Evaluative Schemas and the Mediating Role of Critics

Greta Hsu (), Peter W. Roberts () and Anand Swaminathan ()
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Greta Hsu: Graduate School of Management, University of California, Davis, Davis, California 95616
Peter W. Roberts: Goizueta Business School, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, 30322
Anand Swaminathan: Goizueta Business School, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, 30322

Organization Science, 2012, vol. 23, issue 1, 83-97

Abstract: How do critics enable producers and consumers to come to mutually agreeable terms of trade? We propose that critics offer more guidance to those who set prices when their quality assessments are structured by clearer evaluative schemas. Schema clarity enables producers to accurately anticipate the quality assessments that critics will disseminate to the market. This allows their posted prices to center more faithfully on prevailing conceptions of quality. We then argue that the position of a producer within the market's social structure—in terms of its prior coverage, reputation, and niche width—influences the degree to which it is guided by clear evaluative schemas. We test these predictions in the market for U.S. wines. After elaborating a novel approach to inferring the clarity of evaluative schemas within different varietal categories, we demonstrate that list prices are less variable around expected levels when the schemas used to evaluate quality are clearer. Moreover, this effect is stronger among more relevant and more focused producers in each category.

Keywords: mediated markets; critics; categories; sociology of markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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