a
recent case, a state guild spent three years working with lobby-
ists and coordinating a series of grassroots tactics to expand
craft breweries’ production capacity without increasing their
taxes. This guild’s director chronicles:
The first time, we tried to introduce the bill through our lobbyist,
but we failed. Institutions resist change. You have to show the new
bill is a better alternative. The second time, we asked essentially
the same things, but we also did a whole campaign. We had a 300-
people rally at the Capitol, which was the biggest rally for any
commerce committee they’ve ever had. We activated not only our
breweries but also the general public. We had people bussed in.
Our bill sponsor talked before the group. We had [the mayor] talk.
During all this, breweries and myself were doing the basic petition
across the state. We’ve got 10,000 signatures.
Collaborative market driving entails deploying collective
resources into some initiatives that use formal communication
channels with political elites and into other initiatives that dra-
matize the popular support for a cause. Meyers (2007) explains
that the mix of these political tools is what often creates the
sense of merit and urgency required to turn such claims into
policy changes. In this process, trade associations play a crucial
role, bundling dispersed producers and consumers into a more
cohesive political voice.
Over time, this coalition of suprafirm entities, peer firms,
and allied consumers has scored major political wins. Recall
52 Journal of Marketing 84(5)
that regulations prohibited craft breweries from running brew-
pubs and mandated the use of distributors to sell beer in many
states, despite incumbents’ power over these intermediaries. By
2016, Georgia and Mississippi were the only states still forbid-
ding craft breweries from on-premise beer sales. Moreover, this
coalition has legalized home brewing in all states, an activity
that often introduces new consumers to craft beer’s flavors
(Maciel and Wallendorf 2017). This legalization also creates
opportunities for more people to engage in the activity that has
served as the primary incubator of craft breweries, thus promot-
ing the entry of new market players in the coalition. Through
political conversion, craft breweries have shaped regulation in
ways that changed the composition and typical actions of mul-
tiple stakeholders.
Emerging tension. The emerging tension found in political con-
version is political underrepresentation (Figure 2, stage 3,
emerging tensions). For example, the dues paid by smaller craft
breweries partly paid for the costs of the political campaign
mentioned previously, when a guild passed a bill to expand
craft breweries’ production cap. However, the bill’s main ben-
eficiaries were two larger peers, who were close to reaching the
cap. Smaller craft breweries raised their eyebrows at this pro-
cess. But for the most part, this kind of tension is tempered by
these larger peers’ role in expanding the craft beer market.
Smaller breweries have observed that larger peers’ presence
in mainstream retailers such as large grocery store chains are
an entryway for more consumers into the craft beer world,
many of whom become eventually interested in their local
products. Furthermore, this tension is tempered by the role of
smaller breweries in economic conversion. There, they are the
main beneficiaries of what larger peers can provide.
Discussion
Theoretical Implications
We compare our theorizing with prior marketing research to
distill the main differences between collaborative and indivi-
dualistic approaches to market driving. These differences, all
introduced in our findings, are synthesized in Table 1. We
propose that the first five are defining characteristics of colla-
borative market driving and that the last two are typical occur-
rences. Consistent with Jaworski, Kohli, and Sahay’s (2000)
work on market driving, these dimensions should be seen as the
ends of a continuum, not dichotomies.
Individualistic versus collaborative market driving. When enacting
individualistic approaches to market development, peer firms
see the marketplace as a zero-sum game: they remain strongly
self-oriented to develop a brand reputation that is superior to
that of their peers.
We believe this ethos tends to prevail when firms’
resources are relatively ample or aligned with the market
environment. This is the case in Rosa et al.’s (1999) study
of automakers and Humphreys and Carpenter’s (2018) work
on wineries; these firms drove their markets mostly through
individualistic efforts to outdo peers. When some resources
are scarce, though, firms may resort to marketing alliances as
part of market-driving efforts, as often happens in the devel-
opment of complex technologies (Santos and Eisenhardt
2009). These alliances differ in degree from collaborative
market driving. They are time-bound and tend to involve a
select group of firms, often excluding peers. Under these con-
ditions, the importance of suprafirm entities is situational, as
when otherwise rival firms try to shape regulation as an inter-
est group (Schuler, Rehbein, and Cramer 2002).
