Investigating Category Dynamics: An Archival Study of the German Food Market
通过分析1949-2014年西德食品杂志的档案，发现品类成员增殖、价值提升和纠缠三种动态驱动市场变化，对品类理论和市场研究者有参考价值。
The contemporary German food market is marked by a large number of food items on retail shelves—the choice and abundance of products stand in sharp contrast to the market of the 1950s. We conduct a qualitative, interpretive analysis of the archives of a food magazine from West Germany between 1949 and 2014 to understand the changes the German food market has undergone. Drawing on category research, we discover three inter-related category dynamics that contribute to the change in the market: category member proliferation, category member valorization, and category member entanglement. We then discuss the implications of category dynamics and theorize how they drive category change.