Figuring out IT markets: How and why industry analysts launch, adjust and abandon categories
研究了三大行业分析公司如何推出、调整和放弃市场定义类别，发现他们通过类别工作、图形化工作和客户映射来确保专业知识与客户相关，从而创造客户诱导的类别。
Despite being a source of significant change, there has been little focus on how and why industry analysts constantly launch, adjust and abandon market-defining categories. To address this issue, we investigate the Big Three industry analyst firms and find that they promote categories clients find valuable and adjust or abandon those no longer attracting attention. Bringing together insights from information systems research and category scholarship, we show that industry analysts ensure their expertise is seen as relevant to clients through material and visual processes theorised as category-work, figuring-work, and client-mapping, which together create client-induced categories’. This novel theorisation throws light on the processes market intermediaries use to align categories with client concerns and how incorporating categories in graphical figurations can intensify the cycle of category creation and abandonment. It also enhances understanding of the dynamics surrounding transitory terminologies and opens up new research opportunities for studying IT markets.