By contrast, collaborative market driving is guided by a
shared cause instead of a self-oriented vision. Inspired by our
informants, we term this ethos “a rising tide floats all boats”—
which reflects firms’ focus on building a positive reputation for
themselves and their peers. Research shows this kind of col-
lective action often occurs among underresourced players, as in
the dynamics leading to the growth of food trucks and
community-supported agriculture in the United States
(Esparza, Walker, and Rossman 2014; Thompson and Cosku-
ner-Balli 2007). But it also occurs among more powerful pro-
ducers, as when automakers worked with car enthusiasts to
lobby for better roads and regulation in automobile’s early days
(Rao 2009). This collaborative ethos rests on producers’ rela-
tive lack of resources to shape critical market structures and
behaviors, not on their absolute endowments.
Precipitating sustained collective action requires time and
effort (Olson 1965; Ostrom 1990). A suprafirm entity devoted
to coordinating collaborative market driving can, thus, be crit-
ical (Table 1, penultimate line). Our research sheds light on a
common form of such entities: trade associations. Typically,
these actors lack bureaucratic tools (e.g., contracts) to coerce
Table 1. Individualistic and Collaborative Approaches to Market Driving.
Dimension Individualistic Collaborative
Prevailing ethos among peers “Zero-sum game” “A rising tide floats all boats”
Internal vision Self-oriented Shared cause
Firms’ core goal Build brand reputation Build market reputation
Single firm’s resources Adequate to drive market Inadequate to drive market
Collaboration with peers Selective and sporadic Consistent and pervasive
Role of suprafirm entities Limited Extensive
Role of consumers Learners Allies (cocreators, volunteers, activists)
Maciel and Fischer 53
firms into certain behaviors. Instead, they shape markets by
producing cultural templates for action (Spillman 2012),
orchestrating a shared identity among producers, enlisting
allies, and harnessing the resources of these actors into market
driving. Trade associations seem to be well positioned to coor-
dinate this strategy because of their presumed legitimacy as a
representative of collective interests. Other suprafirm entities
that often have such legitimacy, and therefore might alterna-
tively be effective coordinators of collective firm action,
include private consultants, consumer associations, and gov-
ernmental and multilateral agencies (Mesquita 2007).
Collaborative market driving also shows how markets
evolve when consumers systematically join forces with firms
to defy an industry’s status quo. Research on this topic points to
the role of ideological affinities between firms and consumers,
as when they form brand communities (Press and Arnould
2011b; Thompson and Coskuner-Balli 2007). However, ideas
rarely translate spontaneously into sustained, organized action
against dominant practices and actors. This form of action
relies on pragmatic ways to create social cohesion among chal-
lengers, organize contestation, and secure resources for these
tasks in the long term (McCarthy and Zald 1977). Building on
this view, our research deepens marketing theory by specifying
mobilization triggers and types of resource conversion that
mediate between ideologies and the collective action of peer
firms and consumers to drive a market. In this form of action,
consumers play various roles as allies, supporting multiple
rather than single firms (Table 1, bottom line).
By marking the distinctions between individualistic and col-
laborative approaches to market driving, we answer Jaworski
and Kohli’s (2017) call for a systematization of how firms can
shape market evolution. Recently, Humphreys and Carpenter
(2018) moved in this direction by identifying differences in the
“basis of competition”; specifically, they show that firms can
drive markets through symbolic leadership in addition to
through the more often discussed focus on technological dis-
ruption. Across the differences between symbolic and techno-
logical leadership, firms typically cooperate with multiple
actors within and outside the supply chain, but they see their
peers mostly as rivals. We extend this nascent typology of
market driving by identifying differences in the “form of
action”; we theorize how firms can drive markets by collabor-
ating with peers, adding to the understanding of how firms do
so through individualistic competition.
To be sure, collaborative market driving does not exclude
self-interest. By cooperating, firms can change markets to an
extent they would be unlikely to do otherwise. In the craft beer
case, even the largest craft breweries would struggle to shape
policy, an arena in which their resources are hardly a match to
those of their rival multinationals. Peers also cooperate because
they jointly benefit from growing the visibility of their offering,
a key factor in boosting the economic and cultural significance
of their market positions (Humphreys 2010b). Thus, collabora-
tive market driving is a collective strategy that includes but is
not overtaken by self-interest.
Relatedly, collaborative market driving does not mean an
absence of producer hierarchies. In our context, there is a clear
power difference between craft breweries that sell only in small
towns and those with national distribution. In collaborative
market driving, though, higher-power firms do not use their
greater resources to oppress their peers, as would be typically
the case in individualistic approaches to market driving (Santos
and Eisenhardt 2009). Instead, they allocate some resources to
help peers thrive. In doing so, they inevitably assert their
power, but looking at collaborative market driving only
through the lens of self-interest obscures rather than illuminates
this strategy. Of course, the prevalence of collaboration can
change as market growth slows down. Future research could
explore how this collaborative market driving may break down.
