UNIVERSITÉ DE REIMS CHAMPAGNE-ARDENNE

ÉCOLE DOCTORALE SCIENCES HUMAINES ET SOCIALES N°555

THÈSE
Pour obtenir le grade de

DOCTEUR DE L’UNIVERSITÉ DE REIMS CHAMPAGNE-ARDENNE

Discipline : SCIENCES DE GESTION

Spécialité : Marketing

Présentée et soutenue publiquement par

Mauricio RODRIGUEZ ALFONSO

Le 25 Novembre 2019

MARKETS AS NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

Thèse dirigée par M. PHILIPPE ODOU ET M. GAËL BONNIN

JURY
M. Dominique ROUX, Professeur des Universités, Université de Reims Champagne Ardenne , Président

M. Philippe ODOU, Directeur de Recherche, Université de Reims Champagne Ardenne, Directeur de thèse

M. Gael BONNIN, Professeur des Universités, Neoma Business School, Directeur de thèse

M. Graham ROBERTS, Maître de Conférences HDR, Université Paris Nanterre, Rapporteur

M. Beatrice SIADOU, Professeur des Universités , Université de Lorraine, Rapporteur

“...Everybody is a storyteller; a
business man, a brand, a writer, a
musician, a scientist and everybody
is telling their life story”
.
This thesis is dedicated to Casper,
for being the special companion
who follows this path with me.
 Acknowledgements

This thesis is a collective effort which saw the light thanks to the guidance
and unconditional support of my supervisors Dr Philippe Odou and Dr
Gaël Bonnin, their open-mindedness, ideas, discussions and continuous
encouragement has been and always will be an an important source of
motivation for my research. Thank you for introducing me to industrial
marketing research and be open to explore the topic of narratives. It has
been an honour to work with both of you. Thanks to the jury, for their
comments, guidance and different perspectives offered through different
stages of this thesis, allowing me to enhance the analysis and to improve
the contributions of this dissertation.

I also want to thanks my closest friends; Diana Restrepo, Laura Rodriguez,

Lina Castro and Ferney Quiroga which in one way or other have always
been there, despite the distance, supporting and encouraging me through-
out this time and too many others. I can not leave out an special grati-
tude to the Vega-Niño family who has been a support with unconditional
friendship and guidance in the bright and dark hours of this thesis.

Lastly, but not less important a warm and huge thanks to my parents
who have always supported me in all my travels and adventures around
the world, to you a special and nondescript thanks. (De último, pero
no menos importante, un grande y cálido agradecimiento a mis padres
quienes siempre me han apoyado en todos mis viajes y aventuras a través
del mundo. A ustedes un especial e indescriptible agradecimiento)

Gracias totales!
 Statement of Originality

I hereby declare that I composed this dissertation entirely myself and

that it describes my own research, except where explicitly stated oth-
erwise in the text. Part of the material has already been presented in
the IMP Conference, NoRD workshop, Interdisciplinary Market Studies
Workshop, CCT Conference, sent for publication in Industrial Marketing
Management and European Journal of Marketing and published in the
Journal of Business and Industrial marketing.

Reims, November 2019

Mauricio Rodriguez

Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne

Laboratoire d’Economie et Gestion de Reims

 Abstract

This dissertation investigates the market shaping for smart city technolo-
gies, understanding market shaping as a process that embeds market prac-
tices in which the narrative permits their assemblage as a coherent and
logical construction that allows to make sense of the actors’ actions, grant-
ing the entrance of new products or services into the market. The case in
point, the smart city technology market depicts the multiple roles of the
narratives in the shaping of markets. Thus, narratives are used to create
market representations that explain how the market operates and inter-
relations between actors and technologies, those representations are later
re-created in commercial exchanges by adding new elements that resonate
with the customer the narrative becomes a tool to persuade, convince,
show expertise, reduce uncertainty and develop trust bonds. New re-
creations of the narrative fulfil a role in normalisation practices that allow
the creation of norms, policies, habits and routines. Thus, the narrative
is present throughout the market shaping process acting as an assemblage
tool. This research contributes to provides an alternative perspective into
the market shaping process, presenting how this process is developed for
emerging technology markets and by bringing narratives as a pivotal tool
in the assemblage of market practices and demonstrating the narrative
agency in the market shaping process.

Keywords: Market shaping, Market Practices, Narratives, Smart City,

Emerging Technologies, Actor network Theory.
Cette thèse étudie l’évolution du marché pour les technologies de la ville
intelligente, en décrivant l’évolution du marché en tant que processus inté-
grant des pratiques de marché dans lesquelles le récit permet leur assem-
blage en tant que construction cohérente et logique permettant de donner
un sens aux actions des acteurs, en permettant l’entrée de nouvelles tech-
nologies, produits ou services sur le marché. Le marché technologique
des villes intelligentes illustre les multiples rôles des narratives dans la
formation des marchés. Ainsi, les narratives sont utilisés pour créer des
représentations de marché expliquant le fonctionnement du marché et les
interrelations entre acteurs et technologies. Celles-ci sont ensuite recréées
dans les échanges commerciaux en ajoutant de nouveaux éléments util-
isées qui résonnent pour le client. La narration devient un outil pour
convaincre, faire preuve d’expertise, réduire les incertitudes et développer
des liens de confiance. Les nouvelles recréations du récit jouent un rôle
dans les pratiques de normalisation qui permettent la création de normes,
de politiques, d’habitudes et de routines. Ainsi, le récit est présent tout
au long du processus de mise en forme du marché, agissant comme un
outil d’assemblage. Cette recherche contribue à fournir une perspective
alternative dans le processus de formation du marché, en présentant la
façon dont ce processus est développé pour les marchés technologiques
émergents et en faisant des narratives un outil essentiel dans l’assemblage
des pratiques du marché et en montrant le rôle de l’agence narrative dans
le processus de formation du marché.

Mots clés: évolution du marché, pratiques de marché, narrations, ville

intelligente, technologies émergentes, théorie du réseau d’acteurs.

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Résumé de la thèse

L’impact des technologies sur la performance des entreprises et la compétitivité

des marchés d’entreprises est reconnu depuis longtemps (Pires and Aisbett, 2003;
Varadarajan et al., 2010; Trainor et al., 2011; Makkonen and Johnston, 2014; Makko-
nen and Vouri, 2014; Lee and Lee, 2015; Makkonen et al., 2016). Ce phénomène
n’est pas nouveau, mais le nombre de perturbations technologiques (nanotechnolo-
gies, biotechnologies, technologies de l’information, sciences cognitives, ou NBIC)
augmente, tout comme le rythme de leur développement et l’ampleur de leurs con-
séquences commerciales et économiques. Cependant, l’introduction de technologies
émergentes sur le marché nécessite un processus de modelage du marché afin de garan-
tir la réussite de la pénétration, de la commercialisation et de l’appropriation de ces
technologies (O’Connor and Rice, 2012).

Ainsi, les études de mise en marché deviennent fondamentales pour comprendre

l’adoption et la diffusion de technologies. L’étude des marchés a été développée en
faisant valoir que les marchés peuvent être décrits comme un dispositif collectif rendu
possible par des agences de calcul multi-acteurs (Callon and Muniesa, 2005). Dans
lequel le marché résulte de l’arrangement et de la traduction de trois pratiques de
marché distinctes et interconnectées: la représentation, l’échange et la normalisation
(Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006, 2007; Araujo, 2007). En dépit de son importance,
Azimont and Araujo (2007); Nenonen et al. (2014) ont reconnu que le lien entre les
différentes pratiques de marché n’était pas clair et que quelques études seulement
avaient exploré l’articulation des pratiques de marché et leur influence sur la forma-
tion du marché (par exemple Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007; Doganova and Karnøe,
2015). En outre, la formation des marchés a été examinée sous l’angle de la sociologie
économique, affirmant que les marchés sont des ensembles socio-techniques qui pos-
sèdent, entre autres: “des règles et des conventions; dispositifs techniques; systèmes
métrologiques; infrastructures logistiques; textes, discours et récits; connaissances
techniques et scientifiques, ainsi que les compétences et habiletés incarnées chez les
êtres vivants” (Caliskan and Callon, 2010, p.3). La formation du marché est reconnue
comme un processus dialectique mis en œuvre par le biais de dispositifs du marché
comme “moyen simple de se référer aux assemblages matériels et discursifs intervenant
dans la construction des marchés” (Muniesa et al., 2007, p.2) . De même, il a montré
que la formation d’un marché nécessite la narration d’une histoire racontable: “une
histoire qui raconte les frontières, les relations, les agents et les identités d’entités”
permettant d’assembler des personnes et des objets matériels (Simakova and Neyland,
2008, p.96).

L’assemblage peut être compris dans le cadre des études technologiques comme
des associations complexes entre diverses composantes, comprenant des technologies,
des idées, des discours et des personnes, qui peuvent être arrangées pour former un
tout unifié (Law, 2009). Ainsi, les assemblages sont capables de relier des objets,
des phénomènes sociaux et des discours à des constructions issues de l’interaction
entre des personnes, des choses et des concepts. En ce sens, les récits permettent
d’assembler les pratiques du marché en offrant un fil cohérent et logique aux actions
et récits développés par les acteurs impliqués.

La narration est au centre de ce processus de formation du marché, fonctionnant

comme un outil permettant de comprendre et de donner un sens aux actions en-
treprises, rendant inattendue, donc gérable, un cadre plausible pour la création de
sens (Robinson et al., 2005). Une définition généralement acceptée du récit est la
suivante: “le récit est la représentation d’un événement ou d’une série d’événements”
(Porter Abbott, 2008). Ainsi, le récit “possède une intrigue et des personnages,
générant une émotion chez le narrateur et le une élaboration poétique de matériel
symbolique. Ce matériel peut être un produit de fantaisie ou d’expérience, y com-
pris une expérience de récits antérieurs” (Gabriel, 2000, p.239). En outre, les récits
servent à véhiculer des sens et à attribuer des significations au monde (Bruner, 1986)
en attribuant un ordre chronologique aux événements qui enchâssaient des valeurs et
des significations partagées, servant de lignes directrices pour les actions (Rhodes and
Brown, 2005).

Cette thèse est elle-même un assemblage de trois essais qui montre le rôle des nar-
rations dans la formation des marchés, permettant d’observer comment les récits sont
utilisés dans chacune des pratiques de marché: représentation, échange et normalisa-
tion. La principale revendication de cette recherche est que les récits constituent un
outil d’assemblage des pratiques du marché, permettant de donner un sens cohérent
et articulé aux actions des différents acteurs impliqués dans la formation des marchés.
Cette recherche s’inspire du concept de marché en tant que constructions culturelles
et dialectiques existant dans un processus social en cours (Peñaloza and Venkatesh,
2006; Nenonen et al., 2014). Ainsi, les récits sont construits par différents acteurs
tout au long du processus de façonnage du marché avec des objectifs multiples: de la

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création de représentations du marché expliquant le produit, attribuant des significa-
tions et illustrant le marché (Rinallo and Golfetto, 2006; Diaz Ruiz, 2013), jusqu’au
développement de relations commerciales et pratiques d’échanges où le récit permet
de créer des liens de confiance et de montrer une expertise produit lors de rencontres
commerciales (Gilliam and Flaherty, 2015), tout en réduisant les incertitudes et en
permettant de donner un sens aux relations interentreprises (La Rocca et al., 2016).
Enfin, l’élaboration de pratiques de normalisation a permis de stabiliser le marché
grâce à un processus de légitimité normative et réglementaire (Humphreys, 2010)
dans lequel les récits permettent d’expliquer le produit aux utilisateurs en créant des
routines, des habitudes et des pratiques en vigueur.

Cette recherche utilise une seule étude de cas avec plusieurs unités d’analyse (Yin,
2013), en prenant le marché de la ville intelligente comme un cas pour étudier le
rôle des récits dans la formation de ce marché. La sélection de ce marché répond à
quatre raisons: premièrement, le choix de la technologie, l’Internet des objets (IoT),
appliqué à un secteur spécifique (gestion de la ville) permet de comprendre en pro-
fondeur l’évolution du marché et les interactions de différents acteurs. Deuxièmement,
les villes intelligentes étaient l’une des solutions initiales publiées sur le marché, per-
mettant de voir les récits des débuts et de les transformer au fil du temps en analysant
les positions contradictoires et les contre-récits relatifs au concept de ville intelligente
et à son évolution. réduire les incertitudes et gagner en légitimité auprès des utilisa-
teurs. Le troisième aspect est lié à l’accès aux données et à la possibilité de collecter
des informations provenant de différentes sources. Enfin, le contexte de la ville intel-
ligente a permis d’analyser le flux du récit à différents moments et la manière dont il
contribue à aligner les perspectives et les discours sur différentes pratiques de marché.

En utilisant plusieurs unités d’analyse, il a été possible de comprendre les perspec-

tives et les récits développés par les acteurs impliqués dans le processus de formation
du marché. Quatre unités d’analyse font partie de l’étude de cas: Entreprises tech-
nologiques: IBM et Cisco; villes: Amsterdam (AMS), Barcelone (BCN) et Lyon;
Sociétés de conseil: McKinsey & Company, PWC, EY et ARUP; médias: Forbes et
The Guardian; organisations internationales: Banque interaméricaine de développe-
ment (BID), commission européenne et centre pour les villes; autres acteurs des villes
en tant que start-ups et résidents. Les données ont été recueillies de 2014 à 2017 et
ont conduit une étude en temps réel permettant de voir comment se déroulent les
récits et la formation des marchés (Halinen and Törnross, 2005).

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 Pour faciliter la compréhension de la problématique, il est important de passer
brièvement en revue certains concepts liés au développement de la ville intelligente: la
ville en tant que concept, l’Internet des objets (IoT) et le concept de ville intelligente.
“Une ville peut être comprise comme un moteur de la croissance économique et les
centres de la culture, du divertissement, de l’innovation, de l’éducation, du savoir et
du pouvoir politique” (Roberts and Kanaley, 2006) où le processus d’urbanisation a
conduit les villes à “développer des institutions sociales, telles que les entreprises et
le gouvernement, pour subvenir à leurs besoins” (Orum, 2004). Malgré la nouveauté
du processus d’urbanisation, celui-ci a changé la dynamique des pays, créant des
nœuds au sein du pays où l’activité économique et sociale est centrée. Les nations
unies (2014) affirme que le phénomène d’urbanisation tend à augmenter, prévoyant
que l’urbanisation “pourrait ajouter 2,5 milliards de personnes supplémentaires à la
population urbaine d’ici 2050”.

L’Internet des objects est la solution technologique à la base du concept de so-

lutions intelligentes et de son application à la gestion de la ville, dénommée smart
city. Ainsi, l’IoT a été défini comme “étant la présence omniprésente autour de nous
d’une variété d’objets ou d’objets tels que RFID, tags, capteurs, actionneurs, télé-
phones portables, etc. qui, grâce à des systèmes d’adressage uniques, interagir les uns
avec les autres et coopèrent avec leurs voisins pour atteindre des objectifs communs”
(Atzori et al., 2010). Leur définition envisage un réseau de dispositifs intelligents
et interconnectés capables d’interagir entre eux sans intervention humaine, générant
et collectant des données pouvant être utiles pour prendre des décisions autonomes
ou pour aider des individus et des organisations à prendre des mesures basées sur
des données en temps réel. Porter and Heppelmann (2014, 2015) ont présenté l’IoT
comme une nouvelle révolution industrielle, soulignant que les produits subissent
une transformation radicale, acquérant un nouvel ensemble de fonctionnalités per-
mettant l’interconnexion des produits avec plusieurs appareils générant un monde
hyper-connecté. Par conséquent, un nouveau panorama stratégique apparaît pour les
organisations, ce qui représente un défi pour les gestionnaires. Par conséquent, les
entreprises doivent repenser les modes de création et de valorisation des clients et ses
interactions continues avec les objets intelligents.

Enfin, les villes intelligentes associent des solutions technologiques: Internet des
objets (IoT), intelligence artificielle (IA) et données volumineuses, qui collectent des
informations à partir de capteurs de toute la ville, ce qui permet de décider en temps

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réel améliorer l’efficacité et le bien-être en ville, ce qui permet de prendre des dé-
cisions instantanées en vue de l’amélioration de son efficacité et du bien-être de ses
habitants. Cependant, sa définition n’est toujours pas claire et fait partie d’un proces-
sus de co-construction continu entre les différents acteurs impliqués (entreprises tech-
nologiques, administrations municipales, entreprises, organisations internationales,
jeunes entreprises et résidents) dans le cadre de la formation du marché, conduisant
à avoir de multiples visions du concept de ville intelligente et du marché. Le concept
de ville intelligente est apparu dans les années 70 en Californie avec une première
tentative d’association de données et de gestion de la ville, qui a échoué en raison du
manque de capacités des solutions technologiques existantes (Vallianatos, 2015). Une
nouvelle tentative a été mise au point en 2005 lorsque la fondation Clinton a demandé
à Cisco de développer une technologie rendant les villes durables, menant à la création
de solutions de ville intelligente (Falk, 2012). Ce n’est que jusqu’en 2012 que Cisco a
lancé la première solution pour les villes intelligentes, ce qui a permis de structurer
le marché de la gestion urbaine et de créer des récits qui donnent un sens, attirent
et convainquent différentes villes de s’engager dans l’adoption et la construction d’un
ville intelligente.

La problématique de cette recherche provient du manque de compréhension de la

manière dont les pratiques du marché sont assemblées (Azimont and Araujo, 2007).
Comme mentionné ci-dessus, la littérature se concentre particulièrement sur chaque
pratique du marché, en négligeant le lien entre ces pratiques. Par conséquent, les
recherches actuelles sur la formation du marché ne fournissent pas d’explication claire
sur la manière dont les pratiques du marché sont interdépendantes et sur les éléments
permettant d’assembler les pratiques de représentation, d’échange et de normalisation
dans une construction articulée et cohérente permettant de façonner les marchés.

La principale proposition de cette recherche est que l’assemblage des pratiques

du marché est mis en œuvre par des éléments discursifs, en particulier l’utilisation
de récits. Il a été reconnu que les marchés sont un processus dialectique perma-
nent dans lequel l’élément discursif est important pour le façonner, en permettant
l’assemblage de personnes et d’objets matériels (Muniesa et al., 2007; Simakova and
Neyland, 2008; Caliskan and Callon, 2010). Par conséquent, l’objectif central de cette
recherche est de comprendre le rôle des récits dans la formation des marchés en tant
qu’outil d’assemblage parmi les pratiques du marché. Les histoires sont pertinentes
pour comprendre le phénomène de formation du marché car elles existent à l’origine
de nouveaux marchés en tant que “systèmes cognitifs agissant comme des outils de

12
création de sens parmi les participants à un système social” (Rosa et al., 1999, p.68),
en permettant de donner un sens aux changements du marché et à son évolution
(Theoharakis and Wong, 2002), en offrant une compréhension commune du marché
et en permettant la participation de multiples acteurs dans le processus de formation
du marché de manière articulée (La Rocca et al., 2015).

Cette thèse explore trois aspects de la narration dans la formation des marchés
qui contribuent à l’objectif global de cette recherche. Ainsi, chaque essai a un objectif
qui permet de comprendre comment les récits sont utilisés, articulés et orchestrés à
différentes étapes de l’évolution du marché.

Ce travail commence par la description du problème de la recherche, en proposant

des objectifs et des questions de recherche, et fournit une explication sur la manière
dont cette recherche contribue à la littérature sur la formation du marché. Une de-
scription de la littérature existante est présentée et divisée en trois sujets d’importance
pour la compréhension du phénomène étudié. Premièrement, un examen des perspec-
tives mondiales sur l’adoption de technologies est proposé notamment un bref examen
de la perspective rationnelle et des modèles, de la perspective relationnelle et du rôle
de multiples acteurs dans l’adoption de la technologie et de la perspective sociocul-
turelle décrivant la consommation de technologie. Cette analyse sera ensuite suivie
de la recherche existante sur la formation du marché, les pratiques de marché et le
réseau d’acteurs la théorie comme cadre d’analyse des données recueillies. Enfin, une
révision de la théorie narrative dans laquelle les origines et les différents courants
de cette théorie sont expliquées, permettant de comprendre les structures et les élé-
ments narratifs utilisés dans la création d’histoires et leurs relations avec les marchés
technologiques.

En outre, des considérations méthodologiques sont présentées, expliquant les po-

sitions philosophiques adoptées dans cette recherche et le cadre d’analyse utilisé.
Le chapitre suivant fournit un résumé de chaque essai, en précisant leur contribu-
tion individuelle et collective et en expliquant comment l’essai permet de résoudre
les objectifs proposés. Cette thèse se termine par une discussion des implications
théoriques, empiriques et méthodologiques de cette recherche dans le domaine de la
théorie du marché et des études de marché, conduisant à une enquête sur de futurs
scénarios possibles dans lesquels l’étude des récits et la formation du marché peuvent
être étendus.

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 Chaque essai fournit une vision particulière des récits et de leur rôle dans la
formation des marchés. Le premier essai répond à l’objectif de compréhension du rôle
des récits en tant qu’outil de création de sens et d’assignation de sens aux technologies
émergentes. Pour atteindre cet objectif, cette recherche explore le rôle des récits dans
la publicité industrielle pour la technologie émergente de l’IoT. Le développement de
cette étude permet de comprendre le rôle des récits dans les premières étapes de la
formation du marché, où les pratiques de marché de représentation sont plus fortes,
montrant comment les récits incorporent des significations dans la publicité qui sert
d’outil de création de sens. De plus, le récit offrait une perspective globale de ce
qu’est la technologie et de son fonctionnement dans différents scénarios générant une
représentation du marché auprès du public. Cette étude contribue à deux niveaux:
Améliorer les connaissances sur la manière dont les représentations du marché sont
créées (Rinallo and Golfetto, 2006) et sur la manière dont les récits sont construits et
qui ont fait l’objet de peu d’investigation dans le marketing (Visconti and Van Laer,
2016; Bublitz et al., 2016).

