Market shaping through controversial innovation

Karim Ben-Slimane and Lilia Fessi

In this paper, we examine market-shaping literature that investigates how markets evolve overtime. We focus on how controversial innovations gain acceptance as the result of the intentional strategies put into place by companies.

Introduction

"The bottle does not matter as much as the drunkenness," wrote Alfred de Musset in 1831. However, when wine packaged in cans was first introduced in France in 2008, it was highly controversial and met with severe criticism. Developed in New Zealand, this new packaging for wine first gained a toehold in countries with a comparatively weak cultural legacy of wine consumption, such as in Japan.

Today, the highly conservative French wine market is increasingly receptive to this novel idea. In line with the literature, canned wine may be conceptualized as a controversial innovation (Delacour & Leca, 2017),...

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