Mimoun, L

Sobande, F.

Torres, L. T.

City Research Online

              City, University of London Institutional RepositoryCitation: Mimoun, L ORCID: 0000-0002-5173-312X, Torres, L. T. and Sobande, F. (2017). When High Failure, Risky Technology Leads to Market Expansion: The Case of the Fertility Services Market. ACR North American Advances, 45, pp. 773-774. This is the published version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link:  http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/21611/Link to published version: Copyright and reuse: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to.City Research Online:            http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/            publications@city.ac.ukCity Research Online     ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH  Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802   When High Failure, Risky Technology Leads to Market Expansion: the Case of the Fertility Services MarketLaetitia Mimoun, HEC Paris, France Lez Trujillo Torres, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA Francesca Sobande, University of Dundee, UK  This paper explores how risky innovation in the fertility services market impacts legitimation dynamics and marketing expansion. Wefind that despite high failure, risky technology supported by scientific legitimacy leads to an expansion, rather than contraction, inconsumer segments. These findings contribute to the risk, legitimacy, and services literatures.  [to cite]:Laetitia Mimoun, Lez Trujillo Torres, and Francesca Sobande (2017) ,"When High Failure, Risky Technology Leads to MarketExpansion: the Case of the Fertility Services Market", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 45, eds. Ayelet Gneezy,Vladas Griskevicius, and Patti Williams, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 773-774. [url]:http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1023813/volumes/v45/NA-45 [copyright notice]:This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or inpart, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/.773 Advances in Consumer ResearchVolume 45, ©2017When High Failure, Risky Technology Leads to Market Expansion:  The Case of the Fertility Services MarketLaetitia Mimoun, HEC Paris, FranceLez Trujillo Torres, University of Illinois at Chicago, USAFrancesca Sobande, University of Dundee, UKEXTENDED ABSTRACTThis paper explores how risky innovation in the fertility servic-es market impacts legitimation dynamics and marketing expansion. Taking institutional theory as an enabling theory, we introduce scien-tific legitimacy as key pillar in the legitimation of risky, biomedical technologies. Prior research identifies several actors who play key roles in the legitimation process of consumption practices. For ex-ample, Humphreys (2010) highlights how casino managers achieve a sense of legitimacy by successfully navigating regulatory, socio-cognitive, and normative conventions that underpin the industry. Ad-ditionally, Giesler’s (2012) analysis of Botox marketplace activity illuminates how brands strategically engage with other stakeholders to facilitate the legitimation of new markets. Three main legitima-cy-driving actors emerge in the literature: decentralized groups of consumers (e.g. Martin and Schouten 2014; Scaraboto and Fischer 2013), centralized marketplace actors such as a brand (e.g. Giesler 2008; Humphreys 2010a), and news media (e.g. Humphreys and Thompson 2014).Whilst the aforementioned research has significantly advanced our understanding of market evolution and legitimating processes, several questions remain. First, Martin and Schouten (2014) empha-size that legitimation efforts include “a process of multiple transla-tions wherein consumers mobilize human and nonhuman actors to co-constitute products, practices, and infrastructure” (p.855). There-fore, our research considers how other types of nonhuman actors can be central in legitimation process, especially ones that originate outside the control of marketplace players (e.g. firms or managers). Studies on role of technological innovation are limited. For instance, Giesler (2012) focuses on a technology-centered brand and empha-sizes that market creation and development evolves with consum-ers’ perceptions of technology. We argue that technological innova-tion itself can substantially affect legitimacy dynamics concerning consumption practices. Furthermore, previous related studies often focus on empirical contexts in which producers and consumers are relatively clearly de-fined and the risk of consumption is minimal or predictable. Thus, there is an impetus to examine issues pertaining to the legitimation of consumption processes, in relation to contexts where the subject positions of consumer and producer may shift, and where consump-tion risks are uncertain or the risk of failure exceed those of success (Fischer, Otnes, and Tuncay 2007).Existing work which explores the part played by communica-tion technologies as intermediaries of legitimation processes, has fo-cused on the results of centralized industry efforts, such as within one industry, brand, or a set of managerial or expert systems (Humphreys and Thompson 2014). We advance that research is needed to analyze the role of communication technologies, including mass-media, in selecting and disseminating