La deuxième étude a pour objectif de comprendre l’orchestration des récits créés

tout au long du processus de formation du marché. En développant une analyse
du flux des récits de sociétés technologiques (Cisco et IBM) dans divers scénarios
(publicité, blogs, livres blancs, discours publics, discours de vente), il a été possible
d’observer comment le récit évolue en même temps. la paix du marché et être utilisé
dans chaque pratique du marché. Ainsi, le récit sert initialement d’outil pour créer
des représentations du marché expliquant l’objectif et les avantages de la technologie
tout en créant une identité pour le marché. Le récit est ensuite adapté et utilisé
dans le cadre de pratiques d’échange lors de rencontres de vente, permettant ainsi de
réorganiser le récit du contexte de l’acheteur, montrant l’expertise du produit et com-
ment la technologie peut résoudre des problèmes particuliers auxquels l’acheteur peut
faire face. Enfin, les récits sont utilisés pour normaliser et stabiliser le marché. À ce
stade, le récit devient un outillégitimant des acteurs en générant une réglementation,
des routines et des habitudes. L’étude montre que l’utilisation de récits permet de
développer un discours cohérent à tous les points d’interaction entre l’entreprise et
les clients dans chaque pratique de marché.

La troisième étude a pour objectif d’identifier le rôle du récit dans l’assemblage

des pratiques du marché et son rôle dans la formation du marché dans une perspective
multi-acteurs. Alors que les deux études initiales analysent en profondeur la produc-
tion des récits des entreprises technologiques sur les solutions intelligentes, cette étude

14
se concentre exclusivement sur l’évolution du marché de la ville intelligente, en tenant
compte des multiples acteurs impliqués dans ce processus: entreprises technologiques,
villes , bureaux d’études, médias, organisations internationales et autres acteurs de
chaque ville. Cette analyse permet de comprendre comment plusieurs perspectives
interagissent dans l’évolution du marché. De même, cela permet d’observer les con-
testations qui ont émergé contre la ville intelligente, se transformant en contre-récits
et comment l’entreprise ou la ville développent de nouveaux récits pour réduire ces
contre-arguments. Cette étude analyse l’évolution du marché de la ville intelligente
en utilisant la théorie de l’acteur-réseau (Callon, 1986) pour étudier comment les réc-
its se déplacent à travers les pratiques du marché et comment les acteurs façonnent
ces récits à des fins différentes, en fonction de la pratique de marché dominante en
vigueur. L’essai montre l’évolution des récits dans les pratiques du marché, illustrant
les utilisations des récits par les vendeurs de technologie dans chaque marché, tout en
montrant comment l’acheteur, dans ce cas la ville, s’approprie le récit et construit un
nouveau récit qui initialement utilisé pour obtenir un soutien politique et financier
afin de développer l’initiative de ville intelligente. À ce stade, le rôle de la ville subit
une transformation, passant d’acheteur à revendeur du concept de ville intelligente,
entrant dans un nouveau cycle de modelage du marché visant à attirer, engager les
entreprises, les start-ups, les résidents et d’autres acteurs dans le développement de
initiatives de ville intelligente. Par conséquent, la ville suit chaque pratique du marché
afin de façonner le marché de la ville intelligente.

Le but de cette thèse est de comprendre le rôle des récits dans l’assemblage des
pratiques de marché permettant le processus de formation du marché. À cette fin,
trois questions de recherche ont été formulées: (1) Comment les récits sont-ils utilisés
et quel est leur rôle dans la publicité industrielle? (2) Comment la stratégie nar-
rative est-elle globalement orchestrée? Quelles sont les implications d’une approche
narrative pour les entreprises industrielles et pour notre compréhension de l’évolution
du marketing? (3) Comment l’utilisation de narrations contribue-t-elle à façonner le
marché des technologies émergentes dans le contexte industriel? La thèse analyse les
implications pour la théorie du marketing, les études de marché et les praticiens.

Sur le plan théorique, cette recherche apporte une contribution en présentant une
explication et une perspective alternatives pour comprendre l’ensemble des pratiques
de marché dans le cas des marchés de technologies émergentes. En prenant le cas d’un
marché émergent, cette thèse prolonge la recherche actuelle sur la construction des
marchés, qui se concentre principalement sur l’analyse de marchés bien établis dans

15
lesquels les pratiques de normalisation ont une implication profonde dans le processus
de formation du marché. Cette recherche permet d’observer un ensemble différent de
pratiques de marché (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006, 2007) pour ce marché spécifique
des technologies émergentes. Ainsi, les études présentent un nouvel ensemble de
pratiques de marché qui s’appuient fortement sur des pratiques de représentation qui
utilisent les récits comme un outil permettant d’expliquer le produit et le marché,
de convaincre et de convaincre les acheteurs potentiels et d’attribuer un sens à la
technologie. L’utilisation de la perspective narrative permet d’observer en quoi les
récits offrent un lien cohérent et articulé entre les pratiques du marché, en fournissant
une chaîne de traductions donnant un sens aux actions entreprises par tous les acteurs
dans les différentes phases du processus de formation du marché. Cette contribution
concerne également le rôle des idées dans la formation des marchés ou le concept de
performativité (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006). Cette recherche montre comment les
récits permettent de traduire des idées en constructions plus tangibles qui permettent
de créer des pratiques de représentation et sont ensuite recréés dans d’autres pratiques
de marché, qui permettent l’échange de technologie et l’élaboration d’une légitimité
normative et réglementaire pour le marché (Humphreys, 2010).

Cette recherche décrit les influences culturelles dans le processus de formation

du marché, qui se reflètent clairement dans la façon dont les villes ont construit
leur perspective en tant que ville intelligente, déterminant de différentes manières
la manière dont les initiatives de ville intelligente ont été conçues, à partir de villes
axées sur la technologie. aux villes centrées sur le citoyen. Ces influences culturelles
présentent des différences idéologiques dans la consommation de technologies dans le
contexte industriel. Les éléments idéologiques proposés par (Kozinets, 2008) ont été
identifiés dans les récits élaborés par les villes et les entreprises technologiques qui
ont montré que la technologie constituait un moteur du développement culturel et
économique, présentant une vision déterministe technologique, tandis que les contre-
récits illustrent les aspects négatifs de la technologie. la technologie liée au manque
de solutions réelles de la technologie et à la possibilité de générer une ségrégation
technologique. Ainsi, les multiples contre-récits, issus d’acteurs divers, ont permis
aux entreprises technologiques et aux villes de créer de nouveaux récits qui incluent
des réponses à ces contestations, permettant ainsi à la légitimité de la technologie
en tant que processus médiatisé par la marque (Giesler, 2012) et démontrant que la
légitimation des marchés se produit comme un processus socioculturel (Humphreys,
2010).

16
 La contribution suivante a trait à la plasticité des récits et à son importance dans
le processus de formation du marché. Étant donné que la réalité peut être considérée
comme une construction plastique (Storbacka and Nenonen, 2011; Nenonen et al.,
2012), le marché existe intrinsèquement comme un processus socioculturel continu qui
change et conserve certaines formes (Peñaloza and Venkatesh, 2006; Venkatesh and
Peñaloza, 2006; Geiger et al., 2012; Sigala, 2015), dans lequel des acteurs, des activités
et les récits évoluent continuellement, s’adaptant aux changements du marché. Le
récit peut intégrer et répondre à ces changements et à l’évolution du marché, en
permettant d’élaborer des explications narratives qui non seulement améliorent la
configuration des marchés, mais permettent également d’élaborer des récits capables
de défier les positions idéologiques contradictoires générées par des doutes et méfiance
à l’égard de la technologie, en tant qu’outil permettant de lutter contre les peurs
innées des paradoxes technologiques (Mick and Fournier, 1998). De plus, les récits
étant transversaux au processus de mise en forme du marché, la même structure
narrative peut être utilisée sans perte de cohérence en permettant l’assemblage de
pratiques de marché.

Enfin, cette thèse contribue à étendre l’utilisation des récits non seulement en tant
que phénomène d’analyse, mais également en tant qu’approche méthodologique de la
théorie des marchés et de l’étude des marchés. L’importance des récits a été reconnue
comme un élément fondamental pour rassembler des éléments socio-techniques au sein
des marchés (Caliskan and Callon, 2010), et créer une histoire racontable relatant les
interactions des marchés, décrivant les limites, et leur identité (Simakova and Neyland,
2008), générant une compréhension commune du marché entre les acteurs impliqués
et facilitant la stabilité du marché (La Rocca et al., 2015). Ainsi, les récits peuvent
être compris comme un outil essentiel de la perception et de la création de sens
utilisés dans la construction des marchés (Rosa et al., 1999; Shankar et al., 2001).
De plus, les sciences narratives ont été largement explorées dans d’autres sciences
sociales en tant que comportement organisationnel, fournissant ainsi des informations
importantes pour la compréhension de phénomènes multiples allant du leadership au
changement (Gabriel, 2000, 2004; Czarniawska, 2004; Abolafia, 2010; Polleta et al.,
2011; Humphreys and Brown, 2008; Humphreys and Latour, 2013,?; Czarniawska,
2014). Cette recherche souligne l’importance des récits dans la théorie du marché
et prévoit d’élargir l’utilisation de la recherche organisationnelle à la recherche en
marketing.

17
Contents

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Research problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 Research objectives and research questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 Position of this research towards the literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2 Research background 13
2.1 Socio-cultural perspectives of technology adoption . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2 Global approach to the shaping of markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.2.1 Actor Network Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.3 Narrative uses in the shaping of markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.3.1 Understanding the narrative approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.3.2 The study of narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.3.3 Structures of narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.3.4 Narrative studies in businesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

3 Methodological considerations 52
3.1 Research design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.1.1 Casing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.2 Data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.3 Data analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.4 Research quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

4 Summary of the essays 61

4.1 Summary 1st essay - Narrative advertising as symbolic representation
tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.1.1 Essay 1 - Narrative advertising as symbolic representation tools 64
4.2 Summary 2nd essay - Narrative strategies and B2B technology brands 93
4.2.1 Essay 2 - Narrative strategies and B2B technology brands . . 95
4.3 Summary 3rd essay - Markets as narrative constructions . . . . . . . 111

i
 4.3.1 Essay - Markets as narrative constructions . . . . . . . . . . . 113

5 Discussion and contributions 139

5.1 Contributions for Market studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
5.2 Implication for marketing practitioners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
5.3 Limitations and future avenues of research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

6 Annexes 150
6.1 Coding scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
6.2 Interview protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
6.3 Timeline of firm’s advertising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
6.4 Documentation links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

Bibliography 159

ii
List of Figures

2.1 The ideological field of technology: A semiotic square (Kozinets, 2008) 24

2.2 Generic poetic modes (Gabriel, 2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

4.1 Smart City market construction process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

5.1 Smart City market shaping process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

iii
List of Tables

1.1 Research objectives and questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2.1 Basic plots in narratives (Frye, 1957) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

2.2 Key features in narratives (Gergen and Gergen, 1988) . . . . . . . . . 44

3.1 Data gathered and analysed per actor and category . . . . . . . . . . 58

4.1 Basic plots in narratives (Frye, 1957) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

4.2 Timeline of story sets developed by Cisco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
4.3 Narratives developed by IBM and Cisco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
4.4 Counter-narratives of cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
4.5 Narratives developed by smart cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

6.1 First and second cycle coding structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

6.2 Detail timeline of Cisco’s story sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
6.3 Detailed story’s timeline sets developed by IBM . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

iv
Chapter 1

Introduction

Contents
1.1 Research problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 Research objectives and research questions . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 Position of this research towards the literature . . . . . 11

The impact of technologies on firm performance and competitiveness in business

markets have long been recognised (Pires and Aisbett, 2003; Varadarajan et al., 2010;
Trainor et al., 2011; Makkonen and Johnston, 2014; Makkonen and Vouri, 2014; Lee
and Lee, 2015; Makkonen et al., 2016). This phenomenon is not new, but the num-
ber of technological disruptions (e.g. nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, information
technology, cognitive science, aka NBIC) increases as do the rhythm of their develop-
ment and the magnitude of their business and economic consequences. However, the
introduction of emerging technologies into the market requires a process of market
shaping to ensure the successful entrance, commercialisation and appropriation of
those technologies (O’Connor and Rice, 2012).

Thus, market shaping studies become fundamental to understand technology

adoption and diffusion. The study of markets has been developed arguing that
markets can be described as a collective device enabled by calculative agencies of
multiple actors (Callon and Muniesa, 2005). In which the market is the result of the
arrangement and translation of three distinct and interconnected market practices:
representational, exchange and normalising (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006, 2007;
Araujo, 2007). Despite its importance, Azimont and Araujo (2007); Nenonen et al.
(2014) have recognised that the link between the different market practices remains
unclear and only a few studies have explored the articulation of the market practices

1
and its influence in market shaping (e.g. Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007; Doganova
and Karnøe, 2015). Furthermore, market shaping has been examined under the eco-
nomic sociology perspective, arguing that markets are socio-technical assemblages,
that possesses among others: “rules and conventions; technical devices; metrological
systems; logistical infrastructures; texts, discourses and narratives; technical and sci-
entific knowledge, as well as the competencies and skills embodied in living beings”
(Caliskan and Callon, 2010, p.3). Market shaping is recognised as a dialectical pro-
cess enacted through the use of market devices as a “simple way of referring to the
material and discursive assemblages that intervene in the construction of markets”
(Muniesa et al., 2007, p.2). Likewise, it has shown that the shaping of a market re-
quires the narration of a tellable story; “a story which narrates boundaries, relations,
agency and identities for entities” permitting the assemblage of people and material
objects (Simakova and Neyland, 2008, p.96).

Assemblage can be understood under the frame of technology studies as complex

associations among diverse constituencies that include technologies, ideas, discourses
and people, that can be arranged to form a unified whole (Law, 2009). Hence, assem-
blages are able to connect objects, social phenomena and discourse into constructions
that emerged from the interaction among people, things and concepts. In that sense,
the narratives permit to assemble market practices by offering a coherent and logical
thread to the actions and narratives developed by the actors involved.

Narratives lie at the centre of this market shaping process, working as a tool that
permits to understand and to give sense to actions taken, making the unexpected ex-
pectable, hence manageable, providing a plausible frame for sensemaking (Robinson
et al., 2005). A generally accepted definition of narrative is: “narrative is the repre-
sentation of an event or a series of events” (Porter Abbott, 2008) Thus, the narratives
“posses a plot and characters, generating emotion in narrator and audience, through
a poetic elaboration of symbolic material. This material may be a product of fantasy
or experience, including an experience of earlier narratives” (Gabriel, 2000, p.239).
Furthermore, the narratives serve as a vehicle of give sense and assign meanings to
the world (Bruner, 1986) through the assignation of chronological order to the events
that embedded shared values and meanings, serving as guidelines for action (Rhodes
and Brown, 2005).

This dissertation is a collection of essays that shows the role of the narratives in
the shaping of markets, allowing to observe how the narratives are used in each one of

2
the market practices: representation, exchange and normalisation. The central claim
of this study is that the narratives act as an assemblage tool among market practices,
permitting to give sense in a coherent and articulated way to the actions of different
actors involved in the shaping of markets. This research takes as an starting point the
concept of market as cultural and dialectical constructions that exist in an ongoing
social process (Peñaloza and Venkatesh, 2006; Nenonen et al., 2014). Thus, the
narratives are constructed by different actors throughout the market shaping process
with multiple purposes: from the creation of market representations that explain
the product, assign meanings and illustrate the market in which operates (Rinallo
and Golfetto, 2006; Diaz Ruiz, 2013), to the development of business relationships
and exchanges practices where the narrative permits to create trust bonds and show
product expertise in sales encounters (Gilliam and Flaherty, 2015), while reduces
uncertainty and permits to assign meaning in business interrelations (La Rocca et al.,
2016). Finally, the development of normalisation practices enacts the stabilisation of
the market through a process of normative and regulatory legitimacy (Humphreys,
2010) in which narratives permit to explain the product to the users creating routines,
habits and enacting practices.

This research employs a single case study with multiple units of analysis (Yin,
2013), taking the smart city market as a case to study the narratives’ role in the
shaping of this market. The selection of this particular market responds to four
reasons: First, the selection of the technology, Internet of Things (IoT), applied to
an specific sector (city management) permits to understand in depth the shaping of
the market and the interactions of different actors. Second, smart cities was one
of the initial solutions released into the market, allowing to see the narratives from
the earlier beginnings and their transformation through time granting the analysis
of contradictory positions and counter-narratives towards the smart city concept and
how the narrative evolved to reduce uncertainty and gain legitimacy among users.
The third aspect is related to the access to the data and the possibility to gather
information from different sources. Finally, the context of the smart city granted
the possibility to analyse the flow of the narrative in different moments and how it
contributes to align perspectives and discourses in different market practices.

Using multiple units of analysis it was possible to understand the perspectives

and the narratives developed by the actors involved in the market shaping process.
Four units of analysis are part of the case study. Technology firms: IBM and Cisco;
cities: Amsterdam (AMS), Barcelona (BCN) and Lyon; Consulting firms: McKinsey

3
& Company, PWC, EY and ARUP; media: Forbes and the guardian; international
organisations: Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), European commission and
centre for cities; other actors of the cities as start-ups and residents. The data was
gathered from 2014 to 2017, conducting a real-time study that permits to see how the
narratives and the shaping of the markets is unfolding (Halinen and Törnross, 2005).

To facilitate the understanding of the the problematic it is important to briefly

review some concepts related to the development of the smart city: the city as a con-
cept, Internet of Things (IoT) and the smart city concept. A city can be understood
as an “engine room of economic growth and the centres of culture, entertainment,
innovation, education, knowledge, and political power” (Roberts and Kanaley, 2006)
where the urbanisation process has lead the cities “to develop social institutions, such
as businesses and government, to support themselves” (Orum, 2004). Despite the
novelty of the urbanisation process, it has changed country dynamics, creating nodes
within the country where economic and social activity is centred. The United Nations
(2014) argues that the phenomenon of urbanisation tends to increase, forecasting that
“urbanisation could add another 2.5 billion people to urban populations by 2050”.

Internet of Things is the technological solution behind the concept of smart so-
lutions and its application in city management, denominated as smart city. Thus,
IoT has been defined as “the pervasive presence around us of a variety of things or
objects such as RFID, tags, sensors, actuators, mobile phones, etc. which, through
unique addressing schemes, are able to interact with each other and cooperate with
their neighbours to reach common goals” (Atzori et al., 2010). Their definition envi-
sion a network of smart and interconnected devices that are able to interact among
them without the need of human intervention, generating and collecting data that
can be useful to take autonomous decisions or help individuals and organisations to
take actions based on real time data. Porter and Heppelmann (2014, 2015) have pre-
sented IoT as a new industrial revolution, highlighting that products suffer a radical
transformation, acquiring a new set of capabilities that allows the interconnection of
the products with multiple devices generating a hyper-connected world. Therefore,
a new strategic panorama surges for the organisations representing a challenge for
managers. Consequently, companies should rethink the modes of create and capture
value from clients and its continuous interactions with smart objects.

Finally, the smart cities are the combination of technology solutions: Internet of
Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and big data, that gather information from

4
sensors citywide, permitting to decide in real time, which, according to technology
firms, will enhance efficiency and well being in the city. However, its definition is
still unclear and exist as part of a continuous co-construction process between the
different actors involved (technology firms, city government, businesses, international
organisations, start-ups and residents) as part of the shaping of the market, leading
to have multiple visions of the smart city concept and the market. The concept of the
smart city emerged in the 70’s in California with an initial attempt to combine data
with city management which failed because of the lack of capabilities that existent
technology solutions (Vallianatos, 2015). A new attempt was developed in 2005 when
the Clinton foundation challenged Cisco to develop a technology that makes cities
sustainable, leading to the creation of smart city solutions (Falk, 2012). Only until
2012, the first solution for smart cities was released into the market by Cisco, leading
to the shaping of the city management market and the creation of narratives that give
sense, attract and convince different cities to engage in the adoption and construction
of a smart city.

This work begins with the description of the research problem, proposing objec-
tives and research questions and provides an explanation about how this research
contributes to the literature of market shaping. A description of the extant litera-
ture is presented and divided into three topics of importance for the understanding
of the phenomenon studied. First, a review of the global perspectives on technology
adoption, including; a brief examination of the rational perspective and models, the
relational perspective and the role of multiple actors in technology adoption and the
socio-cultural perspective that describes technology consumption, followed by a re-
view of the extant research on market shaping, market practices and actor network
theory as a frame to analyse the data gathered. Lastly, a revision of narrative theory
in which the origins and different currents of this theory are explained, permitting to
understand narrative structures and elements used in the creation of stories and their
relationships with technology markets.

Furthermore, methodological considerations are presented, explaining the philo-

sophical positions taking in this research and the framework of analysis employed.
The following chapter provides a summary of each essay, clarifying their contribution
at individual and collective level and how the essay permits to solve the objectives
proposed. This dissertation ends with a discussion of the theoretical, empirical and

5
methodological implications of this research in the field of market theory and mar-
ket studies, leading to an enquiry of future possible scenarios in which the study of
narratives and market shaping can be expanded.

