Stay True to Your Roots? The Effect of Audience-distance on the Penalty to Spanning

• In Event: 026 - Regular Session. Economic Sociology: Categories, Category Combination, and Evaluation in Markets

Abstract

Do audiences distinguish between the spanning of different boundaries? We combine research on the penalties associated with boundary spanning with work in cultural sociology on how audiences create categories to test when new entrants to a field benefit from pursuing broader audiences and when they are penalized for leaving their primary genre. We introduce the concept of categorical distance and test our hypotheses using song sales for 144 new artists, first introduced to the public via the U.S. television program “The Voice.” The results show that the initial identity claims of new entrants have robust and lasting effects on sales, and that the effect of spanning follows a U-shaped pattern where the penalty for spanning reverses as the artists benefit from a novelty bonus. These effects are moderated by the characteristics of the artists “home genre” with artists in high-contrast genres experiencing an inverse-relationship where spanning is rewarded and then penalized, and those in low-contrast genres experience strong initial penalties and then greater benefits to distant spans. In addition, artists in the most popular genres are largely immune to any spanning penalty or bonus and those in “high brow” genres see their sales rise directly with the distance they span.

Authors

• Keyvan Kashkooli, University of California-Los Angeles

• Peter Younkin, McGill University