information within decentralized mar-kets to a variety of consumer segments. This is important because in decentralized markets, news media coverage can widely advance technological progress and reflect the type of consumers adopting these innovations. This can help us to distinguish legitimation efforts from centralized industries, versus those stemming from decentral-ized industries.Taking a meso-level approach to market expansion driven by high-risk technological innovations, we seek to address the outlined research gaps, by analyzing the marketing of fertility services in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US). Innovations in Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) have revolutionized fer-tility services and how reproductive problems are solved, and have facilitated the quest for parenthood for various consumer demograph-ics. We address two research questions: How and why does techno-logical innovation impact the legitimation of consumption? Under what circumstances does this change in legitimacy dynamics result in market expansion? Qualitative methods and automated con-tent analysis were used to analyze a set of visual and textual data, which includes articles from two newspapers (The Guardian and The New York Times) and three magazines (Elle, Cosmo, and New Scien-tist), as well as marketing material from US and UK fertility clinics and related health organizations.We find that decentralized technology innovation which re-lies on scientific legitimacy impacts normative legitimacy (parent-hood norm) and socio-affective legitimacy (in contrast to socio-cognitive), while regulatory legitimacy plays a secondary role. The socio-affective mechanism is fueled by how media and market-ers frame mythologized parenthood and time scarcity in order to minimize implications of risk failure. Last, despite high probability of technology failure, this market has expanded rather than con-tracted over time. From our frame analysis, we see that, while ART were heavily adopted by infertile couples and single women when it entered the mainstream, in recent years the use of ART has been expanded to individuals seeking fertility preservation from cancer treatment, gay couples, couples in need of gestational surrogacy, and single, young women seeking egg preservation to name a few.Our research contributes to literature on institutionalization, by showing that technology innovation is a distinct determinant of consumption-related legitimacy, whilst differentiating between de-centralized and centralized technological innovation. Finally, we link scientific legitimacy to the emotional facet of social legitimacy, and its influence on consumption in a market characterized by moderate success in helping consumers reach their goal of parenthood. Lastly, we hope that this work may have implications for providers looking to promote services in contexts where high hopes and high risk sur-round complex technologies, which may include a variety of medical services. REFERENCESFischer, Eileen, Cele C. Otnes, and Linda Tuncay (2007), “Pursuing parenthood: Integrating cultural and cognitive perspectives on persistent goal striving,” Journal of Consumer Research, 34(4), 425-440.Giesler, Markus (2008), “Conflict and compromise: drama in marketplace evolution,” Journal of Consumer Research, 34(6), 739-753.Giesler, Markus (2012), “How doppelgänger brand images influence the market creation process: Longitudinal insights from the rise of Botox cosmetic,” Journal of Marketing, 76(6), 55-68.774 / When High Failure, Risky Technology Leads to Market Expansion: The Case of the Fertility Services Market Humphreys, Ashlee (2010a), “Megamarketing: The creation of markets as a social process,” Journal of Marketing, 74(2), 1-19.Humphreys, Ashlee, and Craig J. Thompson (2014), “Branding disaster: Reestablishing trust through the ideological containment of systemic risk anxieties,” Journal of Consumer Research, 41(4), 877-910.Martin, Diane M., and John W. Schouten (2014), “Consumption-driven market emergence,” Journal of Consumer Research, 40(5), 855-870.Scaraboto, Daiane, and Eileen Fischer (2013), “Frustrated fatshionistas: An institutional theory perspective on consumer quests for greater choice in mainstream markets,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39(6), 1234-1257.

When High Failure, Risky Technology Leads to Market Expansion: The Case of the Fertility Services Market

This paper explores how risky innovation in the fertility services market impacts legitimation dynamics and marketing expansion. We find that despite high failure, risky technology supported by scientific legitimacy leads to an expansion, rather than contraction, in consumer segments. These findings contribute to the risk, legitimacy, and services literatures

Mimoun, Laetitia

Torres, Lez Trujillo

Sobande, Francesca

Edge Hill University Research Information Repository

http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/21611/1/Mimoun%2C%20Trujillo%20Torres%2C%20and%20Sobande%20%282017%29%20When%20High%20Failure%2C%20Risky%20Technology%20Leads%20to%20Market%20Expansion%20the%20Case%20of%20the%20Fertility%20Services%20Market%20NA%20ACR.pdf

When High Failure, Risky Technology Leads to Market Expansion: The Case of the Fertility Services Market

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