1.1 Research problem

Emerging innovations and the continuous stream of new technology markets have
increasingly challenged the role of marketing both in technological consumption and
industrial marketing. As a consequence, new technologies imply the need for new
argumentative explanations that permit the technology solution to enter the market.
Therefore, firms that offer these solutions must engage in a process of market shaping
that permits the correct entrance and stabilisation of the product within the mar-
ket (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006). Thus, firms resort to the utilisation of market
practices (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006, 2007; Araujo, 2007) aiming to be able to
shape a market that allows the correct entrance, adoption and appropriation of the
technology solutions developed.

In the case of emerging technology markets, the studies show that the initial step
in this market shaping process is to engage in the development of representational
practices that permit to give sense to the product, provide argumentative explanations
that create awareness, depicting the market for the emerging technology and allow-
ing to different actors to understand how the market works (Kjellberg and Helgesson,
2006; Rinallo and Golfetto, 2006). Diverse representational practices can co-exist si-
multaneously, from advertising, stories about the market, market research, statistical
data, among others (Diaz Ruiz, 2013). This representation provides a simplified ex-
planation of what the market is, how it operates and the effects on business networks,
facilitating the challenge that companies face when they try to explain the effects of
the technology in the existent business relationships and the development of new re-
lationships that may be required to effectively exploit the technology potential (Ford
et al., 2011).

Thus, firms engage in exchange practices, defined as “concrete activities involved

in consummating individual economic exchanges of good” (Kjellberg and Helgesson,
2006, p.843), where interactions between firms and potential buyers occur allowing
to explain further potential benefits of the technology and the establishment of a
relationship between both firms. The literature on industrial marketing is extensive
on this area, with a focus on several areas, including: trust in business relationships

6
(Gilliam and Flaherty, 2015; Virtanen et al., 2015; Kaski et al., 2017), value cre-
ation (Haas et al., 2012; Hohenschwert and Geiger, 2015; Geiger, 2017) and business
networks (Aarikka-Stenroos et al., 2014).

Finally, the normalising practice has gained more importance in the last years as a
process of market stabilisation being fundamental for market creation, especially if we
recognise market construction as an ongoing social process. Normalising practices can
be understood as efforts to stabilise markets through the institutionalisation of norms,
development of technical infrastructures and creation of routines and habits (Kjellberg
et al., 2015). The importance of normalisation is to demonstrate in the gambling
industry as a socio-cultural process of legitimisation of new markets (Humphreys,
2010), in which multiple contestations emerge continuously in an effort to align the
contradictory position of multiple actors that enable the legitimate of the technology
as a brand-mediated process (Giesler, 2012).

Despite the importance of the market shaping phenomenon, the division of the
extant literature in the three market practices; representation, exchange and nor-
malisation (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006), has provided valuable insights on how
each practices operates and contributes to the shaping of markets. Nevertheless,
that division has undermined the research that explain the interrelations between
market practices, Azimont and Araujo (2007) argues that it remains unclear how
market practices interact with each other in an aim to shape the market. Few studies
have analysed those interactions, arguing that exist through a chain of translations
that permit to offer an explanation of how market practices interact (Kjellberg and
Helgesson, 2007). This studies can be complemented with the narrative perspective
where is possible to present that narratives acts as an assemblage tool that enable
the chains of translations between market practices. This represent an important gap
in the literature, which this research aims to contribute to reduced it by presenting
an alternative view on how constituent market practices are linked.

Thus, the research problem can be framed in the following argument:

1. The study of markets has been dissected in the study of market practices at the
individual level, permitting to understand in depth each market practice.

2. The link between market practices has been barely studied. Therefore, exist a
gap to understand the assemblage of market practices as part of market shaping.

7
 3. Markets have been recognised as dialectical constructions. However, the study
of the shaping of markets through a narrative perspective is almost nonexistent.

1.2 Research objectives and research questions

The problematic of this research arises from the lack of understanding about how
market practices are assembled (Azimont and Araujo, 2007). As aforementioned, the
literature focuses particularly on each market practice, overlooking the link between
those practices. Therefore, current research on market shaping does not provide a
clear explanation about how the market practices are interrelated and which elements
permit the assemblage of practices of representation, exchange and normalisation in
an articulated and coherent construction that enable the shaping of markets.

The central claim of this research is that the assemblage of market practices is
enacted by discursive elements, in particular, the use of narratives. It has been recog-
nised that markets are an ongoing dialectical process in which the discursive element
is important for shaping the market, granting the assemblage of people and material
objects (Muniesa et al., 2007; Simakova and Neyland, 2008; Caliskan and Callon,
2010). Therefore, the central objective of this research is to understand the role of
narratives in the shaping of markets as an assemblage tool among market practices.
Stories are relevant to understand the market shaping phenomenon because they exist
at the inception of new markets as cognitive systems acting as “sense making tools
among participants in a social system” (Rosa et al., 1999, p.68), permitting to make
sense of the changes in the market and its evolution (Theoharakis and Wong, 2002),
granting a shared understanding of the market and allowing the participation of mul-
tiple actors in the market shaping process in an articulated manner (La Rocca et al.,
2015).

This dissertation explores three aspects of the narratives in the shaping of mar-
kets that contribute to the overall objective of this research. Thus, each essay has
an objective that permits to understand how narratives are employed, articulated
and orchestrated in different stages of the market shaping. Table 1.1, summarises
the objectives of each study, its correspondent research question and the essay that
address each objective. The elaboration of each essay enriches our understanding of
the use of narratives in the different market practices and the role of the narratives in
the shaping of markets. The study of markets through the lenses of narrative theory,
allows to enhance the existing knowledge about the markets, the link between market

8
practices, the evolution of the markets and efforts developed by multiple actors to
shape the market in particular ways.

Research objectives Research Question Study

1. Investigate the role of 1. How are narratives em- 1. Narrative ad-

narrative advertising in the ployed and which is its role vertising as sym-
assignation of meanings. in industrial advertising? bolic representa-
tion tools

2. Identify the elaboration 2. How is narrative strat- 2. Narrative

of a narrative strategy and
how the different stories are
coordinated throughout the
market shaping process.
egy globally orchestrated? transmedia
What are the implications strategies and
of a narrative approach B2B technology
for industrial firms and for brands
our understanding of mar-
ket evolution?

3. Identify the role of the
narratives in the assemblage
of market practices that en-
able the market shaping.
Understand its role in mar-
ket evolution.
3. How does the use of nar- 3. Narratives’
ratives contributes to shape role in the shap-
the market for emerging ing of new tech-
technologies in the indus- nology markets
trial context

Table 1.1: Research objectives and questions

Each essay provides a particular vision of the narratives and their role in the
shaping of markets. The first essay responds to the objective of understanding the
role of narratives as a tool of sensemaking and meaning assignation towards emerging
technologies. To accomplish this goal, this research explores the role of the narra-
tives in industrial advertising for the emerging technology of IoT. The development of
this study permits to understand the role of the narratives in early stages of market
shaping where representational market practices are stronger, showing how the nar-
ratives embedded meanings in the advertisement which serves as sensemaking tools.
Additionally, the narrative offered a global perspective of what is the technology and
how it operates in different scenarios that generates a market representation in the
audience. This study contributes at two levels. First to enhance the knowledge on
how market representations are created (Rinallo and Golfetto, 2006) and how narra-
tives are constructed which has been poorly investigated in marketing (Visconti and
Van Laer, 2016; Bublitz et al., 2016).

9
 The objective of the second study is to understand the orchestration of the nar-
ratives created throughout the market shaping process. By developing an analysis of
the flow of the narratives of technology firms (Cisco and IBM) in diverse scenarios
(advertising, blogs, white papers, public speeches, selling discourses, podcasts), it was
possible to observe how the narrative evolves at the same peace of the market and
being used in each market practice. Thus, the narrative initially serves as a tool for
create market representations that explain the purpose and the benefits of the tech-
nology while creates an identity for the market, subsequently the narrative is adapted
and used as part of exchange practices in selling encounters, permitting to rearrange
the narrative to the buyer’s context, showing product expertise and how the technol-
ogy can solve particular issues that buyer’s can face. Finally, the narratives are used
to normalise and stabilise the market, at this point the narrative become a tool that
enable legitimacy among actors by generating regulation, routines and habits. The
study shows that the use of narratives grant the development of a coherent discourse
at all interaction points between the firm and the customers in each market practice.

The third study has the aim to identify the role of the narrative in the assem-
blage of market practices and its role in the shaping of the market from a multi-actor
perspective. While the two initial studies analyse in depth the production of the
narratives from the technology firms about smart solutions, this study focuses exclu-
sively in the shaping of the smart city market, taking into account multiple actors
that are involved in this process: technology firms, cities, consulting firms, media,
international organisations and other actors of each city. This analysis grants the
possibility to understand how multiple perspectives interact in the market shaping.
Likewise, it permits to observe contestations that emerged against the smart city,
turning into counter-narratives and how the firm or the city develops new narratives
to reduce those counter argumentations. This study analyses the smart city mar-
ket shaping, using actor-network theory (Callon, 1986) to study how the narratives
navigate through the market practices and how the actors shape those narratives for
different purposes according to the dominant market practice that is in place. The
essay shows the flow of the narratives in the market practices, illustrating the uses
of the narratives by the technology sellers in each market practice while present how
the buyer, in this case, the city, appropriates the narrative and constructs a new
narrative that is initially used to gain political and financial support to develop the
smart city initiative. At this point, the city’s role suffers a transformation, passing
from buyer to a seller of the smart city concept, entering in a new cycle of market

10
shaping that aims to attract, engage business, start ups, residents and other actors
in the development of smart city initiatives. Therefore, the city goes through each
market practice in order to shape the smart city market.

1.3 Position of this research towards the literature

This section has the aim to provide an overview of the different streams of research
that were used as part of this dissertation, this explanation will permit to the reader to
better understand the philosophical foundations employed in each study and provide
a preamble to understand the contributions of each essay and the entire dissertation.
The body of this work is situated in the marketing literature and it is composed of
three essays that have been presented at conferences and are in reviewing process in
marketing journals.

The aim of this dissertation is to understand the role of narratives in the shap-
ing of emerging technology markets as an assemblage tool among market practices.
Therefore, this research takes elements from three research streams: market studies,
technology adoption and narrative theory. In the field of market studies, the topics of
market shaping and market practices are preponderant throughout the three essays.
We use insights from economic sociology (Callon, 1986; Muniesa et al., 2007), from
market shaping the majority of the concepts employed are based on the research
developed by (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006, 2007; Kjellberg et al., 2012; Araujo,
2007; Araujo et al., 2008) and the extensive research on market practices (Rinallo
and Golfetto, 2006; Simakova and Neyland, 2008; Caliskan and Callon, 2010; Har-
rison et al., 2010; Diaz Ruiz, 2013; Humphreys, 2010; Doganova and Karnøe, 2015;
Nenonen et al., 2014; Geiger, 2017).

Likewise, the literature on technology adoption permits to understand the adop-

tion process by firms from a rational and cultural perspective, allowing to explore
the market shaping process from the technology adoption perspective. Thus this
dissertation explores the rational models of technology adoption: Technology Accep-
tance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989), Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) (Rogers, 2003) and
Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technologies (UTAUT) (Venkatesh et al.,
2003). In the same manner, it permits to understand the adoption, consumption and
appropriation of technology through a socio cultural perspective that includes topics
as legitimacy and institutionalisation of technologies (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005;
Vaara and Tienari, 2008; Humphreys, 2010; Giesler, 2012; Humphreys and Latour,

11
2013; Hsu et al., 2014), meaning construction and assignation (Weick, 1995; Gioia
and Chittipeddi, 1991; Mills, 2003; Brown et al., 2012; Colville et al., 2012; Brown
et al., 2015; Mattsson et al., 2015), narratives and technology markets (Czarniawska,
2004; Escalas, 2004a; Brown et al., 2008; Bartel and Garud, 2009; Polleta et al., 2011;
Van den Hende and Schoormans, 2012), technological frames of reference (Gioia and
Sims, 1986; Orlikowski and Gash, 1994; Haselton et al., 2005; Bennett and Toft, 2009)
and technology as ideology (Mick and Fournier, 1998; Kozinets, 2008; Press et al.,
2014).

Finally, the narrative theory is the central pivot of this research that serves as a
lens of analysis, and at the same time, is a central tool for the shaping of markets
and the assemblage of market practices. Thus, a review of the historical origins of
the narrative theory is developed (Propp, 1928; Frye, 1957; Barthes, 1975; Bruner,
1986; Fisher, 1985; Polkinghorne, 1988; Gabriel, 1998; Nünning, 2003; Adler, 2008),
followed by an analysis of the types of narratives, which are employed in the essays
(Bal, 1997; Herman, 1999; Meister, 2014; Gabriel, 2004) and the commonly narrative
elements such as narrator, plot, characters (Frye, 1957; Ricoeur, 1980; Gergen and
Gergen, 1988; Green and Brock, 2000; Phelan, 2005; Woodside, 2010). This research
stream grants us to analyse the shaping of markets as a narrative process that evolves
through the use of diverse market practices. In that sense, the use of the narrative
research stream allows to extend our contribution to the field of market studies. The
following chapter will explore in detail the extant literature in each one of these three
research streams, providing a research background that permits to understand the
findings and contributions achieved in each essay.

This dissertation is permeated by the conception that markets are ongoing social
processes in which multiple actors contribute to the formation and stabilisation of
the market (Peñaloza and Venkatesh, 2006). By recognising the relevance of the
cultural context in the shaping of market this research approach to Consumer Culture
Theory (CCT) as a theoretical foundation to understand the shaping of markets.
Additionally, by acknowledging this cultural perspective it also allow to observe the
influence of consumers in the shaping of the markets (Giesler, 2012; Martin and
Schouten, 2014). Likewise, this cultural perspective grant the possibility to explore
markets as cultural constructions that need to be legitimated (Humphreys, 2010),
which are permeated by ideologies (Kozinets, 2008) and identities (Holt, 2002) that
are translated into narratives of technology consumption.

12
Chapter 2

Research background

Contents
2.1 Socio-cultural perspectives of technology adoption . . . 14
2.2 Global approach to the shaping of markets . . . . . . . . 28
2.2.1 Actor Network Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.3 Narrative uses in the shaping of markets . . . . . . . . . 34
2.3.1 Understanding the narrative approach . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.3.2 The study of narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.3.3 Structures of narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.3.4 Narrative studies in businesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

This research background approaches to the shaping of markets through the theory
of technology adoption from a socio-cultural perspective and the lenses of narrative
theory. It starts with the review of technology adoption literature, studying the socio-
cultural perspective, allowing to have a broader vision of technology adoption and
the role of cultural aspects in the adoption and consumption of technologies. The
analysis of the existent literature permits to understand that technology adoption
requires a market in which the technology can operate. Therefore, a central piece
of this dissertation is the review of the literature on market shaping including the
literature on market practices and a revision of Actor Network Theory (ANT) which
was employed as a method theory, hence providing a tool to analyse the data gathered
in some of the studies. This chapter ends with a review of narrative theory that
explains origins and evolution, structure and typologies of the narratives and other
common elements used in the construction of narratives. Therefore, the review of
these research stream provides the conceptual basis for the studies developed and to
elaborate the contributions to the literature in marketing.

13
 Given the broad definition of adoption (intention to use and actual use of a tech-
nology over time), it comes as no surprise that research on the topic has taken various
perspectives. Variety is found in the types of adoption behaviour explained: intention,
adoption per se, mandatory adoption, use, satisfaction, and, at an aggregated level,
diffusion (accumulated number of users of an innovation, Frambach and Schillewaert,
2002). Variety is also found in the unit of analysis: users within the organisation or
organisations (interfirm-adoption). Likewise, variety can be seen in the theoretical
frameworks used: Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989), Unified Theory of
Acceptance and Use of Technology (Venkatesh et al., 2003), Diffusion of Innovations
(Rogers, 2003), Technology, Organisation, and Environment framework (Tornatzky
and Fleischer, 1990).

Despite the important of other approaches this research focuses on the socio-
cultural perspective. This emerging perspective is presented trying to include multi-
ple theoretical and/or methodological underpinnings that exist within this research
stream, the findings enrich and enlarge the knowledge of technology adoption and use
in the socio cultural and industrial context.

2.1 Socio-cultural perspectives of technology adop-

tion
The endorsement of a socio-cultural perspective responds initially to the conception
that markets are an ongoing social process in which multiple actors contribute to the
formation and stabilisation of the market (Peñaloza and Venkatesh, 2006) and this
is not different for technology markets. Thus, the understanding of cultural under-
pinnings grants the analysis of meanings and significations that occurs behind the
process of adoption and diffusion of technologies. This section concentrates on four
main areas, that are interrelated and partially overlapped, permitting to solve addi-
tional questions that enlighten our understanding of shaping of markets for emerging
technologies under this cultural perspective. (1) The construction of meaning; how
is meaning constructed? (2) legitimacy and institutionalisation; how are technologies
legitimised and institutionalised? (3) Discursive and rhetorical implications (4) Tech-
nology as ideology; How do ideologies shape actors behaviour and relations? How
does enchantment of technology take part in the process? The resolution of this
question allows to analyse different aspects of the shaping of markets and market
practices.

14
 Narrative are an important aspect in this cultural perspective and has been used as
method or phenomena of study in the four topics aforementioned, the variety of uses
of the narratives as managerial, communication and marketing tool has been recog-
nised by (Denning, 2005; Czarniawska, 2014) allowing to understand why narratives
has been studied in a diversity of theoretical backgrounds. In this particular case,
technology per se has been considered as a character of a bigger metanarrative of an
interconnected world that ruled out every aspect of human lives (Van der Laan, 2016).
In that sense, the narrative of technology is in itself an agent of change, empowered
by organisations and consumer, which acts as protagonist or antagonist according to
the position of the storyteller. By doing so, the narrative of the technology exists
as an ongoing construction nurtured by multiple actors (society, government, compa-
nies, users) and multiple narratives, counter narratives and antenarratives which are
aligned with ideological positions of the society towards technology. Consequently,
the understanding of the narratives’ role in the cultural perspective will grant a better
understanding of the shaping of markets for emerging technologies.

1. The construction of meaning: giving and making sense. This process

of meaning assignation has two sides that coexist simultaneously. First the un-
derstanding of how one actor guides the construction of meaning in an effort
to give sense to their actions, and, another actor that decipher and make sense
of that construction while assigning meanings. Hence, sensegiving is consid-
ered as an interpretative process that has the purpose of influence the meaning
construction in particular ways toward a preferred definition of organisational
reality (Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991). In other words, it is the process by which
managers guide organisational perceptions through persuasive discursive tools
that grant make sense and assign meaning in an expected manner. Sensegiving
has been considered as a social process enacted through a persuasive discur-
sive ability that allows actors to build articulated interpretations of the world.
Being promoted by organisational routines, practices and performance that pro-
vide time and opportunity to engage in the sensegiving processes (Maitlis and
Lawrence, 2007). Empirical research has focused on the organisational context
to explore the practices employed by managers to give sense to organisational
challenge, showing four micro-practices: translating the orientation, overcoding
the strategy, disciplining the client, and justifying the change. That that act
together in a permanent flux to give sense and to make sense of the events
occurred in specific contexts, being reconstructed in daily experiences of agents

15
(Rouleau, 2005). A set of conditions that lead to the sensegiving process where
identified, revealing that sensegiving is triggered mainly by the perception or
anticipation of a gap that required an interpretation of an issue that anyone else
would provide. However, differences exist between the triggers for stakeholders
and managers within the organisation (Maitlis and Lawrence, 2007). Likewise,
it has been studied how new managers draw on sensegiving strategies to gain
adepts to the changes proposed and obtain legitimacy and validation among the
organisation members (Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991)

Despite the importance of sensegiving, studies argue that sensegiving and sense-
making are complementary, reciprocal processes that cannot be considered alone
(Rouleau, 2005). In theory, the differences between the concepts are clear, but
in practice, “people engage in sensegiving processes based on their sensemaking
processes” (Søderberg, 2003). Regardless the conceptual differences each con-
cept is permeated by the other (Hopkinson, 2001). Therefore, it is important
to explore both concepts, seeking to establish similarities and differences that
can be useful to comprehend the phenomenon in an empirical setting.

Sensemaking seeks to understand how individuals assign meanings to specific

situations, structuring the unknown in a coherent piece of significance which
become the material to construct collective views and understanding of the
world (Weick et al., 2005; Brown et al., 2015). In this process, the actors
involved create and assign meanings, subsequently, those meanings are filtered
and framed into specific cognitive structures that encompass knowledge and
expertise and are translated into plausible stories that are redraft several times
through a process of social construction where the subjective unknown become
tangible. Sensemaking can be understood as “a search for plausibility and
coherence, that is reasonable and memorable, which embodies past experience
and expectations, and maintains the self while resonating with others. It can
be constructed retrospectively yet used prospectively, and captures thoughts
and emotions: To engage in sensemaking is to construct, filter, frame, create
facticity... and render the subjective into something more tangible” (Weick,
1995, p.14). In a similar way, sensemaking has been considered as an action-
oriented process of acquisition, reflection and action used by individuals to
assign meanings to lived experiences aiming to rationalise them and comprehend
the world that surrounds them (Kolko, 2010). Thus, it has been argued that

16
people are able to create their social world, where negotiated positions take
place in a communal construction of meanings that serves as a platform to
take actions and is comprehended explicitly in words and it is obtained through
a continuous dialogue of discovery and invention where individual and social
identities are referenced, constructed, and reconstructed. (Brown et al., 2008).
Likewise, sensemaking has been considered as a process of organising, in which
the initial stage is the materialisation of meanings in the construction of identity
and action.Sensemaking unfolds as a sequence in which people concerned with
identity in the social context of other actors engage ongoing circumstances from
which they extract cues and make plausible sense retrospectively while enacting
more or less order into those ongoing circumstances (Weick et al., 2005). Hence,
sensemaking contributes to deal with the inherent uncertainty that exists when
individuals face unknown situations (Mills, 2003).

