There is increasing interest in the marketing discipline to adopt an institutional perspective when examining markets. This requires seeing markets as complex systems that evolve through time, rather than as preexisting, stable structures. Using a historical, longitudinal case study, we integrate the “institutional work” framework as a lens to understand the process of market change in the novel, historic case of circus in North America through the 20th century. We explore the decline of the market for traditional American circus, and the emergence, in the 1970s, of the adjacent market for new circus, with a specific focus on the world’s preeminent new circus company, Cirque du Soleil. Theoretical contributions of the article include a “market-shaping activities” framework that illustrates market shaping involves considerably more actors than the dyad of producer and consumer. Market-shaping occurs through an interdependent process involving institutionalized practices, beliefs and expectations, and the intentional activities of market actors at any institutional level. Market change is shared, iterative, and recursive, that is cocreated, and undertaken by market actors both formal and informal. Market shapers do not necessarily work in an orchestrated fashion; nevertheless, vibrant networks of complementary actors contribute positively to the construction of shared identities and normative networks. From a managerial perspective, we find implications for policy makers, funders, strategists, and marketers.
The circular economy (CE) presents an alternative perspective to the linear take-make-use-dispose model prevalent in industrial value chains. CE envisions economies operating like natural ecosystems—restorative and waste-free, underpinned by principles such as reuse, repair, share, and pay-for-use. Surprisingly, although these principles align with the fundamentals of service management, there is limited scholarly exploration of CE within service research. Leveraging service-dominant logic, this study introduces the concept of circular service ecosystems as ideal types of service ecosystems, regenerative, and embedded within nature, where (material, intellectual, digital and financial) resources flow seamlessly within and between nested systems without creating any waste or leakage. By analyzing 3,178 blogs penned by CE experts over 7 years and conducting in-depth interviews with industry specialists, this study offers two significant contributions. Firstly, it presents a process framework elucidating the transition towards circular service ecosystems. This framework explains the emergence of novel circular solutions and service ecosystem properties through processes of de- and re-institutionalization. Secondly, the study identifies six shaping strategies that actors can apply to drive circular service ecosystem transitions. The study concludes by emphasizing the importance of circular service ecosystems and CE as promising areas for future service research, providing a comprehensive research agenda to explore these areas in depth.
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