Transferability of theoretical insights. Our framework (Figure 2) is
useful to explain other cases of market development. In theo-
rizing market driving, Jaworski, Kohli, and Sahay (2000, p. 47)
note that this strategy is a matter of degree: “A business that
greatly changes the composition of a market [and] the beha-
viors of most players would be classified as having driven the
market to a greater extent than another business that caused
only a small change in the behavior of a single player.” The rise
of U.S. craft breweries lies on the higher end of this continuum.
It involves players that shaped much of the composition of the
market and the behaviors of many economic and political
actors; furthermore, these players did so with the odds stacked
against them, using limited resources to confront powerful
incumbents and alter adverse consumer preferences.
We propose our framework has a strong explanatory fit
with similar cases: firms that collectively drove markets to a
high degree despite their fragmented economic and political
power. Research has documented many such instances, as in
the markets for organic food, grass-fed meat, and legal can-
nabis, all of which developed through the collective action of
relatively small producers and allied consumers (Belasco
2007; Kjellberg and Olson 2016; Weber, Heinze, and DeSo-
ucey 2008). Other exemplars are the growth of food trucks
and the credit union movement (Esparza, Walker, and Ross-
man 2014; McKillop and Wilson 2011). The early days of
personal computers and nouvelle cuisine also involved peer
firm collaboration in particular areas. For example, producers
cooperated to create consumer awareness and interest in their
offerings, the area where they individually lacked resources to
drive market development (Rao 2009). In short, our frame-
work is useful in explaining the process of collective action
when peer firms employ collaboration, more and less broadly,
to drive markets to a high degree.
In addition to contributing to market driving research, our
work offers new insights on the formation of market hetero-
geneity, in particular to resource partitioning and organiza-
tional ecology theories. Often, work in these areas hold that
markets tend to become dominated by large generalists that
cater to the majority of consumers with mass-produced offer-
ings, leaving unattended smaller segments of buyers who prefer
more differentiated experiences (e.g., Carroll and Swaminathan
54 Journal of Marketing 84(5)
2000; Hannan and Freeman 1977). Market heterogeneity arises
as entrepreneurs form market niches to cater to these segments
that are beyond better-resourced incumbents’ interests. In this
view, the best strategy for this new set of firms is to remain in a
sort of competitive quarantine, operating in market spaces
without provoking retaliation of more powerful incumbents.
In contrast, collaborative market driving shows how markets
become heterogeneous as underresourced firms jointly shift
from a defensive to an offensive strategy. In this strategy, they
do not simply find consumers with tastes that resonate with
their differentiated offerings; instead, they shake deep-seated
preferences to develop consumer demand. Moreover, they do
not merely occupy market niches away from generalists’ reach
but rather move into generalists’ turf, directly defying their
dominance. The present research thus accounts for a more
vigorous form of agency by underresourced new firms, deepen-
ing knowledge of the nature and extent of their competitive
efforts and market influence.
The conceptualization of collaborative market driving also
informs the ongoing conversation on interfirm ties in marketing
research. This literature has built a rich understanding of the
vertical form of these ties, whereby sellers and buyers in a
given distribution channel try to optimize their bilateral
transactions (e.g., Heide and John 1990; Kumar, Heide, and
Wathne 2011; Lusch and Brown 1996; Stern and Reve
1980). Much less studied are horizontal forms of market coor-
dination, those involving firms positioned as sellers in a distri-
bution channel. Work on horizontal coordination emphasizes
time-bound interactions between a select group of peers; these
interactions are regulated through formal contracts and
oriented toward cost-sharing, as when firms form alliances to
develop new products (Rindfleisch and Moorman 2003; Swa-
minathan and Moorman 2009). By contrast, collaborative mar-
ket driving refers to cooperation among a broad (vs. select) set
of peer firms that are at the center of a broader coalition of
actors who seek to develop a market. This cooperation relies on
an informal (vs. formal) contract, safeguarded by a curated
ideology and cohesive social networks, and enacted through
a portfolio of initiatives that market actors devise to pursue
their collective goal.
Managerial Implications
Our work can help managers assess when a collaborative
approach to market driving is best suited. To organize this
discussion, we offer a decision flowchart (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Decision flowchart for collaborative market driving.