The literature on sensemaking and sensegiving is far from being homogeneous

and exist an important amount of research on sensemaking related to the top-
ics of this dissertation. A review of these two aspects is presented: discursive
sensemaking and sensemaking in technology adoption. Thus, research on dis-
cursive sensemaking emphasises the linguistic aspect rather than the cognitive
one. People not only share meanings but also enact their comprehension of the
world explicitly in words and through the linguistic and communicative pro-
cesses in which are embedded (Weick et al., 2005). As a result of the need
to share meanings in a collectivity, the linguistic processes turn into articu-
lated narratives that embrace multiple stories full of experiences, expectations,
knowledge and emotions. Humans have been conceived as storytelling animals,
as Homo narrans that have decided to use the recourse of stories to recreate
and share their world (Fisher, 1985, 1989; Iversen, 2014), the narrative also
works as acts of interpretation and meaning production (Fenton and Langley,
2011). Hence, sensemaking stories allow the analysis and unravel how sense is
produced and rationalised in organisational settings (Brown et al., 2008), while
permitting the creation of cohesive pieces of stories that make sense of the world
that surround use (Currie and Brown, 2003), facilitating the understanding of
experiences (Rhodes and Brown, 2005).

Research on sensemaking and technology adoption has been a widely explored.

Thus, the concept of cognitive gap examines the interaction between technology

17
 and individuals arguing that is a process of individual sensemaking and situa-
tional awareness (Dervin, 1983). In the organisational context, sensemaking has
been understood as a two-level process that embedded individual and collective
sensemaking processes to accept new technologies (Weick, 2000). Likewise, it
has been argued that the adoption of technology initiates far behind to the
decision process, starting with the formation of perceptions and symbolic repre-
sentations toward the technology and it continuous with a series of sensemaking
cycles that pretend to change or modify the perception, leading to the adoption
of rejection of the technology (Seligman, 2006; Borup et al., 2006; Kozinets,
2008; Buchanan-Oliver et al., 2010; Garland et al., 2013; Van der Laan, 2016).

In this research stream, narratives have been understood as a primordial el-

ement that serves as a vehicle for meaning assignation and comprehension of
the world, relying on the idea that exists a narrative knowing (Fisher, 1985)
and a narrative mode of though (Bruner, 1986). Thus, narratives contribute
to facilitate the comprehension of experiences, assigning chronological order to
the events that embedded shared values and meanings, serving as guidelines for
action and convey shared values and meanings (Rhodes and Brown, 2005) and
narratives embedded in dialogues are used by people to building accounts that
help them to comprehend their thoughts, their experiences, contributing to con-
trol and predict events (Currie and Brown, 2003; Abolafia, 2010), contributing
to reduce the complexity and uncertainty of unknown situations. Hence, the
narrative is an engaging and ongoing construction where actors involved assign
meanings, filter and frame them into a specific cognitive knowledge of expertise
in order to create plausible stories that translate the subjective unknown into a
more tangible social construction (Weick, 1995; Brown et al., 2005, 2008, 2015).
In other words, the world becomes evident and tangible through narratives
helping humanity to give and make sense of the world that surround us. There-
fore, sensemaking and sensegiving are intrinsically related to the construction
of narratives (Sonenshein, 2001)

2. Legitimacy and institutionalisation of technologies. Legitimacy is de-

fined as a congruence between social values, individual or organisational ac-
tivities and the norms of acceptable behaviour established by social systems
(Dowling and Pfeffer, 1975), also legitimacy has been understood as the com-
mon perception of the desirable, appropriate and useful actions taken by man-
agers which must be aligned with the organisational logic, including the system

18
of norms, values, beliefs assumptions and definitions embedded in the core of
each organisation (Suchman, 1995). And legitimacy can be considered as a
process in which a set of practices or institutions becomes acceptable in par-
ticular social, cultural and political settings (Johnson et al., 2006). Therefore,
it is necessary “is necessary to understand the place of technological innova-
tions within the larger and more complex process of industry legitimation, a
process that involves cultural, social and material factors” (Humphreys, 2010,
p.1). it has been argued that legitimacy is based on the understanding of the
actions taken and the level of congruence between the attributes of the tech-
nology adopted and the organisational logic (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005).
In a similar way, institutionalisation has been defined as a legitimation process
that is accompanied by a managerial discourse (Abrahamson, 1991), helping to
embed an entity in the organisational logic and be part of the taken-for-granted
assumptions (Zucker, 1991).

Suchman (1995) identifies three types of legitimacy; a cognitive legitimacy, a

pragmatic legitimacy and a moral legitimacy, these typologies suggest that nor-
mative and regulatory factors are significant components for organisational ac-
ceptance and by extension to the opening of new markets which are rooted in the
sociocognitive patterns of the society. As consequence, legitimacy contributes
to enhance the readiness of a social group to accept and embrace a change in the
social patterns. The understanding of the legitimacy process inside an organi-
sation helps sellers to tailor marketing strategies that engage stakeholders and
facilitate the understanding of the technology. A grasp of legitimacy dynamics
gives to the seller tools to develop narrative strategies to explain the innovations
to different stakeholders allowing to easily navigate through complex regulatory
societal environments (Humphreys and Latour, 2013). Therefore, this process
determines how the technology will fit in the society, having impacts in the im-
plementation and diffusion of the same. An example of this, is a study that ex-
plores the creation of new markets as a legitimation process mediated by brands
and argues that branding strategies foster innovation’s legitimation by tailoring
their emotional branding delivery to the exigencies of sociological translations
(Giesler, 2012), and also legitimacy has been examined in the gaming and gam-
bling industry showing the influence of media in the framing process arguing
that adoption and acceptance of an industry occur through a social process of
legitimation (Humphreys, 2010; Humphreys and Latour, 2013).

19
Legitimacy strategies have been explored through the lens of discursive and
rhetoric, arguing that they play a central role in this process and the use of
rhetorical strategies complement and enhance the process of institutionalisa-
tion. Thus, rhetoric is used to create and maintain ideological and meaning
systems within the organisation allowing to control institutional elements as
agency, conflicts and power (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005) and through tex-
tual strategies, particular interest in the organisations can be reproduced or
silenced in order to adapt managerial positions in controversial situations. As a
consequence, the use of multiple strategies of legitimacy is often the most effec-
tive form of legitimation (Vaara and Tienari, 2008). Typologies of legitimacy
have been established including: normalisation, authorisation, rationalisation,
moralisation and narrativisation (Vaara et al., 2007). Normalisation is described
as a category of authorisation to emphasise that events are constructed as nor-
mal or natural. Authorisation is related to legitimacy obtained through law or
individuals who hold some kind of institutional authority. Rationalisation refers
to legitimacy obtained through specific knowledge claims that are accepted in
a given context. Moralisation Is built around social ethical systems that grant
validity and legitimacy and narrativisation refers to the process of legitimating
an action by placing it in a relevant and accepted narrative structure that re-
lates the action to the past or the future. In other words, how telling a story
provides a plausible and socially acceptable framework where actors involved
can be dramatised.

Narratives play an important role in the institutionalisation process at the soci-

etal level, helping organisations to introduce innovations to the market through
a social legitimation based on normative and regulatory structures (Humphreys,
2010). In this process, managers must know how to navigate through multiple
stakeholders to obtain legitimacy among them. It has been argued that the
diffusion of managerial practices depends directly on the justification used by
organisations to rationalise it, suggesting that the discourse is the most influ-
ential tool (Green et al., 2004). Thus, narratives are crucial to acquire and
maintain legitimacy at the individual and organisational level, impacting di-
rectly cognitive legitimacy (Golant and Sillince, 2007). By using narratives
in this way, the organisation is inserted in a frame of cultural understanding,
where the stories operate as autonomous actors with a specific programme of
actions. Therefore, legitimacy is determinant for the shaping of markets and

20
 especially normalisation practices that grant the stabilisation of the market and
its placement within society.

3. Rhetorical implications in technology adoption

Aristotle (2007) defines the use of the rhetorical strategies in persuasive dis-
course in the following way “persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal
character when the speech was so spoken as to make us think him credible.
Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers when the speech stirs their
emotions. Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we
have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments
suitable to the case in question”. Rhetoric can be seen as a valuable way to un-
derstand technological adoption and diffusion, it explains how the phenomenon
of diffusion is linguistically afforded and is discursively constructed into real-
ity (Hsu et al., 2014), allowing to discern discursive influences from social and
contextual ones that affect the adoption process. Rhetoric as a useful way
to examine how legitimacy is obtained in the organisation in times of change,
emphasising the relevance of rhetoric influence of frameshifting which can be
developed through the creation of institutional vocabularies and the theorisa-
tions of change “institutional vocabularies make comprehensible the need for
change while theorisations make the change itself comprehensible” (Suddaby
and Greenwood, 2005). Discursive influences are examined arguing that dis-
courses encompass ideologies, fully charged of ideals, interests and power, that
are manifested as rhetorical frames that shape actions. As a consequence, tech-
nologies are interpreted and adopted or rejected, based not only on performance
characteristics but through the effects of deep social structures encompassed in
ideological discourses of diverse actors involved (Barret et al., 2013). However,
the role of discourse and brought new concepts as technological action frames
to understand technological diffusion process (Elliot and Kraemer, 2008) and
it has been argue that discourses are important for the introduction of inno-
vation in the firms to assign attributes that enhance the adoption rate (Eccles
et al., 1992; Elsbach, 1994). Thus, rhetorical strategies works as a tool to guide
audience perceptions towards an innovation, building or enhancing congruence
among the innovation itself, the institutional logic and the organisational pre-
conceptions of change (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005).

Likewise, rhetoric is highly used in the construction of technological frames as a

political process in which stakeholders involved frame and re-frame perceptions

21
of the organisation towards technologies (Lin and Silva, 2005). Furthermore,
the rhetorical approach illustrates how cognitive limits grant the use of dis-
course by managers to construct organisational problems, solutions and goals
(Green, 2004). Thus, the goal of rhetorical strategies is to facilitate change
in institutional practices. The power of the rhetorical perspective rests on the
assumption that adoption processes of new technologies are not based on the
effectiveness and the benefits offered by the technology, it is just necessary that
the buyers believe the innovation is beneficial (Strang and Macy, 2001). Benefits
can be constructed through persuasive discourses by different actors through-
out the entire adoption process (King and Kugler, 2000), offering the possibility
to the organisation to rationalise the adoption of new technologies, assigning
meanings and establishing practices that permit the legitimation. Finally, some
research has explore the role of the manager under the rhetorical perspective
arguing that its importance lies to in the ability to provide justifications that
link the organisational needs, allowing organisational members to make sense
of the managerial decisions and the organisational changes, contributing to the
acceptance and continuous use of technologies allowing them to become part of
the organisation and being taken for granted (Lin and Silva, 2005).

Rhetorical discourses frequently utilise narrative elements to create stronger ar-

guments that convince or motivate the audience. The study of narratives in
rhetoric examine how the narrative serves to enhance argumentative functions
instead of the aesthetic or didactic function of the stories (Iversen, 2014). This
approach focuses on understanding how narratives influence readers and audi-
ences. narratives work on a more subtle level than the rhetorical discourses, nev-
ertheless, narrative offers extra tools to obtain actions from the audience, which
relies mainly on the ability of the narrative to generate levels of the identifica-
tion between the story, the characters, the plot and the audience “most actions
are motivated by processes beyond rational persuasion, processes of identifying
with, say, an idea, a worldview, an image or a tonality” (Burke, 1951). As a
consequence, the narrative construction can lead to a positive process of identi-
fication or a negative one, denominated diversification, where the story receivers
do not feel identified with the narrative, therefore, is not possible to obtain the
persuasive effect intended (Bal, 1997). The difference between rhetorical com-
munications and narratives lies on the credibility. Thus, rhetoric is influenced
by framing: the impact of the discourse is affected by the speaker credibility. In

22
 contrast, when a reader is transported by a compelling narrative regardless if the
narrative corresponds to the reality, the source loses its influence, “narratives
might be used to advantage by low-credible sources or by speakers who lack
cogent arguments” (Green and Brock, 2000). Two functions of the narratives in
rhetorical text have been highlighted. An epistemic function that refers to the
narratives as a tool to understand the world through a temporal sequence and
the teleological structure of the narrative, mankind is able to assign meanings
and values to past experiences and foresee future scenarios where it is possible
to establish relationships between them. The persuasive function summarise
the convincing effects produced by narratives, helping to maintain the atten-
tion of the audience, creating a sense of identification between the characters,
the narrator and the audience, while facilitate the re-framing process ending in
the break down of barriers and previous conceptions

4. Technology as ideology. The analysis of ideology is rooted in the conception

that ideologies are a common horizon to see the world, created in a social process
of heritage where beliefs are shared to form social practices that are embedded
in institutions and in organisations (Homburg and Pflesser, 2000). This per-
spective permits to analyse technology consumption as a process rooted in ide-
als belief and strong perceptions towards the world. Therefore, understanding
technology as ideology permit to observe the underpinnings of organisation and
societies towards emerging technologies, facilitating the development of strate-
gies that grant the entrance of new technologies into the market. Technology
as an ideology has been studied from a consumer perspective, defining ideol-
ogy as a “systems of meanings that tend to channel and reproduce consumers
thoughts and actions” (Kozinets, 2008) where people consume the ideology of
the technology itself. Thus, the consumers appeal to an ideology that provides
a sense of personal and social identity. Four ideologies that coexist in modern
technological societies were analysed through a semiotic square, allowing the
analysis of each ideology while examining the paradoxes that emerged in terms
of morality and individuality. Figure 2.1 illustrates the model proposed, show-
ing a semiotic square with the four ideological nodes: technopian, green luddite,
work machine and techspressive, a description of each ideology follows below.

(a) Technopian Ideology or technology utopian is founded on the idea of

technology development as a tool for progress that will bring improvements

23
Figure 2.1: The ideological field of technology: A semiotic square (Kozinets, 2008)

in terms of community betterment and material enhancement, assuming

that moral and social improvements go hand in hand with material im-
provement. This ideology encourages corporations to control futuristic
technologies aiming to bring unanticipated benefits to mankind. Nonethe-
less, counterarguments commonly risk for its optimistic view, disregarding
prior disasters generated by failed technology seeking to fulfil alternative
and utopic realities.
(b) Green Luddite Ideology observes technology as a destruction of the
natural environment, as a fracture of the traditional ways of life and as a
tool to dehumanise individuals, taking out the crafting skills. Therefore,
in this ideology, the nature and natural ways of living are primordial and
technology threaten this life style. Hence, technology is understood as

24
 harmful and destructive. The luddite and neo-luddite movement were born
in the industrial revolution and it provides an ideological position to resist
too many forms of technology consumption (Jones, 2006). Therefore, this
nodal ideology exists in a radical counter position against the technopian
and the work machine ideology.
(c) Work Machine Ideology This ideology is the articulation of technology
as an engine of economic growth, arguing that obtaining technology mas-
tery the individual can elevate its industriousness and efficiency bringing
to the individual worker’s wealth and success which are elevated into the
corporate, industrial and national enhancement. Nevertheless, this ide-
ology is intrinsically contradictory, because the development of working
individuals can diminish the human spirit, debasing it into slaves that can
be exploited in the search for economic growth. Furthermore, it goes in a
clear contradiction with the green luddite precepts and its humanist ver-
sion of the individuals. Nevertheless, it shares ideas based on the rational
arguments of the technopian node.
(d) Techpressive Ideology articulates technology as a provider of pleasure,
entertainment and style, enabling the entrance of technology as modes of
creative, fashion and art forms. This ideology presents a dark side offering
to consumers a way to be transported into altered digital realities where
tales of technological seduction and dystopian societies emerge. Therefore,
this node represents a contradiction with the technopian and the work
machine ideologies due to the individual pleasurable aspect is distant from
the economic growth and utopic society. However, techpressive shares a
complementary link with the green luddite at the emotional level.

The existence of those ideological positions towards technologies presented im-

portant insights to understand technology consumption by showing the relation
and discrepancies of the ideologies, the relation with cultural myths towards
technologies and the individual and collective perceptions of prior experiences
with technology and the impact of those ideologies in levels of interaction with
technology innovations. Thus, this study permits to understand how ideologies
play a fundamental role in technology consumption, allowing the meaning assig-
nation and becoming the material for the creation of narratives of technology

25
that contribute to reach particular audiences in which the story resonates at
deeper level enhancing the shaping of a market.

Despite its importance, the research under this perspective is not widely ex-
plored but the few studies that used ideologies as a central point depict clearly
the foundations of how markets are shaped by multiple actors. An initial study
was developed with the aim to understand the paradoxical consumption of tech-
nology, showing how opposite conditions can simultaneously exist in the same
time-space context, defining paradoxical consumption as “a statement that ap-
pears self-contradictory, though possible well founded or essentially valid” (Mick
and Fournier, 1998). Eight paradoxes were defined in terms of control and chaos,
freedom and enslavement, new and obsolete, competence and incompetence, ef-
ficiency and inefficiency, fulfils and create needs, assimilation and isolation and
finally, engaging and disengaging. For each paradox, coping strategies were pro-
vided. This paradoxes has been linked to technology consumption and used as
part of science fiction culture, permitting to create myths and assign positive
and negative connotations to technology. (Giesler, 2012) present the entrance of
a new technology in the market and how cultural contradictions emerged con-
tinuously based on the idea that the technology is unnatural (Green luddite).
This study illustrates how the firm that developed the technology resorts to a
new set of argumentations, which could also be understood as new narratives, to
neutralise the contradictions and achieve legitimacy in an ongoing market shap-
ing. Thus, market shaping under this author perspective can be understood as
a brand mediated process. Another research examines the role of ideologies in
strategical changes, proving that in specific cases strategic orientations respond
to ideological conceptions, and these ideologies are regulatory sources of legiti-
macy embedded in a cultural-cognitive process (Press et al., 2014). This study
suggests that the reconnaissance of conflicting ideologies between companies
and markets provides better elements to introduce successful new products and
the use and manipulation of ideological conceptions permit to resonate with
the actors involved, obtaining higher levels of commitment which occurs in a
cultural and cognitive process of legitimacy that can be started by firms.

Narratives and ideologies are interrelated because the narratives exist as a re-
description of the world to deal with specific situations (Humphreys and Brown,
2008). Therefore, the narratives are built through the ideological lenses of the

26
 storyteller, which promotes a set of values or a vision that resemble a specific
ideology. The process of ideology development occurs as a response to the
cultural frames of a person which are established in the early ages of the indi-
vidual through retelling stories, which are embedded in the children literature
(Stephens and McCallum, 1998). By doing so, mankind is able to preserve their
culture and ideologies throughout generations. In this sense, children literature
is able to explore different narrative resources, such as mythologies, magic and
enchantment. Mythologies are one of the most common narratives employed
with embed ideologies and meanings in the myth and characters construction.
Myths have been understood as more than fabrications of the truth, they are a
form of reality that gives sense and meaning to life, contributing to create more
comprehensible scenarios for phenomena that seem incomprehensible (Mosco,
2004). Whereby, the myth is not a fixed story, is an evolutionary collective con-
struction that gives meaning to human life belonging to the culturally entangled
web of meanings within each society (Campbell, 1991). Therefore, myth is also
a political term that inflects human values with ideology deeply embedded in
the culture of mankind.

In the particular case of technology, science fiction narratives has been creating
technological myths that permeate consumption culture (Thompson, 2004), by
developing alternative realities that depict and reimagine how technologies will
fit in the society, the narrative is able to shape perceptions and expectations
while highlighting fears and counter-ideologies present in the consumption and
development of technologies. Those narratives resort to the narrative structure
of a myth, resembling not only the plot but also the characters and the purpose
of explaining and assign meanings to the construction of the world. Thus,
the most recurrent technology narrative is related to the possibility that A.I.
surpasses human intellectual capacity and control. This has been denominated
as a technological singularity myth which highlights how the technology paradox
is used to show the dark side of technological advances while reinforcing the
benefits of the technology (Kurzweil, 2005).

The understanding of these three different visions of technology adoption; rational,

relational and socio-cultural provide insights related to the importance of the product
and its usefulness as an element to promote adoption and diffusion of the technology.
However, this vision does not take into account the market in which this product
circulates, overlooking external influences that can enhance or diminish the adoption.

27
The relational perspective provides a vision of networks in which technology adoption
and diffusion need to be considered as a communal process that impact a network
of businesses. This vision pays more attention to the market and the repercussions
that a new technology can have in a business network. The socio-cultural perspective
offers the capability to analyse additional aspects of how people and organisations
give and make sense of the technology, the importance of the discourse, the ideologies
around technology and the need of legitimate the market. The commonality between
the rational and socio-cultural perspective is the interest of the market and how a
new good requires a process of market shaping that permit to the good to enter the
existent market. Therefore, it is important to make a review of the literature on the
shaping of markets and the market practices, the following section offers a review of
these topics, permitting to understand how emerging technologies required to shape
the market by employing the different market practices of representation, exchange
and normalisation. While permitted to understand how narratives are used in these
market practices.

