Clean, Fake, or Alternative? Market Disruption, Containment, and Realignment in the Meat Industry

• In Event: 40463 - Climate Change, Risk, and Markets

Abstract

Why are some markets disrupted? How are powerful actors responding to market disruption, and
how are disrupters adapting when they face pushback from powerful actors? Using a novel
dataset that traces 22,686 press releases and advertisements from plant-based meat companies
and associations, meat companies and industry associations, and governmental agencies, this
study examines the dynamic processes of market disruption, containment, and realignment in the
context of the U.S. meat industry. The study shows that the animal meat market was disrupted
because institutional entrepreneurs used new sociocognitive categories that instantiated beliefs
about the negative impacts of the meat industry on the natural environment while connecting
with dominant food categories. The study also finds that the meat industry responded to
disruption with a two-pronged market containment strategy: meat industry associations used
counter-categories, while meat companies saturated the new market with competitor products.
Institutional entrepreneurs reacted to market containment by realigning the sociocognitive
categories from an emphasis on the natural environment to one on human health. We conclude
by discussing the insights our case provides not only for economic sociology but also for
environmental sociology and social movement scholarship.

Authors

• Ion Bogdan Vasi, University of Iowa

• Levi Sands, University of Iowa