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100			_aKrabbe, Anders Dahl and Grodal, Stine _947864
245			_aThe aesthetic evolution of product categories
260			_aAdministrative Science Quarterly
300			_a68(3), Sep, 2023: p. 734-780
520			_aMost literature on aesthetic innovation has focused on single producers who use radical aesthetic innovation to differentiate their products. However, a few scholars, as well as anecdotal evidence, suggest that when gazed at from the category level, aesthetic innovation usually occurs as incremental variations of a dominant aesthetic. Extant theory fails to account for why we see cycles of shift and stability in the dominant aesthetic of a category. In this study, we identify the mechanisms that drove such shifts and stability in the dominant aesthetic of the hearing aid category from 1945 to 2015. Leveraging this study, we develop theory showing that alignment or misalignment between category meanings and recent cultural trends spurs producers to generate new categorical aspirations to associate their category with new sets of meanings. However, producers introduce radical new aesthetic innovations only when a change in product form allows them to experiment. Examining aesthetic evolution at the category level helps to shed light on category-level patterns of aesthetic shifts and stability, why attempts to differentiate outside the dominant aesthetic are rare, and why product aesthetics across a category shift synchronously between dominant aesthetics. Furthermore, we enhance understanding of the roles of culture in category evolution and of aesthetics in the construction of category meaning, and we show how such meanings are periodically and collectively renegotiated in mature categories. – Reproduced https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392231173677
773			_aAdministrative Science Quarterly
906			_aSCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
942			_cAR