2.2 Global approach to the shaping of markets

The study of market construction has been examined under the economic sociol-
ogy perspective. Caliskan and Callon (2010, p.3) define markets as socio-technical
arrangements or assemblages with three characteristics: (1) Markets organise the
conception, production and circulation of goods in which a transfer involves a mon-
etary compensation. (2) Markets are an assemblage of heterogeneous elements that
encompass: rules and regulations; technical and calculative devices; metrological sys-
tems; logistical infrastructures; texts, discourses and narratives; technical and sci-
entific knowledge, as well as the competencies and skills embodied in living beings.
(3) Markets construct a virtual space of confrontation and power struggles in which
the transactions are determined by pricing mechanisms. Thus, the market can be-
come stable and well defined through time but preserve the characteristics of being
an evolving structure that surge as an outcome of a framing process (Callon, 1986).
Furthermore, markets have been recognised as a dialectical construction process that
uses market devices as a “material and discursive assemblage” (Muniesa et al., 2007,
p.2). In which the assemblage of market constituencies requires the narration of “a
tellable story which narrates boundaries, relations, agency and identities for entities”
(Simakova and Neyland, 2008, p.96). Despite that those definitions highlight the rele-
vance of the discourse and the narratives as an assemblage in market construction, its

28
study is still scarce and has been focused mainly on the constituencies or the market
practices.

Contributions from humanities are important to understanding how markets are

developed in real contexts, far from economic presumptions related to the idea of a
perfect market, allowing to understand the market as a socio-cultural construction
that is mediated by the discursive aspect which permits to frame and shape the
market. In that sense, markets have been recognised as ongoing social constructions
in which multiple actors contribute to the formation and stabilisation of the market
(Peñaloza and Venkatesh, 2006). This implies that “markets are not universal, self-
contained entities, but rather take on distinct discursive forms and material practices
across various social contexts and over time” (Venkatesh and Peñaloza, 2006, p.147).
Likewise, markets can be conceived as ecosystems where social, material and technical
networks work together in a process of balancing and capturing new opportunities
which emerged from changes and stabilising efforts in the market (Kjellberg et al.,
2015). Therefore, multiple markets or their representations can coexist simultaneously
among actors (Diaz Ruiz, 2013). From this perspective should be studied as sites
of multiple market practices which can be conflicting and the attention should be
directed to the efforts to shape them (Araujo et al., 2008). Likewise, it has been
argued that the understanding of market formation lies on three pillars: cultural-
cognitive, normative and regulatory legitimacy, highlighting the role of the cultural
aspect to introduce and stabilise markets (Humphreys, 2010). Nevertheless, scholars
argue that we know little about how markets actually work (Kjellberg et al., 2012)
and some authors have claimed that markets should be a primary concern in market
research (Peñaloza and Venkatesh, 2006; Venkatesh and Peñaloza, 2006; Araujo et al.,
2008, 2010).

The study of market shaping has received considerable attention in the last decade
(Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006, 2007; Araujo, 2007; Araujo et al., 2008), arguing
that markets are the result of the arrangement and translation of three distinct and
interconnected market practices: representational, exchange and normalising. It has
been argued that the interaction between market practices are created by chains of
translation that influence the other market practices (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006,
2007). However, the link between the different market practices remains unclear
(Azimont and Araujo, 2007) and only a few studies have examined the articulation
of market practices and its influence in the shaping of markets (e.g Doganova and
Karnøe, 2015). The study of each market practice has allowed to examine each

29
practice in depth, showing how market actors vary their actions according to the
dominant market practice. Thus, engaging in divergent market practices, each actor
trying to shape the market in different ways (Storbacka and Nenonen, 2011).

1. Representational practices. Multiple definitions of representational prac-

tices have emerged through the years and have been studied in different settings.
Hence, it is important to understand what a representation means. “representa-
tion refers to meaning production through language” (Schroeder, 1999, p.641),
emphasising that meaning-making is constructed by social and cultural forces.
Thus, representations “are conceived as entering into the very constitution of
things. That is, an objects or idea’s meaning is shaped by the very process of
representing it via language” (Ibid). Representational practices have been un-
derstood as a human intended creation that shares structural similarities with
the reality, without the need of mimicking it (Mitchell, 1995). A more contem-
porary definition argues that representational practices depict the way in which
the market operates, producing a shared image of the market among the actors
(Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006). In that sense, market representation prac-
tices are a tool of sense and meaning-making embedded in the cultural context.
This definition opens the door to the discussion on performativity proposed
by Kjellberg and Helgesson (2007) and how markets are material constructions
that translate ideas into real exchanges of goods in a profitable way. Within
the existent literature of representational practices, Rinallo and Golfetto (2006)
analyse how the clothing fabric industry shapes the fashion market through the
development of a set of hyperreal representational and normative practices that
are able to socially construct and establish the trends in the fashion industry.
Thus, the trade fairs operate as hyperreal entities that contribute to shape the
market and permit the concertation concerting a singular vision of the fashion
trends among diverse actors. In a similar way, Diaz Ruiz (2013); Diaz Ruiz and
Kowalkowski (2014) explores the role of market research as a representational
practice, indicating that the correct assemblage of market representations pro-
vides a simplified explanation of what a market is and privilege a reality’s vision
that impacts the firm marketing strategy.

2. Exchange practices. Those practices comprise the economic exchanges of

goods between actors, involving the object of exchange, the price and the activ-
ities developed by each actor (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006). The literature
on exchange practices is extensive in industrial marketing, focusing primarily

30
 on sales and commercialisation (e.g. Haas et al., 2012; Aarikka-Stenroos et al.,
2014; Virtanen et al., 2015; Kaski et al., 2017; Geiger, 2017). Few studies have
explored the use of narratives in this context. Thus, it has been demonstrated
that narratives provide a vivid imagery of initial technology prototypes, gen-
erating positive responses similar to the final product (Van den Hende and
Schoormans, 2012). In the same manner, the value of stories in commercial
exchange has indicated that stories permit to inform, persuade, build bonds,
show expertise and reduce counter argumentations from potential buyers, while
are adaptive to different situations (Gilliam and Zablah, 2013; Gilliam and Fla-
herty, 2015). Furthermore, it has been highlighted the importance of stories
in communication process as a tool of meaning construction among actors in
business relationships (La Rocca et al., 2015). Likewise, framing and narrative
constructions are an important part of the sales functions in new service devel-
opment because it permits to align perceptions of the actors (La Rocca et al.,
2016).

3. Normalisation practices. Normalising practices aim to establish normative

objectives including regulations and activities that institutionalise the use of
the good that embedded enacting practices, routines and habits (Kjellberg
et al., 2015). Normalising practices gained more importance recently, consider-
ing them as a process of stabilisation which is fundamental for market shaping,
recognised as an ongoing social process. Normalising practices permit the es-
tablishment of regulation and activities that institutionalise the use of the good
(Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007). Including the institutionalisation of norms,
the development of technical infrastructures, dissemination of knowledge, rep-
resentation and enacting practices, routines and habits (Kjellberg et al., 2015).
Thus, new markets require a cultural process of legitimacy that involve norma-
tive, regulatory and cultural-cognitive practices (Humphreys, 2010). Different
studies have highlighted the importance of policy development in the institu-
tionalisation of new technologies and their impact in the market construction
as an assembled process, affirming that the central challenge of market making
creates an alignment among market practices that become mutually supportive
contributing to develop irreversibilities (Doganova and Karnøe, 2015). Then,
allowing the stabilisation of markets, permitting the generation of alternative
ways of value co-creation (Vargo et al., 2015). Furthermore, the government
behaviour has been examined as part of this normalisation practices in the pro-
motion of technology developments, affirming that government is fundamental

31
 for the stabilisation of the market, through the development of regulations and
the creation of routines that permit the institutionalisation of the technology
(Caerteling et al., 2013). Thus, the development of those spaces contributes
to the commercialisation of technology and to the institutionalisation of the
market (Chiesa and Frattini, 2011).

The study of markets has been analysed by diverse authors using Actor Network
Theory (Giesler, 2012; Ballantyne, 2015; Onyas and Ryan, 2015). Therefore, it con-
siders relevant to understand the shaping of the markets and especially in relation to
technology markets.

2.2.1 Actor Network Theory

Actor Network Theory (ANT) is a constructivist approach, originated within the
sociological subfield of science and technology studies, which explores the interac-
tions between the members of social networks and how these associations can make
a network more influential than other. In that way, ANT is able to map the social
and technological changes associated with the introduction of technological innova-
tions and determine if an adoption of a technology will be successful or not based on
the network influence degree (Ballantyne, 2015). In the actor network theory, tech-
nological artefacts are not considered as only technical objects, but socio-technical
development embedded in networks designed in order to encourage some actions and
constrain others (Latour, 1996). Thus, ANT permit to analyse the perspectives of di-
verse actors related to the introduction of socio-technical innovations (Tatnall, 2011).
By using ANT this research acknowledges that socio-technical networks are composed
of human and nonhuman, social and material actors that include organisations, peo-
ple, technologies, texts, architecture, among others. Hence, technological artefacts are
recognised not only as conceived technical objects rather than socio-technical projects
embedded in actor networks designed to enable and constrain some actions (Callon,
1986; Latour, 1992).

The central thesis of ANT is to reorganise the understanding of networks, granting

an important relevance to material objects and their effects upon humans, and how
these non-human actors shape the interaction between the members of the network
(Latour, 2005). This theory explores how created associations can develop new agen-
cies between humans and non-human actors, presenting different pathways to create
an assemblage network, being able to determine the level of actants involvement in

32
this process (Latour, 1992). Within ANT is important to emphasise the effect of hu-
man actors in the representation of the non-human actors, affecting, therefore, their
interaction with other actors in the network (Latour, 1996). Which directly relates to
market practices of representation. Furthermore, ANT permit to study the actants
effects in the relation of power within the network “This power of association is mea-
sured in both its ability to give and take power away” (Munro, 2009). Allowing the
exploration of how human and non-human actors modify their power structures to
achieve their own goals.

Some of the critics of the Actor Network Theory relies on the lack of method-
ological structure of this theory and the complexity to apply some of the principles
that belong to ANT. It has been considered that ANT is not a theory, because “It
offers no causal explanations and no consistent method. It rather takes the form
of a repertoire. If you link up with it you learn sensitising terms, ways of asking
questions and techniques for turning issues inside out or upside down. With these
you may go out and walk new roads” (Mol, 2010, p.263). On the contrary, ANT
has been acknowledged as an analytic framework used to examine processes associ-
ated with the implementation of technological innovations (Ballantyne, 2015) that
permit to identify the actors, selecting the most influential actors involved in the im-
plementation and follow the traces left by the actants in order the comprehend how
the networks were assembled and their implication in the institutionalisation process
(Latour, 2005). From the empirical point of view ANT researchers are interested in
how actor networks are assembled, maintained and how the network stabilises over
time becoming part of the taken for granted assumptions (Law, 2009).

ANT has been used to analyse processes of market creation related to technol-
ogy developments, permitting to understand the socio-cultural contradictions that
emerge by different actors and how are resolved. It has been presented how ANT
permits to make sense of the technology’s role in the assemblage of personal identity
and the interrelation between people and technology (Lagesen, 2012). This is cor-
roborated by a study that examines the role of technology in processes of emerging
fatherhood, showing how technology contributes to establish an identity and helps to
cope with moments of change, while illustrates the perceptions of technological para-
doxes that generate ambivalence in their relationship with technology (Bettany et al.,
2014). Furthermore, ANT has been used to theorise the contradictions developed in
the establishment of the botox industry, understood as a technological development,

33
showing moments of cultural contradiction where the focal actor develop advertise-
ments to neutralise those contradictions and achieve legitimacy in an ongoing market
construction (Giesler, 2012).

Thus, socio-technical networks are assembled through time in a process known

as translation. Translation can be understood as a mechanism by which the social
and natural worlds progressively take form in which certain entities gain control
over others (Callon, 1986) or as a social process through which something - an idea,
a role, a text, a product, a technology, a claim - spreads across time and space
(Latour, 1986; Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007). Four moments of translation has been
defined: problematization, interessement, enrolment and mobilisation (Callon, 1986).
Those moments occur throughout the market shaping process where focal actors aim
to create alliances that permit the correct appropriation of the technological device
within their cultural context. Thus, problematization refers to the moment in which
the project is conceived by redefining a problem in a manner in which the solution
proposed becomes indispensable for the actors involved or by finding a solution of a
problem in other equivalent problem, that converges in the creation of a new solution.
The interessement is related to the actions developed by the focal actor to align
other actors or objects with the focal actor’s interest, imposing a vision defined in
the problematization, establishing alliances that permit to enrol other actors “to
oblige an entity to consent to detour. This is done by choosing from a spectrum of
methods that ranges from seduction to pure violence by way of simple bargaining”
(Ibid). The enrolment only occurs if the interessement is successful. Then, the focal
actor persuades diverse actors to engage and obtain concrete alliances where the
definition and distribution of roles take place. This process is considered as an ongoing
effort to enrol the actors in a series of multilateral negotiations in order to sustain
the collaboration. Lastly, the mobilisation seeks to ensure that the engagement of
the actors involved remains stable and the alliances acquire the status of taken-for-
granted. Once the network is stabilised does not imply that the agreements cannot be
questioned or repealed. Thus. the successful entrance of a technology into the market
and its socio-cultural milieu depends on the ability to bind together the interest of
multiple actors over time.

2.3 Narrative uses in the shaping of markets

This section has the aim to contextualise the reader, providing an understanding of the
narrative elements and its use in the shaping of markets by being a cohesive element

34
that permits the translations between the market practices. Thus, this section starts
by offering a historical review of narrative theory to depict the different approaches
that exist to built and analyse narratives, followed by an explanation of the narrative
structures that have been developed and used in every type of narrative that exists
nowadays. This offers a structural vision of how narratives are constructed and the
recurrent elements that are involved in the construction of each narrative according
to the type and purpose. An explanation of those narrative elements will provides to
the reader an understanding of different elements and how they are used. Finally, a
revision of the effects of the narratives in marketing field under different perspectives
is provided.
Narrative theory begins with the basic assumption that mankind can be considered
as homo narrans (Fisher, 1985) and possesses two ways to express their thoughts: a
paradigmatic and a narrative way. On the one hand, the paradigmatic mode of
thought attempts to offer a formal and mathematical description or explanation that
is able to elucidate the existent relationships between different sets of variables offering
causal explanations of the phenomena, granting in that way predictions of possible
outcomes which can be tested by hypothesis deduction process. In other words,
“good paradigmatic explanations should accurately predict observable phenomena”
(Adler, 2008). On the other hand, the narrative mode of thought focuses on the rich
and detailed interwoven of human experience, that contributes to comprehend, give
sense and assign meaning to the world in a discursive way through stories (Bruner,
1986). In that sense, narratives offer explanations of the world based on “retroactively
plotting sequences of actions and considering them in a specific context to reveal
their significance” (Cayla and Arnould, 2013). Thus, the role of narratives can be
extended and understood as a fundamental part of how humanity gives and makes
sense. Contributing to make the actions that occur in the world more expectable,
hence manageable (Weick, 1995).

Narratives have been defined as a channel in which human experiences acquire

meaning by being translated into stories (Polkinghorne, 1988), that “posses a plot and
characters, generating emotion in narrator and audience, through a poetic elaboration
of symbolic material. This material may be a product of fantasy or experience,
including an experience of earlier narratives” (Gabriel, 2000, p.239). Narratives have
been understood as a fundamental way to structure and make sense of our lives
(Shankar et al., 2001), in which narratives can be considered as coherent and creative
re-descriptions of the world which deal with specific situations, emphasising the active

35
participation of the actors involved in the construction of the narratives through the
use of the discursive resources available to them (Humphreys and Brown, 2008). One
definition that is generally accepted states that “narrative is the representation of an
event or a series of events” (Porter Abbott, 2008). This definition has been extended
and new elements have been incorporated “narratives are forms of discourse, vehicles
of ideology, and elements of collective action frames, but unlike all three, they can be
identified in a chunk of text or speech by their formal features” (Polleta et al., 2011).
However, a clarification related to the nature of stories is provided, emphasising that
not all the existent narratives can be categorised as stories, those factual accounts of
events that aim to offer an objective perspective rather than create an emotional effect
should not be treated as stories, “narratives involve temporal chains of interrelated
events or actions, undertaken by characters”, implying, therefore that the narrative
requires actions to be developed by characters in a sequential order (Gabriel, 1998).
Additionally, narratives encompass elements for personal experiences, such as time,
process and change that enable the construction of stories that articulate in a coherent
piece a re-description of the world (Phelan, 2005). Thus, narrative theory assumes
that narrative is a basic human strategy to express thoughts and recreate the world
in an attempt to give sense to the situations that occur.

2.3.1 Understanding the narrative approach

The origins of narratives studies can be traced to ancient Greece in the texts of Plato,
who makes a distinction of the literary genre based on two modes of speech: Mimesis,
which focuses on the imitation of speech in the form of dialogues or monologues
interpreted by characters and was used mainly in the dramatic genre and Diegesis,
which embedded all the expressions that are attributable to the author and restricted
to the lyric genre. Only the epic genre was allowed to combine both. Aristotle in
his work poetics, introduced a fundamental contribution to the comprehension of the
narratives, the distinction between the event that occurs in the depicted world and
the de facto narrated plot or Muthos, serving as the pivot for the functional approach
of the fictional characters and their action. Following the principles of Aristotle, Frye
(1957) identified and defined four plots (Comedy, romance, tragedy and satire) that
are present and configured the actions and events of the characters in the plot.

A comprehensive review of the historical development of narrative theories was

developed by Meister (2014). In 1883, Spielhagen introduced an initial taxonomy that
differentiates between first and third person narration and the relationship between

36
the author and the narrator. In the 20th century, a model was developed to under-
stand the elementary components of the narratives and its relationships. By using
Russian fairy tales, thirty-one functions of the narratives were proposed (Propp, 1928)
which lately served as the basis for the story grammars and semiotics developed by
Lévi-Strauss (1967). In the decade of the 70’s the French structuralism emerged as a
research stream, impulsing the formation of the narratology as a structured method-
ology that differs from the narrative theory. This stream focuses on a re-examination
of the two dimensions of narrative: fable and subject. An emphasis on the struc-
ture of signification permits the development of the semiotic square (Greimas, 1966)
that developed a structural analysis among the signifying systems through the op-
position of concepts. A typology of the functional roles of the characters (main vs.
secondary characters, opponent vs. helper and sender vs. receiver) complement the
understanding of the structure of narratives (Greimas, 1973). Likewise, an analysis
of the functionalities of narrated events was provided, in which it was possible to dis-
tinguish core elements that are necessary to maintain the coherence of the plot and
elements that make appealing the plot (Barthes, 1975). While, a narrative syntax
was developed, including the logic of virtual action sequences (Todorov, 1975). From
then, a narratological taxonomy of the discourse was created, paying attention to
three aspects: (1) the temporal structure and dynamics of representation. (2) The
narration modes and its logic of narrative communication. (3) The epistemological
implications and normative constraints of the gathering of information during the
narrative process (Genette, 1988).

After the French structuralism, a post-structuralist current surged, opening the

studies to a broader scope outside of the literature and integrating concepts from
other sciences. The value of narratology was proved in the analysis of cross-textual
phenomena, being able to explain the intertextuality and intermediately of the texts
and also the applicability of the narratology as an analysis tool for visual narratives
(Bal, 1997). In the same way, new sciences pay attention to the narratives. The
introduction of psychological motivation at plays opened a new door of studies from
the narrative perspective (Brooks, 1984) and the introduction of the theory of pos-
sible worlds offered a theoretical possibility of alternative hyper-realities that can
emerge in narrative texts (Pavel, 1986; Eco, 1994). Narratology has entered into an
era denominated post-classical and new narratology. Eight categories emerged from
the compilation of new narratives that arose since 1990, three of those categories
became the dominant methodological paradigms of contemporary narratology (Nün-
ning, 2003).

37
 1. Contextualist narratology. Creates a link among the specific social, cul-
tural, historical and ideological contexts with the phenomena that appear in
the narrative. By doing so this category expands its scope passing from the
analysis of structural elements of the narratives to the issues of the content that
is narrated.

2. Cognitive narratology. This approach is not exclusive to the literary narra-

tives and examines the intellectual and emotional processing of humans toward
narratives. This approach has been fundamental in the development of Arti-
ficial Intelligence research, where researchers aim to create machines that can
simulate human narrative intelligence (Mateas and Sengers, 2003)

3. Transgeneric approaches. Studies under this line explore the relevance of

the concepts of narratives outside the traditional literary texts in visual media
(Ryan, 2005). Likewise, a multiplicity of scholars explore the use of narratology
concept and techniques to study drama, poetry, film, music, performing arts
and computer games.

2.3.2 The study of narratives

The studies of the narrative contain multiple variables that have surged over time.
Despite the difference between the streams of research in the study of narratives
(narrative theory, narrative criticism or narratology), the narrative theorists centre
their studies in three interrelated aspects.

