Entry into emergent and uncertain product-markets: The role of associative rhetoric

We analyze how firms use media-associative rhetoric in their decisions to enter emergent and uncertain product-markets. In the context of our study, this type of rhetoric associates the logics of firms' existing markets with the not-yet-legitimated logics of a newly emerging market. Our panel study shows that firms enter such markets faster when the associative rhetoric has higher (versus lower) volume, positive (versus negative) tenor, firms (versus journalists/analysts) as the source of information, and generalizations (versus specific cases) as the focus. We discuss the implications of our findings for institutional theory and market entry. Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved.