Categories or submarkets: Different perspectives on within-industry heterogeneity

In this panel symposium, we aim to stimulate a rich discussion between different perspectives of theories of heterogeneity within industries and markets. This heterogeneity has been defined through various terms, such as strategic groups, niches, segments, categories, or submarkets, each focusing on diverse features of the product characteristics space. On one hand, industry evolution literature has gradually shifted to studying industries persisting as fragmented and heterogeneous product markets that offer new opportunities for entrants. On the other hand, a recent research stream on economic sociology and organization theory focused on how cognitive representations of economic actors divide markets into categories. Although these two different fields have different perspectives to understand heterogeneity within industry structures, there is a potential to inform each other. In this symposium, after briefly going over what have we have learned on theories of heterogeneity within industry and market structures so far, we will draw on these two different research fields in order to bridge established theories in these fields, and aim to come up with a further research agenda to inform both of these fields in their shortcomings.