1. The structure of the narrative. Under this aspect are encompassed the
study of different forms of narratives (including fiction and non-fiction texts),
the diverse genre (myths, history, legends), the structural aspect (including
plot, theme, foreshadowing) the characterisation (comprising the elaboration
of the characters that compound the story and the role of the narrator) and
the narrative perspective. Narrative theorists from the structuralist current
decompose the narrative into two levels that need to be analysed (1) What is
told and (2) How is told. For the structuralists the what of the narrative is
the story and the how is called discourse. This division creates a path which
follows different purposes and offers diverse perspectives on the analysis of the
narrative (Todorov, 1969; Barthes, 1975; Genette, 1988). Throughout time a
new research stream surged centring its attention in the narrative structures,

38
 being denominated as Narratology. It offers a comprehensive study of the nar-
rative, dissecting its components in an effort to determine the function of each
element and its relationships (Meister, 2014). Thus, narratology was defined as
“the theory of narratives, narrative texts, images, spectacles, events; cultural
artefacts that ‘tell a story’. Such a theory helps to understand, analyse, and
evaluate narratives” (Bal, 1997). Thus, narratology is considered not only as
an individual theory but, a compound of related theories (Herman, 1999).

2. Differences and particularities of the narratives against other kinds

of discourse. The narrative theorist have delineated a conceptual line that
defines which kind of text enters into the realm of what is considered a narra-
tive. As consequence, the study of the narratives establishes the characteristics
of the narratives that differentiate them from another kind of discourses such
as rhetoric, poetry, arguments, statistical analyses, graphic novel, visual, etc.
Several differences can be found in this field, arguing in some cases that only
traditional stories can be categorised under the narrative perspective, neglect-
ing the existence of modern narratives embedded in comics or films. Therefore,
the scope of what is considered a narrative varies according to the perspective
of the study and its ontological position.

3. Narratives as a sensemaking tool. A research stream denominated nar-

rative criticism focuses on the comprehension of how narratives contribute to
make sense and assign meanings to the experiences. Thus, In the same man-
ner, this research analyses how people make sense of the narratives presented.
Narratives are considered as “symbolic action and deeds that have sequence
and meaning for those who live, create or interpret them” (Fisher, 1989). Simi-
larly, researchers recognised that the sensemaking process becomes evident and
tangible through narratives “which convey the sense they have made of events”
(Currie and Brown, 2003). In summary, narrative theorists examine how stories
contribute to make sense of the world, while also examine how people give and
make sense to the stories.

To achieve the purpose of the studies developed on narratives, multiple resources

from diverse sciences are encompassed and embedded. A big contribution is given by
literary studies especially in the study of the narrative structure. In the same manner,
fields as rhetoric, sociolinguistics, philosophy, cognitive sciences, social psychology
and folklore grant the exploration of how narratives work as texts and as strategies

39
to interpret and assign meaning to human experiences and the world that surround
us, permitting to use narratives as a tool to create and assign meanings to new
technology products seeking to create market representation that permits to shape
the markets. This research includes as part of the data gathered and analysed all
kinds of existent narratives developed around smart cities, including fiction and non-
fiction texts, comics and graphic novels, films and advertisement, hypertext including
blogs, social media and oral narratives.

2.3.3 Structures of narratives

Part of the power embedded in the narrative is caused by the detailed and refined
construction of the items that compose it. Therefore, one of the focuses of narrative
theorists is the study of the narrative structures. Embedding the study of the different
forms of narratives, including fiction and non-fiction texts; the diversity of genres
(comedy, romance, satire and tragedy); the structural aspect, that encompasses the
plot, the theme and foreshadowing; the characterisation, comprising the creation of
characters and the role of the narrator; and the narrative perspective. A structured
story is essential for the development of cohesive and appealing narratives, and it is
comprised of four elements that cohesively interact throughout the narrative.

1. The plot. The story plot refers to the articulation of the temporal sequence of
the events presented in the story, and where the characters are involved, “a plot
is able to weave together complex events to make a single story” (Polkinghorne,
1988). Consequently, narratives that are able to create vivid imagery allow the
story receiver to resemble the story plot with real-life experiences, generating
a bigger state of transportation. A plausible plot should raise interest in the
audience, presenting a story with unanswered questions, unresolved conflicts or
depict an incomplete activity or proposed situation that characters appearing
at different moments of the plot will resolve (Green and Brock, 2000). Thus,
the plot connects the events, activities and characters in a coherent structure
that accounts a series of events that occur in order to make a point and to
raise interest in the audience (Czarniawska, 2004; Porter Abbott, 2008; Polleta
et al., 2011). The plot is crucial for the plausibility of the story involving real
and/or fictional characters and events that are product of experiences or fantasy
(Ricoeur, 1980; Gabriel, 2000). This offers a unique attribute to stories that
are able to combine fiction that represent reality. Likewise, the plot permits the

40
understanding of the interconnections within events, providing plausibility, or,
in other words, verisimilitude (Czarniawska, 1999).

Throughout history, the narratives have employed four recurrent plots with well-
defined characteristics, which has an impact in the way characters are built and
their roles in the story. Thus, four basic plots have been identified: comedy,
romance, tragedy and satire (Frye, 1957). The characteristics of each plot are
summarised in table 2.1 and are fundamental to understand and analyse nar-
rative constructions.

Plot Description

Romance The hero should overcome and face multiple challenges

in order to reach his goal and the eventual victory. These
stories typically have virtuous heroes that represent ide-
als of a nostalgic golden age.

Comedy Restoration of the social order where the hero must have
the required social skills to overcome the hazards which
threaten the order. Comedy focuses on the social group,
which has lost a social standard that needs to be recov-
ered to obtain a balance.

Tragedy The hero is defeated by the forces of evil and banished

from society. The focus of this plot is on individuals;
the tragedy exists in the isolation of the hero, not in the
causes that lead to that event.

Satire Presents a cynical perspective on social hegemony, in

which satire and irony make a parody of romance and
presents an image where reality rather than ideology is
dominant.

Table 2.1: Basic plots in narratives (Frye, 1957)

This classification of plots is complemented by adding the type of character that

is developed by the protagonists, the focus of the plot, the predicaments that will
suffer the characters, the poetic tropes and the kind of emotions that those plots
should arise in the audience. Figure 2.2 presents the complementary elements
proposed by Gabriel (2000). The understanding of the plots and the elements

41
 that composed them serves as a blueprint for the construction of narratives,
permitting to follow a traditional structure that is recognised and provides the
desired effects of the narratives. As it is shown in the table, the selection on
a plot shapes the characters selection, personality and the development of the
story.

Figure 2.2: Generic poetic modes (Gabriel, 2000)

2. Identifiable characters. Characters are identified as “invented personas the

story receiver clearly pinpoints from the storyteller’s use of context-derived as-
sumptions” (Van Laer et al., 2014). Likewise, established characters fulfil spe-
cific functions in the plot and are necessary to create a realistic narrative that
allows the story receiver to resonate with the characters and, subsequently, with
the story. For example, villains are the counterpart of the hero, and they in-
carnate the negative side of the story while developing a crucial part in the
creation of the difficulties that must be over-passed by the main character.
Consequently, the existence of the villain makes the entire plot more plausible.
Thus, the narrative developer has the responsibility to create clear and robust
characters that have distinctive features and personalities from the early start
of the story. These distinctive features helps the reader to identify, resonate and
empathise with the characters, allowing to the story receiver to vicariously ex-
perience the character’s beliefs and emotions (Green and Brock, 2002; Escalas,

42
 2004a; Van Laer et al., 2014). Therefore, characters are important because peo-
ple “not only enter into a narrative world, they become involved with the people
they find there” (Green and Brock, 2000), in that manner, the level of empa-
thy reached by the audience enhances the level of immersion in the story and
increases the chance to obtain a transportation to the fictional world presented
in the narrative.

3. The narrative voice or narrator. It is considered as a character who re-

counts the events that happen in the narrative, being capable to fulfil different
roles in the story. If the narrator is present as a character of the story is de-
nominated as homodiegetic narrator. If the narrator is the main character of
the narrative, he or she becomes a autodiegetic narrator. On the contrary, a
heterodiegetic narrator is an omnipresent narrator who is not a character in the
story; nevertheless, it seems like he or she knows everything about the story
and the characters (Genette, 1988). Likewise, the narrator can possess either
an overt or a covert personality. The narrator possesses multiple functions in
the narrative; the most obvious is to guide the story receiver through the narra-
tive, illustrating complicated situations that require an additional explanation.
Additionally, the narrator can have independent opinions that could differ from
the author’s. This occurs especially when an overt narrator exists in the narra-
tive, offering the writer a narrative license to express thoughts in a subtle way.
It has been highlighted that the narrator can also omit parts of the story and
intentionally mislead the story receiver, named as unreliable narration (Nün-
ning, 2008). A third function of the narrator consists of introducing in-cohesive
experiences by choosing relevant elements and integrating them into an entire
and cohesive entity (Czarniawska, 2004; Elliot, 2005).

4. Verisimilitude. The fourth and final element necessary for successful sto-
rytelling is the verisimilitude of the story, which is the level of likelihood or
plausibility of the events presented. It is pivotal to grant the recreation of men-
tal imagery that allows the transportation effect of the narratives to fictional
scenarios (Van Laer et al., 2014). The truth in stories does not lie in empir-
ical evidence, rather it is related with the life-likeness and the possibility to
believe in the consistency of the acts and in the temporal sequence that does
not contradict other situations established in the plot. “a fictional story is a
tautology because a story always contains some invented elements, which move
it away from objective reality” (Eco, 1994). Therefore, the storyteller decides

43
 to exclude a purely realistic story and add some fictional features in order to
obtain transportation.

Additionally to the narrative elements presented, it exists a series of key features

that need to be taking into account in the construction of the narratives, this serves
as a checklist of elements that permit the construction of intelligible contemporary
narratives (Gergen and Gergen, 1988). Table 2.2 presents five key features with their
descriptions.

Feature Description

The establishment of
An acceptable story must have and establish “the
a valued end point
point”. Furthermore, the story receiver determines and
value what is an appropriated endpoint.

Selection of events
relevant to the goal Once the goal has been established it serves to determine
state the events that will happen in the story that leads us to
the endpoint.

The ordering of
Once the point and the events that occur in the story
events
have been established, the events need to be placed in
an order, which frequently is a linear and temporal se-
quence.

Establishing causal
The order of the events that happen in the story should
sequences
have a causal link. e.g this event occurs just because the
other event took place.

Demarcation signs A major part of the traditional stories have recognisable

beginnings, middles and ends.

Table 2.2: Key features in narratives (Gergen and Gergen, 1988)

In summary, a good story must contain identifiable characters which allow the
story receiver to empathise. A plot that can be imagined is necessary to recreate
mental imagery with a clear objective that guides the story receiver through the
different events, and, thus, the likelihood of those events and its causal sequences
presented in the story are fundamental characteristics of a narrative than permit the
creation of engaging and effective content that enhances the transportation effect.

44
2.3.4 Narrative studies in businesses
The extant research of narratives in business marketing research is scarce but it has
been gaining relevance in the last years. On the contrary, in consumer research, nar-
ratives have been explored in different contexts analysing elements such as empathy,
and transportation. In the same manner, organisational research has been widely de-
veloped, mainly focusing on the effects of storytelling in organisations. Therefore, it
is necessary to make a clarification between the concept of narrative and the concept
of storytelling, which are commonly used as synonyms.

1. Narratives in business markets. Narrative is defined in the business context

as “a discourse dealing with interrelated actions and consequences in chrono-
logical order” (Gilliam and Flaherty, 2015). However, stories are highly related
and codependent of the story receivers (audience) which are the ones who as-
sign meaning to the story, becoming in this sense as co-narrators in a process of
mutual learning and teaching in seller-buyers exchanges (Lacoste and La Rocca,
2015). Thus, the use of stories allows the development of normative structures,
albeit, those structures require the interaction of the audience to interpret them
and assign meanings about the scenarios proposed by the story. Likewise, it has
been considered that narratives are used as a persuasive tool used by sellers that
facilitate engagement and reduce the barriers of the customers towards novel
products, arguing that salespeople use stories recurrently and with different pur-
poses as persuasion, bonding, or simply to deliver information. In this process,
personal ideas and company values can be communicated through the narratives
and stories (Gilliam and Zablah, 2013; Gilliam and Flaherty, 2015), emphasis-
ing the aspect of transportation generated by the narrative into the fictional
world employing narrative thinking rather than analytical processing. There-
fore narrative transportation contributes to reduce negative responses from the
audience due to the increased realism of the experience that generates an affec-
tive empathy, leading to obtain less counter-argumentation.

The research on the uses of narratives in business markets is scarce and disperse
on multiple topics not fully interrelated. Thus, the narratives have been studied
in the context of sales, innovation and co-creation. In commercial exchanges,
sellers that employ a narrative style are able to demonstrate a sense of knowl-
edge and expertise with the product offered, therefore, counter-argumentation is
significantly reduced and has impacts in the development of commercial bonds

45
and maintenance of trust relationships (Gilliam and Zablah, 2013; Gilliam and
Flaherty, 2015). Likewise, the use of narratives permits the development of
sociocognitive value in business relationships, providing relevant data while
connecting emotionally with the buyers (Haas et al., 2012). In the context
of innovation, the narratives serve a tool to negotiate multiple visions, reducing
uncertainty and providing stabilisation in the innovation process by offering a
coherent articulation of previous innovation efforts and how new innovations
for product development will fit within the strategic view of an organisation
(Araujo and Easton, 2012). In a similar way, narratives resolve coordination
problems in innovation, allowing the translation of ideas, while diminish ambi-
guity and enable the addition of organisational components such as history into
the construction of meanings that guide innovation efforts (Bartel and Garud,
2009). Additionally, the narratives permit the temporal replacement of pro-
totypes, being useful in the pre-development phase of new products, offering
a tool to predict product evaluation (Van den Hende and Schoormans, 2012).
Finally, in the context of co-creation, stories have an important role in the pro-
cess of mutual learning and teaching in seller-buyer relationships, contributing
to the construction of collective and participative sensemaking (Komulainen,
2014). Other studies prove the contributions of narratives in other fields. Thus,
narratives facilitate the obtaining of market insights, because narratives can
reveal new market opportunities and help executives to rethink the previous as-
sumption about markets (Cayla and Arnould, 2013). Likewise, narratives and
other communication processes play a fundamental role in the relational busi-
ness process as a tool to make sense and construct meaning (La Rocca et al.,
2015).

Despite its relevance, the use of narratives requires a cautious management,

otherwise could turn unfavourable for the commercial exchange. Wentzel et al.
(2010) illustrate how an incorrect manipulation of the narratives becomes sus-
picious for the story receiver, resulting in an analytical process to evaluate the
narrative and the product advertised, losing their transportation and engaging
style. Similarly, Sujan et al. (1993) suggest that narrative strategy could lead to
forget the focus on the product information paying more attention to the story
rather than the brand and, finally, Padgett and Allen (1997) explain that the
use of narratives leads to multiple interpretations that increase the ambiguity
of the product in the customer’s mind. In that manner, we could argue that the

46
 implications of narratives are significant and have repercussions among multiple
members of a business network. The use of narratives contributes to give sense
to new markets, reduce ambiguity and create a ripple effect within actors of
business networks.

2. Narrative advertising. One of the fields in which narratives has been widely
used and studied is the advertising field. Narrative advertising, has been mainly
explored in consumer research, seeking to analyse the impact of using narra-
tives in consumption. Thus, narrative advertising has been dissected in four
main topics: narrative transportation (Green and Brock, 2000; Escalas, 2007;
Van Laer et al., 2014; Brenchman and Purvis, 2015; Schweitzer and Van den
Hende, 2017), narrative empathy (Escalas, 2004b; Chang, 2009; Kim et al.,
2016), narrative mental simulation (Phillips and McQuarrie, 2010; Chang, 2013;
Garland et al., 2013) and narratives as cultural tools (Shankar et al., 2001; Holt,
2004; Thompson, 2004; Preece and Kerrigan, 2015). The first three topics are
physiologically oriented while the last one is socio-cultural oriented.

Transportation is a convergent process that can be evoked with minimal nar-

rative structures granting a deeper connection with the source (Hamby et al.,
2015; Brenchman and Purvis, 2015), where all mental capacities become focused
on events occurring in the narrative, bringing three possible consequences when
the story receiver reaches the transportation state regardless if the narrative is
fictional or nonfictional: (1) The story receiver forgets intentionally some real
aspects in favour of accepting the fictional world that the narrative has created,
being less aware of facts that contradict assertions made in the narrative. (2)
story receivers that are immersed in the narrative are more susceptible to experi-
ence strong emotions and motivations that generate active thinking of possible
outcomes for presented situations in the narrative, which happens when the
story receiver empathise with one of the characters. (3) Story receivers return
from being transported somewhat changed by the experience. In some way, the
experience creates new expectations or reflections that modify attitudes and
beliefs (Green and Brock, 2000). The role of the story receiver has a strong
impact in narrative transformation and depends on four key elements: (1) Fa-
miliarity, (2) attention, (3) transportability and (4) demographics. All those
aspects influence the meaning assignation of the story receiver. In other words,
the story receivers must have a basic knowledge or be familiar with the topic
of the story in order to be focused and give enough attention to the plot. The

47
demographics of age, education and sex have an effect on the transportation,
also the cultural level of the story receiver has an influence in their capacity to
be transported regularly by the narrative (Van Laer et al., 2014).

Empathy in the context of the narrative has been defined as a process in which
the story receiver imaginatively project into the experiences featured by the
characters of the advertising (Boller and Olson, 1991). This involves an iden-
tification with the character and a vicarious participation at the cognitive and
affective level from the character’s perspective. Thus, Chang (2009, 2013);
Escalas (2004a) have demonstrated the more positive cognitive responses gen-
erated by narrative ads and the reduction of negative cognitive responses. The
process of empathy is enhanced when the story receiver is transported into the
narrative world (Green and Brock, 2000). However, it has been argued that
empathy is an involuntary process of losing oneself with others to experience
from others’ perspective (Escalas and Stern, 2003), affirming that empathy is
enacted when the story receiver is able to simulate the events that occurred in
the story (Escalas, 2012).

The process of mental simulation occurs as a response to the comprehension of

the narrative in which the story receiver creates a mental imagery, processing
narratives and fully understand them, enacting the construction of mental sim-
ulation and producing a mental representation of the story, the scenarios, the
characters and its interrelations (Chang, 2013). Likewise, mental simulation
occurs when the story receivers are able to imagine themselves in the story and
experiencing the events that occur to the characters (Boller and Olson, 1991).
However, the extant research on mental simulation does not pay attention to
the effects of narratives appeals and is mainly focused on the effects of verbal
instructions or pictures (e.g. Escalas, 2004b; Chang, 2013).

Narratives and brands operate in markets that are embedded within a cultural
milieu in which actors, perceptions, meanings, symbolism and ideologies coexist,
shaping the way in which brands are understood. Successful brands are those
who are capable to forge a deep connection with the customer’s culture (Holt,
2004). Thus, brands are social constructions that are shaped by the interaction
of actors with the brand (Preece and Kerrigan, 2015). Brands employ mythic
archetypes to create compelling and appealing stories that exert influence on

48
 how consumers assign meanings to the experiences (Thompson, 2004). In that
sense, marketing strategy development can be understood through narrative
lenses, where products or brands become central characters of their own story
in a cultural context (Shankar et al., 2001).

3. Narratives in organisations and the study of storytelling. A clarifi-

cation between storytelling and narratives is required because these terms are
usually interchanged, regardless of their differences. On the one hand, narra-
tives encompass a wider dimension, which includes discursive aspects as the
narrative voices, the focalisation, the style and the narrative modes. On the
other hand, storytelling is a specific type of narrative, which mainly focuses
on the construction of stories that contain identifiable characters, unresolved
events and a plausible plot that connects all the actions in the story (Norlyk
et al., 2014). Storytelling is defined in a broader sense as the “an art of weav-
ing, of constructing, the product of intimate knowledge” (Gabriel, 1998). Thus,
stories are not mere chronological accounts of events but are specific types of
narratives, that aim to communicate facts as experiences and not as informa-
tion (Gabriel, 2004). Therefore the storyteller has the privilege to count with a
poetic licence which allows to introduce fictional situations seeking to maintain
the effectiveness of the story, even in the case that the storyteller is representing
the truth, thus, stories can be detached from accuracy and facticity that are
fundamental for another kind of texts. Consequently, the storyteller establishes
a psychological contract with the audience through the poetic licence allowing
to twist the reality for the benefit of the plausibility of the story that is been
claimed by the storyteller as a representation of the reality. The exercise of
telling stories is valuable because the narration helps to frame the storyteller
experience and permits to modify certain aspects to the story in order to make
it more persuasive, influencing the likelihood to repeat the narrated experience
(Thompson, 2004).

In the organisational context, storytelling can be understood as a strategic pro-

cess that creates coherence and progression concerning the organisation brand,
identity and development (Norlyk et al., 2014), working as a channel that con-
tributes to reinforce the message of the company with specific managerial pur-
poses (White, 1980). Therefore, stories are applied as a set of tools to reach a
more value-based approach to the sensemaking of organisations and their stake-
holders. Therefore, storytelling possesses some generalised characteristics in this

49
 context: (1) stories often unfold over repeated interactions rather than being
told in an uninterrupted fashion, (2) the meaning of the story is often negotiated
by teller and audience, and (3) power inheres in storytelling rights that are un-
evenly distributed (Polleta et al., 2011). However, storytelling can fulfil multiple
functions as a management tool, a communication tool and a marketing tool.
As a management tool storytelling contributes to the development of a corpo-
rate culture aiming to create stability within the organisation and knowledge
management as an implementation of planned change. Storytelling as a com-
munication tool seeks to develop a sense of belonging inside the organisation to
prevent and avoid unexpected changes (Czarniawska, 2014). Therefore, shared
stories are used to create a feeling of inclusion, while excluding to those who do
not belong to them. The third use of the storytelling and the most acceptable
and obvious is the storytelling as a marketing tool, where stories contribute to
create and develop markets, positioning brands, concepts and ideas that end in
the selling of products and services (Denning, 2005; Czarniawska, 2014).