Maciel and Fischer 55
The first managerial task is to pinpoint the critical con-
straints a firm would face in driving market development
(Figure 3, box 1). These constraints can be classified as con-
sumer- and producer-related. As to the first type, our work
highlights adverse consumer preferences, but consumers may
also have difficulty in evaluating the value of a novel offering
(Humphreys and Carpenter 2018; Lee, Struben, and Bingham
2018). This is recurrent in the markets for foods and beverages,
entertainment, and fashion, in which assessment of superiority
tends to be subjective. As to producer-related constraints, we
foreground limited know-how and financial resources, though
these constraints also include insufficient social capital (Cusu-
mano, Mylonadis, and Rosenbloom 1992) and brand recogni-
tion (Rao 2009) to attract customers to a new market.
The second managerial task is to assess whether the focal
company has the resources to overcome these constraints (Fig-
ure 3, boxes 2 and 3). Often, firms do not have the means to
develop a new market, even if products are clearly superior to
existing offerings. This happened in the early days of radio
broadcasting, personal computers, and cars (Leblebici et al.
1991; Rao 2009). Peer firms lacked sufficient resources to
create technological infrastructure and generate broad con-
sumer awareness and interest. But single firms may be ade-
quately endowed for market driving, as with the technology
startups studied by Santos and Eisenhardt (2009). In this sce-
nario, we reason that individualistic market driving is more
suitable for a firm to reap most of the rewards in the market
it is developing (box 4). This firm can use orthodox competi-
tive practices such as eliminating peers from the market and
creating unique product attributes (e.g., a patented feature). The
focal firm may also choose to use the form of individualistic
action that Humphreys and Carpenter (2018) labels “systemic”
market driving. While this form of market driving is not col-
laborative among peer firms, it does involve forging relation-
ships with actors outside the value chain (especially media
members) to create symbolic value for consumers.
The next managerial task is to identify whether there is a
pool of peer firms that jointly possess the necessary resources
for market development (Figure 3, box 5). If not, the focal
firm may need to develop ways to lower entry barriers to the
market (boxes 6 and 7) to form a “mob.” This focus was part
of JVC’s strategy to win the battle of VHS over Betamax
(Cusumano, Mylonadis, and Rosenbloom 1992). This firm
facilitated the entry of other firms interested in producing
VHS-based VCRs, while Sony tried to keep Betamax a pro-
prietary technology. In such cases, collaborative market driv-
ing would involve some economic and political
cooperation—before a focus on mobilization—to open up the
market for other firms with overlapping interests.
As peers enter the market, our work points to the pivotal
role of suprafirm entities and mobilization triggers in cultivat-
ing a shared cause, and the networks needed to translate it into
actions (Figure 3, box 8). Once peer firms are mobilized, they
can develop initiatives to deploy their collective resources in
ways that help them overcome their constraints and thus build
a viable competitive position in a new market (box 9).
Managers should carefully consider and include potential
allies in these mobilization triggers and deployment initia-
tives. Finally, when evaluating collaborative market driving,
we advise the use of both firm- and market-centered metrics.
Firm-centered metrics include the typical ones, such as
growth in sales and profit. Market-centered metrics include
increase in the overall size of the market category and the
number of peers. A firm’s overemphasisonitsownmarket
share may be counterproductive to the goal of developing a
market where a set of peer firms can thrive.
Conclusion
This research conceptualizes collaborative market driving, the
collective strategy through which firms consistently cooperate
with their peers and other market actors to develop a market in
ways that increase their overall competitiveness. This research
also highlights the role of trade associations as coordinators and
consumers as allies in this strategy. Furthermore, it provides
recommendations for firms interested in driving new markets
when they lack adequate resources to do so individually.
Together, these contributions help align mainstream marketing
thought and practice with the often collective nature of market
driving. Cheers.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the marketing faculty at the University of
Nebraska–Lincoln and University of Arizona for constructive com-
ments on early versions of the manuscript, particularly Alok Kumar,
Amit Saini, Ravi Sohi, and Melanie Wallendorf. Their gratitude also
goes to Eric Arnould, David Crocket, Pierre-Yann Dolbec, Samuel
Holloway, John F. Sherry Jr., and Madhu Viswanathanan for suppor-
tive feedback and to Aditya Gupta for research assistance. Finally, the
authors acknowledge the helpfulness of all research informants and
the insightfulness of the review team.
Associate Editor
Jan Heide
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors
acknowledge the partial financial support provided by the McGuire
Center for Entrepreneurship, Eller College of Management, Univer-
sity of Arizona.
ORCID iD
Andre F. Maciel https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9706-569X
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