Finally, five propositions validate the relevance of storytelling: (1) Individuals

naturally though in a narrative way, before create arguments or paradigms. (2)
Our memories are decoded in a narrative way, all our mental images become
part of an episodic story that includes inciting incidents, experiences, outcomes
and summaries in a specific situation. (3) The continued repetition of stories
creates proper pleasure. (4) Stories contribute making sense of previous ex-
periences and help the individual to share its experiences with others in an
alluring and simple way by telling stories. (5) Brands and products allow cus-
tomers to recreate and retell the given story adding personal elements of their
own experience(Woodside, 2010). Likewise, it has been emphasised that mul-
timedia language facilitates the construction of mutual dialogue between the
organisation and its stakeholders. Therefore, these multimedia constructions
that encompass narratives help to gain quicker understanding and influence the
way in which story receivers perceive the organisational identity, the brand and
the products released (Bal, 1997).

This research background explored three fundamental topics for the develop-
ment of this dissertation, starting with the different approaches to technology adop-
tion, showing how a socio-cultural perspective understands technology adoption as
a market-mediated process in which the shaping of the market is pivotal for the
entrance, adoption, use and diffusion of an emerging technology, in which multiple

50
market practices are involved in this process, permitting to establish a market repre-
sentation, that serves as an initial point to have commercial exchanges, ending with
the market stabilisation. However, the link of those practices remains unclear and
this dissertation proposes that narratives are that link that permits the translation
between market practices becoming important for the shaping of markets. Therefore,
a review of the narratives was presented, examining the history of different streams
of narrative theory and studying the elements that compose a narrative, permitting
to understand elements and structures that determine the aims of employing stories,
finalising with a review of the extant research on narratives in business markets, ad-
vertising and organisations. The following section, provides an explanation of the
philosophical underpinnings of this research, the methods selected and an argumen-
tation of the cases selected while clarifying the analysis of the data gathered.

51
Chapter 3

Methodological considerations

Contents
3.1 Research design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.1.1 Casing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.2 Data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.3 Data analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.4 Research quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Marketing became an academic established discipline in the twentieth century,

however, its practice and concepts extend to centuries behind (Belk et al., 2013)
and it has proved its methodological soundness and rigour. This discipline has been
influenced by diverse sciences such as management, psychology, sociology and even en-
gineering that nurture it with new and refreshing perspectives that have been tested
through a huge variety of methods used in marketing research going from mathe-
matical models, experiments, surveys to interviews, observation and case studies.
Nonetheless, postmodern world is presenting new threats to the marketing discipline.
It has been argued that marketing discipline is on a path of trivialisation where re-
search appears to be irrelevant to practitioners (Piercy, 2002). The methodological
selections taken in this research permit to approach in a more accurate way to a case
that allows the understanding of the narratives’ role in the market shaping, and also
permit to identify how narratives work as an assemblage tool among market prac-
tices. To this goal in mind, the methodological selections were determined from the
paradigm selection to the design, the case and the subsequent analysis.

52
3.1 Research design

In management sciences, the development of scientific research and the actions taken
by researchers are guided by a system of beliefs which determine how knowledge
claims about the nature of organisations are generated and interpreted (Gioia and
Pitre, 1990). This belief system, or paradigms (Guba, 1990) can be defined answer-
ing questions related to ontology, epistemology and methodology. The most common
paradigms used in contemporary research are the positivist and the interpretativist
within marketing research. The positivist paradigm emphasises on the accumulation
of knowledge and discrete steps with reductionist elements that follow a consistent
pattern and try to explain and predict reality in a cause-and-effect orientation which
can be considered objective, tangible and fragmented (Creswell, 2007). In contrast,
an interpretative paradigm seeks to generate descriptions and insights of events and
understand a phenomenon, but not to explain or predict it (Gioia and Pitre, 1990).
Under this paradigm, the reality is defined as a social collective construction in which
multiple realities can coexist simultaneously (Mentzer and Kahn, 1995). And the out-
comes are considered as time-specific and contextual. Due to the aim of this research
of understanding the role of the narrative as an assemblage tool of market practices
and its role in the shaping of markets for emerging technologies, it is considered that
the interpretativist paradigm will provide a better understanding of the phenomena
studied, allowing to examine in depth how narratives circulates in the shaping mar-
ket process. Furthermore, the analysis of the narratives is highly contextual and
dependent on the cultural particularities of each actor involved.

Following the selection of the interpretativist paradigm as the philosophical foun-

dation for this dissertation, the design of the research, understood as the configuration
of the of research (Easterby-Smith et al., 1991), permits to build and revise the over-
all study (Miles et al., 2014), driving the selection of the methodologies and methods
employed. Therefore, this research uses the qualitative methodology, granting the
obtaining of a richly detailed and contextualised data that is systematic and thor-
ough (Belk et al., 2013), allowing to understand the narratives’ flow and how the
narrative assembles market practices in the shaping of emerging technology markets.
The method selected for this research was the case study. Within case study, it was
selected a single case study with multiple units of analysis. The case study permits
to analyse contemporary phenomena with the desire to obtain depth and highly con-
textualised information of a real-world context (Yin, 2013). The use of multiple units

53
of analysis allows to examine the different postures and use of narratives from the
sellers and the buyers, obtaining a complete understanding of the phenomena (Eas-
ton, 2010) and the case study has been considered as a primary tool for industrial
marketing research (Dubois and Araujo, 2004; Halinen and Törnross, 2005; Easton,
2010). Likewise, the case study grants the possibility to gather information from
multiple sources and from multiple units of analysis which enhance the robustness of
the overall research (Yin, 2013).

In order to build a theory from these cases, we use insights from different authors
including (Eisenhardt, 1989; Halinen, 1998; Easton, 2010; Welch et al., 2011). Four
methods to theorise from case studies (inductive theory building, natural experiment,
interpretive sensemaking and contextualised explanation) (Welch et al., 2011). This
research is positioned under the interpretive sensemaking method of theorising that
emphasises the contextualised explanation, permitting to understand the subjective
experiences of the actors involved, focusing on the particularities of a specific case
rather than generate “law-like explanation”, meaning that this tradition is in contrast
with researchers which aim to find generalisable explanations and exclude the con-
text as a relevant element within the phenomena studied (Welch et al., 2011). Thus,
this method of theorising for the case study, allows to focus on the particularisation
of human experience, researchers under this tradition embrace the context and the
narratives that emerge from the actors involved, offering a rich explanation of the
antecedents, the situation studied, offering thick descriptions rather than establish-
ing cause-effect relationships which are regarded as simplistic in the face of complex
situations that involved multiple actors and external influences which are out of the
scope of cause-effect explanations and allowing to understand the uniqueness of the
case (Stake, 1995). In other words, this method of theorising possesses an “appreci-
ation of how the social context imbues human action with meaning” (Welch et al.,
2011).

In addition to the case study approach, this research employs a narrative analy-
sis (Czarniawska, 2004; Creswell, 2007; Bamberg, 2007; Riessman, 2008) aiming at
understand the role of the narratives in the market construction and the structures
employed in the narratives and particular elements as the plot, the characters’ role
and other elements incorporated (Riessman, 2008). Narratives can be both a method
and a phenomena of study (Creswell, 2007) and provides an adequate account of the
nature of contextualised experience (Clandinin and Rosiek, 2007), allowing to grasp
insights regarding the role of the narratives in the shaping of markets from diverse

54
perspectives permitting to understand the contextual use of narrative elements placed
in the data set (Creswell, 2007). Thus, the cross-case analysis leads us to determine
the role of the narratives in the market construction as a tool to assemble market
practices through time.

3.1.1 Casing
A justification of the case selection or the casing process is required to facilitate
the reader’s understanding, permitting to follow the rationale behind the election
of a particular case (Ragin, 1992). The case in point is the shaping of the smart
city market. As it was aforementioned the smart city is the application of smart
technologies (IoT, A.I. and Big data) in the management of the city with multiple
services and applications. Resorting to the a single case study allows to understand
the role of the narratives and its uses from different actors through time (technology
firms, cities, consultancy firms, international organisations and residents), which are
classified as units of analysis in this dissertation. Likewise, the case study permits to
observe the market evolution, allowing to observe the adaptation of the narrative to
those changes in the market, and how the narratives adapt to the entrance of other
market practices and fulfil a role of assemblage tool between the market practices.

The selection of the smart city responds to several criterion. The first criteria
is related to the need to find an emerging technology (IoT and A.I) that was in
the process of shaping the market and not fully stabilised, offering the possibility
to analyse the efforts developed by different actors to shape the market in order to
permit the entrance of a new technology. Likewise, the novelty of the market offers
the possibility to examine the formation of the narratives from the earlier beginning
and their transformation through time, permitting to see the market evolution and
how the narratives adapted to those changes in order to offer alternative explanations,
reinforcing product or market representations and serving as a tool to reduce counter
argumentation or to respond to particular claims that emerged in the shaping market
process. The second criteria refers to the accessibility of the data, the use of a case
study allows us to combine multiple sources of evidence, including documentary and
archival data that where included as a relevant part of the analysis (e.g. advertising
campaigns, reports, public speeches). The third criteria responds to the interest
generated by the complexity of city context, which provides a rich explanation of the
narrative flow in this particular market, in which a multitude of actors (government,
public sector, private sector, start-ups, final users, etc.) are involved in the market

55
shaping process, offering in this sense a highly contextualised case in which it was
possible to evidence the preponderant role of the narratives in diverse market practices
and, therefore, in the study of the market shaping.

Thereby, a single case study with multiple units of analysis (Yin, 2013) seems
the most suitable option for this research, allowing to understand the shaping of the
smart city market from the perspectives of multiple actors, including: technology
firms (IBM, Cisco and Microsoft), cities (Amsterdam, Barcelona and Lyon), consult-
ing firms (McKinsey, PWC, EY, Arup), media (Forbes, The Guardian, Wired UK),
international organisations (BID, European commission and centre for cities), and
other actors of each city (start-ups and residents). An important focus exists in this
dissertation towards two main actors which provided the majority of the narratives
and the data gathered and deserved an explanation for their selection.

1. Technology firms. Two firms were selected as part of this study: IBM and
Cisco. Both firms have been main actors in the construction of IoT and A.I
solutions in the city context. The selection of those firms responds to the
reiterative use of narratives and storytelling as part of their marketing strategy,
permitting to observe the use of the narrative approach in industrial marketing
and the employment of the narratives in the introduction of new technologies.

2. Cities. Three cities were selected: Barcelona (Spain), Lyon (France) and Am-
sterdam (Netherlands). Barcelona has been recognised as one of the pioneers
in the implementation of smart city solutions, becoming a flagship for smart
cities in Europe. The city offers an interesting view on political and ideologi-
cal changes in the administration that affect the appropriation of technologies.
Lyon is the first French smart city, with more than 104 smart city projects run-
ning that provide a more citizen centred vision in the conception of the smart
city. Lastly, Amsterdam offers a similar citizen-centred vision on the concep-
tion of smart city projects with more than 100 partners and 90 projects running,
emphasising the use of living labs at small scale.

3.2 Data collection

The data was gathered over a period of three years, from 2014 to 2017, conducting a
real-time study that permits to see how the phenomenon is unfolding (Halinen and

56
Törnross, 2005). The data collection included a variety of sources from TV advertise-
ments, public speeches, white papers, customer cases, reports, conference presenta-
tions and news. The videos were transcribed for analysis, their duration range is from
one minute to one hour, with a total amount of 763 minutes. The reports, customer
cases and white papers sum together 176 documents with a range from three pages
until hundred pages. Additionally, 17 interviews with technology firms (Cisco, IBM,
Microsoft and Intel) and with cities (Amsterdam and Lyon) were conducted with a
duration from fifteen minutes until two hours. In the case of Barcelona, the city was
going through an elections period and was not possible to obtain an interview with
city representatives from the new administration, however, documentation, including
interviews was collected, showing the position of the Barcelona’s representatives to-
wards the construction of the smart city. Table 3.1, summarises the type and the
amount of data collected for each actor.

The data collection process followed the precept of triangulation, where the re-
searcher explores a phenomenon using multiple sources of evidence bounded by time
and activity (Yin, 2013). Triangulation provides stronger constructs and hypotheses
(Eisenhardt, 1989), enhancing and assuring the internal validity of the research. The
data triangulation allows to observe the narratives’ flow through different market
practices and the adaptations developed by different actors to the narratives as a
process of re-creation of the narratives. The search for narratives and stories in the
interviews follows the precepts establish by Czarniawska (2004): (1) watch how the
stories are being made, (2) collect the stories, (3) provoke storytelling, (4) interpret
the stories, (5) analyse the stories, (6) deconstruct the stories, (7) put together your
own story and (8) set it against/together other stories. This research provokes the
construction of stories enquiring directly for multiple examples of clients, projects
and experiences that the interviewee has encountered in the selling or adoption of the
smart city, by doing so, it was possible to obtain stories by different actors involved.

The interviews were semi-structured allowing participants to tell the story of the
adoption of the smart city solution. The conversational structure of the interview
encourages to have a less formal and more interactive interview where the participant
could tell their stories about its experiences. By doing so, it was possible to capture
narratives that show the different meanings and positions that this technology rep-
resents for them. Additionally, to the interviews developed, second-hand interviews
were analysed as part of this study, especially in the cases of mayors of the cities and

57
 Selling discourses
Customer cases

Public speech
Advertising

Interviews
Podcasts

Reports
Ac-
Blogs

tor

Cisco 39 22 29 3 3 0 6 3

IBM 46 15 19 2 6 10 5 2

Con-
sult-
0 12 4 0 2 2 2 20
ing
firms

Int
0 0 4 0 2 0 0 11
org

AMS 14 10 8 0 2 0 6 23

Lyon 25 8 12 0 4 0 8 18

BCN 13 12 4 0 2 0 5 19

Table 3.1: Data gathered and analysed per actor and category

58
VP of marketing of IT companies. These interviews contribute partially to the under-
standing of the global vision of the technology firms. The majority of the interviews
were conducted in English and were conducted face-to-face, by phone or by Skype.

3.3 Data analysis

The main purpose of the analysis process is to compare the data gathered and generate
patterns that allow the conceptualisation and the development of synthetic models
that simplify the complexity, give sense to the data collected and serve as the basis for
theory development (Neuman, 2007). The analysis of the case study provides a detail
description of each unit of analysis and the narratives developed by them, relying
on a thick description of the case that offers to the reader a contextual description
that is necessary to understand the phenomena and theory under the interpretive
sensemaking method (Welch et al., 2011). This process was followed by the searching
of patterns (Stake, 1995) in the narratives created that lead to understand the use of
the narratives in the market shaping process, those patterns allow the data analysis
and interpretation of the case study. The results from the units of analysis showed
two aspects: the first is related to cultural elements of each city that are embedded
in the narrative offering the particular vision of each city towards the smart city. The
second aspect is focused on the role of the narratives in the market shaping process,
those results are more general and can be cautiously applied to different industries.

Additionally, to the case study method for analysis and theorising, a narrative
analysis was employed to identify three elements: (1) the structure of the narra-
tives; the typologies, resources and taxonomies used by the different actors in the
construction of their own narratives Polkinghorne (1995). (2) the meanings embed-
ded within the narrative, permitting to examine the purpose behind the narratives
created (Riessman, 2008) and (3) the flow of the narratives in the market shaping
process, allowing to see changes in the narrative according to the market evolution,
thus, showing a transmedia construction that permits to link the market practices.

3.4 Research quality

In every qualitative research, some criteria need to be evaluated in order to assess the
quality of the research. Nine characteristics have been proposed to develop a good
qualitative study, regardless the paradigm or methodology chosen by the researcher:

59
(1) the employment of rigorous data collection procedures, (2) research framed un-
der the characteristics of a qualitative research approach, (3) the use of recognised
research approach or methodology, (4) the study of a single and clear subject, (5)
the utilisation of detailed methods, (6) the development of data analysis using multi-
ple levels of abstraction, (7) writing persuasively, (8) the reflection of the researcher
perceptions and (9) the research is ethical (Creswell, 2007). All those elements were
taken into account and incorporated as part of this study.

As this research resorts to the case study methodology, its quality can be as-
sessed under four parameters: construct validity, internal validity, external validity
and reliability (Yin, 2013). To obtain construct validity the conceptualisation was
developed based on previous studies ensuring to create procedures for the analysis of
the narrative concepts and market shaping. Likewise, multiple sources of evidence
were collected and a chain of evidence was established through the analysis of the
data gathered. To achieve internal validity, it was used explanation building and were
taken into account the rival explanations, permitting to analyse the role of the narra-
tives in the shaping of the smart city market and observing counter-argumentations
and counter-narratives that enrich the understanding of the market shaping process
and the role that the narrative fulfils at those moments. To acquire external validity
this research used a replication logic within the units of analysis for the interviews
and the data analysis to obtain stronger constructs that provide better insights for
the development of the theory that can be generalisable. Finally, to provide trans-
parency and reliability, this dissertation provides in each study a documented and
detailed report of the methods used and the procedures to obtain the conclusions
generated.

60
Chapter 4

Summary of the essays

Contents
4.1 Summary 1st essay - Narrative advertising as symbolic
representation tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.1.1 Essay 1 - Narrative advertising as symbolic representation
tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.2 Summary 2nd essay - Narrative strategies and B2B tech-
nology brands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4.2.1 Essay 2 - Narrative strategies and B2B technology brands . 95
4.3 Summary 3rd essay - Markets as narrative constructions 111
4.3.1 Essay - Markets as narrative constructions . . . . . . . . . . 113

4.1 Summary 1st essay - Narrative advertising as

symbolic representation tools
This essay has the aim to understand the role of narratives as a tool of sensemaking
and meaning assignation towards emerging technologies. To accomplish this objec-
tive, this research explores the role of the narratives in industrial advertising, the
study focuses on the advertising campaigns developed by Cisco from 2012 until 2016
and thirty-five video advertisements were analysed, the data set is large enough to
allow the identification of patterns that were also identified in other advertisement
materials. This selection responds to two criteria; (1) Novelty of the technology so-
lution due to Cisco is one of the first firms that developed IoT solutions. (2) Use of
narrative structures within the advertising campaign. Previous studies have suggested
that technology firms are remarkable cases of industrial branding and advertising, en-

61
gaging in the development of brands that connects at emotional and individual level
with organisations (Lynch and De Chernatony, 2004; Brown et al., 2012).

This study examines the role of the narratives in early stages of market shap-
ing where representational market practices are dominant. At this earlier stage, the
narratives fulfil a role of sensemaking and meaning assignation. In that sense, the
narrative advertising offered a global perspective of what is the technology, its advan-
tages and how the technology operates in diverse scenarios while generates awareness
in an appealing way. Thus, the narrative creates a market representation that illus-
trates how the technology operates in the current market, showing, in some cases,
how it can interact with current technologies, or, depicting fictional scenarios that
illustrate how multiple technologies solutions work together with IoT.

An analysis of the structural elements that are embedded in the narratives devel-
oped by Cisco, shows how those elements are introduced in advertising campaigns,
contributing to the development of the understanding of how narratives are con-
structed, which has been poorly investigated (Visconti and Van Laer, 2016; Bublitz
et al., 2016). Three narrative elements were found: Use of epic narrative structures,
ambivalence in the temporal structure and the employment of binary oppositions.
Likewise, the narratives work as a tool for meaning assignation in which the narra-
tive implicitly provides concepts that the firm pretends to associate to IoT technology.
In this particular case, three concepts were recurrent through the entire campaigns:
IoT as support, IoT to enhance efficiency and IoT to obtain sustainability.

This essay contributes to understand the role of the narrative in industrial ad-
vertisement at two levels. First, it shows the structure of the narrative employed
by a technology firm, showing how different narrative elements are embedded in the
construction of the narrative advertisements that permit the construction of a market
representation that provides a simplified explanation of the market (Diaz Ruiz, 2013).
Second, it presents how narratives embed symbolic material that is decoded by the
story receiver, permitting the assignation of meanings towards the technology pre-
sented in the advertisement (Garland et al., 2013). Additionally, this study explores
the concept of narrative advertising in industrial advertising which have been mainly
examined in consumption and psychological studies (Green and Brock, 2000; Escalas,
2007; Chang, 2009; Phillips and McQuarrie, 2010; Van Laer et al., 2014; Brenchman
and Purvis, 2015; Kim et al., 2016; Schweitzer and Van den Hende, 2017). At the

62
managerial level, this study contributes to show the role of the narratives by tech-
nology firms as a communication tool to connect with the customer at an emotional
level, challenging the traditional concept that industrial buyers respond better to ex-
pository or argumentative advertisements (Kim et al., 2016). Thus, industrial firms
use narrative advertising to create a mixture of rational and emotional arguments
that permit to create a connection that allows the engagement with the organisations
and the individual inside the firms. Thus, this paper offers guides to practitioners to
develop industrial narrative advertising that permits to connect at an emotional level,
increasing the engagement of the audience, which can be translated in the adoption
or buying of products.

63
4.1.1 Essay 1 - Narrative advertising as symbolic represen-
tation tools

Abstract
This paper addresses the role of storytelling in the development of advertisement
campaigns for new technologies. The case in point examines the advertisement cam-
paign developed by a technology firm (Cisco) to introduce a new technology in the
market (Internet of Things). The campaigns “Tomorrow starts here” and “Never
better” displayed between 2012 and 2016 were analysed, showing the narrative and
storytelling structures employed through the advertisements aiming to create a mar-
ket representation that emphasises three recurrent concepts: support, efficiency and
sustainability. The results contribute to the discussion on industrial advertisement
and the importance of narrative advertisement as a tool to create and assign meanings
towards new technology on industrial markets.

Keywords: Advertising, Narratives, Storytelling, Industrial marketing.

Introduction
This paper aims to extant the current knowledge on the role of narratives in industrial
advertising. The study of the use and benefits of advertising has been widely examined
in the consumer research context, demonstrating its importance and the effects on
advertising, on branding reputation and consumption (Cretu and Brodie, 2007; Joshi
and Hanssens, 2010). Advertising has been recognised as “the placement of persuasive
messages that aim to inform and persuade members of a particular target market
or audience about their products, services, organisations or ideas” (AMA., 2018).
Despite, its relevance, research on industrial advertising is still scarce and focused on
branding.

Researchers in industrial marketing have studied the rational and emotional ef-
fects of industrial advertising. Traditionally, the focus was on rational and tangible
variables. As (Wilson, 2000) state, the organisational buying behaviour has been
classified as a “rational purchase decision”, reducing the study of emotional and non-
tangible aspects of advertising and their impact on industrial branding. Gilliland and
Johnston (1997) explored the effects of advertisement in buying centres, recognising
that advertising evaluation is affectual and cognitive, depending on environmental and

64
individual conditions of the buying centre. In recent years, the analysis of emotional
aspects has grown, Lynch and De Chernatony (2004) have explored the emotional
component of industrial advertising showing that technology firms have engaged with
the elaboration of emotional links with their audiences, leading to a recognisance of
the influence of rational and emotional aspects of organisational buying behaviour and
allowing the entrance of other topics previously studied only on consumer research.

One of these topics that have been gaining interest is the use of narratives and
storytelling as a tool to create more engaging brands. In advertising the term narra-
tive advertising has been defined as an advertisement that resort to a communication
which uses a story-like format (Escalas, 1998), while non-narrative advertisements
communicate through argumentative explanation (Kim et al., 2017). Narratives in
marketing research have been dissected in four main topics; narrative transportation
(Green and Brock, 2000; Escalas, 2007; Van Laer et al., 2014; Brenchman and Purvis,
2015; Schweitzer and Van den Hende, 2017), Narrative empathy (Escalas, 2004b;
Chang, 2009; Kim et al., 2016), narrative mental simulation (Phillips and McQuarrie,
2010; Chang, 2013; Garland et al., 2013) and narratives as cultural tools (Shankar
et al., 2001; Holt, 2004; Thompson, 2004; Preece and Kerrigan, 2015). The research
on narratives has proved the advantages of narrative advertising versus expository
advertising to create engagement and an emotional connection with the brand. Nev-
ertheless, the research on narratives in industrial marketing is almost nonexistent,
few studies have analysed the role of narrative in industrial marketing, Gilliam and
Flaherty (2015) argue that narratives permit to create trust bonds and show product
expertise in sales encounters, while La Rocca et al. (2015) have studied how narratives
permit to create meanings that shape markets and business interrelations.

Thus, the primary motivation of this article is to extend the current research on
narratives and industrial marketing by answering the following research question; how
narratives are employed and which is its role in industrial advertising for the tech-
nology sector? Previous studies conducted by Lynch and De Chernatony (2004) and
Brown et al. (2012) argued that technology firms are remarkable cases of industrial
branding and advertising, engaging in the development of brands that connect at
emotional and individual level with organisations. The case in point, analyses how
Cisco uses and structures narrative advertising to introduce a new technology, Inter-
net of Things (IoT) into the market. This research contributes to the discussion on
industrial advertising by understanding narratives advertisement as a tool to explain,
give sense and permit meaning assignation towards new technology markets.

65
Research Background
Industrial advertising
Advertising has been recognised as a tool to enhance industrial branding. Gilliland
and Johnston (1997) presented a model for marketing communication effects, recog-
nising that organisational buying centres are affected rationally and emotionally, pro-
viding positive responses towards the advertiser’s brand. The research on advertising
from the decades of the 80’s and the 90’s examines the effectiveness of the advertising
Lohtia et al. (1995) and the importance of copy in printing ads Bellizzi et al. (1994),
showing that intangible copies enhance the affectual impact of the act making pos-
sible to enact reader’s feelings towards the brand, while tangible copies are used to
emphasise the rational aspect of the selling proposition and in general the advertis-
ing impact brands visibility and awareness. Other authors Lynch and Hooley (1987)
focus on branding and advertising budgeting.

Recent studies on industrial advertising have focused more on the emotional as-
pect Brown et al. (2012) and Lynch and De Chernatony (2004) shows how technology
companies translate brand values into advertising to explain tangible and intangible
benefits while creating an emotional connection with the customer. Other studies
have been focus on the use of advertising on particular contexts, for example, Licht-
enthal et al. (2006) analyse the impact of outdoor advertising for industrial companies
showing that is useful as part of an integrated marketing communication campaign
but alone are not fully able to convey an appropriate message. Leonidou et al. (2014)
explores the concept of greenness advertising arguing that the employment of green
advertising enhances corporate branding image in foreign markets and increases cus-
tomer attraction and retention. Likewise, Baack et al. (2016) has provided additional
information about the importance of creativity and its impact on advertising effec-
tiveness, arguing that creative ads engage the audience. Thus, it is possible to identify
that in the last decade of research on industrial advertising has been taken insights
from consumer research with a focal point on the emotional effects that advertising
could bring to industries.

Despite the importance of industrial advertising per se, it has been eclipsed by
research on industrial branding that provides a wider and more comprehensive knowl-
edge. Nevertheless, neither the literature on industrial advertising or branding has
examined in detail the role of the narratives and storytelling as a tool to create emo-
tional connections that permit to assign meanings to industrial goods. In the B2B

66
context only a few studies approach to the concept of narratives, Araujo and Easton
(2012) examine the value of narratives to negotiate uncertainty and provide stabili-
sation in innovation processes in which multiple temporalities coexist in a continuous
flow among the actors involved. La Rocca et al. (2015) recognises the importance
of communication processes in business relationships and networks, highlighting the
importance of storytelling as a tool to make sense and construct meaning. Gilliam
and Flaherty (2015) explore the role of storytelling in exchange practices, arguing
that salespeople that resort to stories are able to easily create trust relationships and
demonstrate expertise with the product. Recently, Törmälä and Gryd-Jones (2017)
propose to understand brand identity as a narrative performance, noticing that brand
identity is a continuous stabilisation process in an ongoing changing environment. To
fulfil this gap, this article resort to the concept of narrative advertising, which has
been studied recently in the consumer research context.

Narrative advertising
Narrative advertising has been defined by Escalas (1998) as an advertising that com-
municates through a story-like format where actors engage in actions to achieve some
goals, suggesting that two characteristics are needed in a story: (1) Chronology, un-
derstood as a logical sequence of the events and (2) Causality, defined as the link
between the story elements and the causes of the events within the story. Padgett
and Allen (1997) called story ads and defined the story characteristics, arguing that
a story needs actors, a sequence of events and a setting that has physical, social and
temporal components. Likewise, Chang (2013) affirms that “narrative advertising
depicts product consumption and its consequences or employs plots associated with
what people desire”. The effectiveness of narrative ads versus non-narrative ads have
been demonstrated by (e.g. Padgett and Allen, 1997; Escalas, 1998, 2004b; Chang,
2009, 2013; Kim et al., 2017) arguing that narrative ads are more persuasive, permit-
ting the generation of additional engagement by the audience which translates into
positive cognitive responses, the reduction of counter-argumentation and an incre-
ment in the positive attitudes towards the brand.

Narrative advertising has been dissected in four main topics; narrative transporta-
tion (Green and Brock, 2000; Escalas, 2007; Van Laer et al., 2014; Brenchman and
Purvis, 2015; Schweitzer and Van den Hende, 2017), Narrative empathy (Escalas,
2004b; Chang, 2009; Kim et al., 2016), narrative mental simulation (Phillips and Mc-
Quarrie, 2010; Chang, 2013; Garland et al., 2013) and narratives as cultural tools

67
(Shankar et al., 2001; Holt, 2004; Thompson, 2004; Preece and Kerrigan, 2015). The
first three are physiological oriented while the last one is socio-cultural oriented.

Green and Brock (2000) affirm that compelling narratives are able to transport
the story receiver to fictional scenarios regardless the source or the detachment with
the reality, showing that narratives are processed in a different way that cognitive
elaborations and that the power of the narrative lies in the experiential component.
When the story receiver resonates with the story, it can be transported to the narrative
world where the process of interpretation is enacted in the story receiver’s mind, based
on prior experiences and knowledge. This process of transportation is what produces
a memorable and transformative experience that offers extra tools to obtain actions
from the audience (Van Laer et al., 2014). Likewise, (Hamby et al., 2015; Brenchman
and Purvis, 2015) shows that minimal narrative structures can evoke transportation
granting a deeper connection with the source. In the field of advertisement, the use
of narratives is evident, Escalas (2004a) concludes that narrative strategies lead to
a positive evaluation of products that are advertised, without paying attention to
the argument strength. In contrast, cognitive elaborations only lead to favourable
evaluations towards the brand and the advertisement when the argument is robust.

Empathy in the context of the narrative has been defined by Boller and Olson
(1991) as a process in which the story receiver imaginatively project into the expe-
riences featured by the characters of the advertising. This involves an identification
with the character and a vicarious participation at cognitive and affective level from
the character’s perspective. Thus, Chang (2009, 2013); Escalas (2004a) have demon-
strated the more positive cognitive responses generated by narrative ads and the re-
duction of negative cognitive responses. The process of empathy according to Green
and Brock (2000) is enhance when the story receiver is transported into the narrative
world. However, Escalas and Stern (2003) argue that empathy is an involuntary pro-
cess of losing oneself with others to experience from others’ perspective, and Escalas
(2012) affirm that empathy is enacted when the story receiver is able to simulate the
events that occurred in the story.

The process of mental simulation occurs as a response to the comprehension of

the narrative in which the story receiver creates a mental imagery. Chang (2013)
suggest that processing narratives and fully understand it, enact the construction
of mental simulation, producing a mental representation of the story, the scenarios,
the characters and its interrelations. Likewise, Boller and Olson (1991) affirm that

68
mental simulation occurs when the story receivers are able to imagine themselves in
the story and experiencing the events that occur to the characters. However, Chang
(2013) argue that the extant research on mental simulation does not pay attention to
the effects of narratives appeals and is focus mainly on the effects of verbal instructions
or pictures (e.g. Escalas, 2004b).

Narratives and brands operate in markets that are embedded within a cultural mi-
lieu in which actors, perceptions, meanings, symbolism and ideologies coexist, shaping
the way in which brands are understood. As Holt (2004) highlights, successful brands
are those who are capable to forge a deep connection with the customer’s culture and
Preece and Kerrigan (2015) recognises that brands are social constructions that are
shaped by the interaction of actors with the brand. Furthermore, Thompson (2004)
affirms that brands use mythic archetypes to create compelling and appealing stories
that exert influence on how consumers assign meanings to the experiences. In that
sense, Shankar et al. (2001) suggest to understand marketing strategy development
through a narrative lens, where products or brands become central characters of their
own story in a cultural context.

Despite its relevance, the use of narratives requires a cautious management, oth-
erwise could turn unfavourable for the commercial exchange. Wentzel et al. (2010)
illustrate how an incorrect manipulation of the narratives becomes suspicious for
the story receiver, resulting in an analytic process to evaluate the narrative and the
product advertised, losing their transportation and engaging style. Similarly, Sujan
et al. (1993) suggest those narrative strategies could lead to forget the focus on the
product information paying more attention to the story rather than the brand and,
finally, Padgett and Allen (1997) explain that the use of narratives leads to multiple
interpretations that increase the ambiguity of the product in the customer’s mind.

The extant research focuses on demonstrate the narratives’ effects in advertising,

branding and consumption without a clear analysis of what is a narrative, the compo-
nents of a narrative or the diverse narrative resources that can be utilised. Therefore,
the following section explores these topics, aiming to provide a more comprehensive
review of the structure of the narrative and how it can be employed.

Narratives
To comprehend the role of the narratives in advertisement it is essential to start
with the definition of the narrative and its main components. Gabriel (2000, p.239)

69
defined narratives as “stories that posses a plot and characters, generating emotion
in narrator and audience, through a poetic elaboration of symbolic material. This
material may be a product of fantasy or experience, including an experience of earlier
narratives”. Bruner (1986) argues the existence of a narrative mode of knowing,
which regards how meaning is assigned to life experiences through stories, focusing
on the rich and detailed interwoven myriad of human experience that contributes to
understand, to give sense and to assign meaning to the world. Frye (1957) and Gabriel
(2000) classify four basic types of story plots: comedy, romance, tragedy and satire.
The characteristics of each plot are summarised in table 4.1, which are fundamental
to understand and analyse narrative constructions. To comprehend the pervasiveness
of the narratives in advertising and branding is necessary to explore its elements to
offer a panorama of what are narratives, how they work and the contributions of
narratives to create strong industrial brands.

Plot Description

The hero should overcome and face multiple challenges in order to

Romance reach his goal and the eventual victory. These stories typically have
virtuous heroes that represent ideals of a nostalgic golden age.

Restoration of the social order where the hero must have the required
social skills to overcome the hazards which threaten the order. Comedy
Comedy
focuses on the social group, which have lost a social standard that
needs to be recovered to obtain a balance.

The hero is defeated by the forces of evil and is banished from society.
Tragedy The focus of this plot is on individuals; the tragedy exists in the
isolation of the hero, not in the causes that lead to that event.

Presents a cynical perspective on social hegemony, in which satire and

Satire irony make a parody of romance and presents an image where reality
rather than ideology is dominant.

Table 4.1: Basic plots in narratives (Frye, 1957)

A structured story is essential for the development of cohesively and appealing

narratives. It is comprised of three elements that interact cohesively throughout the
narrative (Bublitz et al., 2016). (1) The construction of identifiable characters with
well-defined features allows the story receiver to resonate with the characters and

70
relate his personal experiences with the situations presented, granting a level of em-
pathy with the narrative. (2) A plausible plot that raises interest in the audience,
presenting a story with unanswered questions, unresolved conflicts or depict an in-
complete activity that characters that appear in different moments of the plot will
resolve the proposed situations (Green and Brock, 2000). Thus, the plot connects the
events, activities and characters in a coherent structure that account a series of events
that occurs with a clear purpose (Czarniawska, 2004; Polleta et al., 2011; Araujo and
Easton, 2012). (3) The level of likelihood or plausibility of the events presented is
pivotal to grant the recreation of mental imagery which allows the transportation
effect of the narratives to fictional scenarios (Van Laer et al., 2014).

Other elements are primordial for the construction of the narrative, such as the
chronology and the use of archetypes. Chronology or temporality refers to the posi-
tioning that the story has in a temporal line that creates a contextualisation in which
the story receiver can navigate. Escalas (2004b) argue that a story must contain
three elements: characters, chronology and causality. According to Bruner (1986)
stories organise events temporally and provide meaning to the activities that occur
over time. The use or archetypes allows the definition of certain characteristics of the
story without the need to elaborate an extensive explanation (e.g. the characteristics
of a hero are recognised without explaining what they are). Thus, the archetype
is considered as a constantly recurring universal symbolic image, that represents a
typical human experience that derives from humanity’s collective unconscious (Camp-
bell, 1991). Different types of archetypes can act together in the narratives, including
myths, characters Stevens (2006) and binary opposition Lévi-Strauss (1967).

Despite the contributions developed, the use of narratives in the industrial adver-
tising context is still unclear and raises questions regarding how narratives are used
in the construction of advertising? or what is the role of the narrative advertising? In
order to fulfil this gap is important to define narrative advertising and examine the
extant research. Likewise, to understand what is narrative, explain the elements that
constitute a narrative and how those elements can be used to construct industrial
narrative advertising.

Methodology
This paper selected Cisco because it was one of the first technology firms involved
in the development of IoT (Falk, 2012), offering the possibility to analyse how the

71
firm used narratives in an advertisement campaign to create a market representation
that was able to explain the IoT technology, its scope and benefits, while presenting
a new vision of an interconnected and utopic world. Thus, the analysis is centred on
the efforts conceived by Cisco to assign meanings to an emerging technology through
the use of narrative advertisement.Therefore, this research does not focus on the in-
terpretations elaborated by customers, on the contrary, it is focused exclusively on
the meanings that the firm expects to create in the consumer’s mind. Predominant
themes were found in the throughout the advertisement campaign that guides the con-
sumer interpretation in order to establish a market representation that was coherent
with Cisco’s efforts.

The selection of Cisco advertisement campaign is based on the narrative approach

used by the company and its continuous use throughout time. This campaign of-
fers a useful perspective on the new strategical approach used by technology firms
to create market representations for new technologies that desire to enter into in-
dustrial markets. Thus, this research analyses the messages portrayed by Cisco in
the advertisement campaigns “Tomorrow starts here” and “Never better” developed
for the launching of IoT between the years 2012 and 2016. The campaign was se-
lected on the grounds that reflects the entrance of a new product into the market
that required the creation of a market representations. The data collected initially
included videos, blogs, customer cases, selling discourses, public speeches and print
advertisements that introduce IoT in the market in diverse industrial settings. Never-
theless, the variety of the data offered insights about the elaboration and orchestration
of a transmedia strategy. Therefore, aiming to understand the role and the use of
narratives in industrial advertisement, this article focuses exclusively on the video
advertisements. The videos provide a more clear vision of the intentionally of the
narratives and its structure, providing a wider range of analysis.

The dataset included thirty-five advertisement videos, all the videos analysed be-
longs to the campaign tomorrow starts here and never better, the data set is large
enough to allow the identification of patterns that were also identified in other ad-
vertisement materials. Through this period the “Tomorrow starts here campaign”
included fourth divisions (tomorrow starts here, customer cases, the museum of the
lasts and the next wave of internet) each one of this subdivisions within the tomorrow
starts here campaign followed the same narrative structure, although the intention-
ally of the message varies from the different sets of advertisements. “Never better”
was presented as a new campaign with few advertisements and duration. Table 4.2

72
shows the entire timeline of the advertisement campaigns. To avoid confusion, Cisco
denominated “tomorrow starts here” to the entire advertisement campaign and also
to the initial set of advertisements that were released. Additionally, to contextualise
and to enhance the understanding of the use of narratives in the technology sector,
we analysed several actors, but results concentrate on one.

The analysis of the advertisement campaign was design taking into account the
definition of Buchanan-Oliver et al. (2010) who argue that the advertisement need to
be considered as an aesthetic object that works as a socio-political artefact which is
affected by a cultural circuit. This analysis resonates with the ideas of branding as
a socio-cultural entities proposed by Holt (2004); Thompson (2004). Therefore, this
paper recognises the importance of the socio-cultural context in the analysis of the
advertisement campaign developed by Cisco. A multistage approach was employed
with two main goals. First, to establish the recurrent patterns used in the construction
of the stories elaborated by Cisco with the aim to establish a categorisation of the
narrative elements employed in the construction of the narrative advertisements. And
second to determine which meanings the firm desire to assign to the technology of
Internet of Things.

An initial stage of the analysis followed a qualitative content analysis (Hsieh and
Shannon, 2005), permitting to understand the contextual use of narrative elements
placed in the data set in which the advertisement campaign was used as a single unit of
analysis in order to understand the entire story without dissecting it in each advertise-
ment. The analysis started with searches for occurrences of the identified categories,
this is defined by Potter and Levine-Donnerstein (1999) as manifest content analysis,
followed by a process of content interpretation, denominated latent content analysis
(Holsti, 1969). Additionally, a narrative analysis was developed Riessman (2008) to
determine narrative structures employed and to examine the purpose of the narrative
advertisements. Likewise, Creswell (2007) recognises that the narratives can be both
a method and phenomena of study. Subsequently, the advertisements were dissected
in stories set according to their intent and release date. Likewise, the advertisement
agency “Goodby, Silverstein & Partners” hired by Cisco for the campaign develop-
ment, determined a division of the different set of advertisements. This second stage
of the analysis provides information about the changes in the narrative uses and their
evolution through time.

The content analysis was performed manually and using the (QDAS) NVivo 11,
a software that permits the organisation of the data gathered and its subsequent

73
analysis (Dean and Sharp, 2006).The data gathered allows the detection of regular
patterns in the narratives used for the construction of the advertisement campaign.
The data was coded through an interpretive analysis that provides information about
the meanings that Cisco portrays in their narrative advertisements, the first coding
cycle focused on the selection of diverse themes presented in the advertisements which
subsequently were aggregated in a second order themes that permit the establishment
of three recurrent meanings that were depicted by the narrative advertisements; sup-
port, efficiency and sustainability.

A sample of the six most representative advertisements was analysed, to develop an

initial set of codes, that were refined individually by the authors and later socialised.
This initial coding process served as the basis for the analysis of the entire adver-
tisement campaign. The narrative analysis was developed seeking for the narratives
structures employed, the characters, the temporality and the plot construction for
the advertisement campaigns. The authors independently coded the data and then
triangulated it to revise the first coding scheme, using a constant revision process
to establish robust constructs. This paper recognises that multiple interpretations
can emerge from the analysis of advertisements, however, a constant revision of the
constructs reduce the number of possible interpretations.

Research context
Between 2010 and 2011 Cisco was forced to redefine its business strategy after facing
share losses across several markets (Duffy, 2009). Growth in its core business was
reducing and the company also had to face that some of its ventures and acquisitions
were not as profitable as expected. Therefore, Cisco’s management team defined
and implemented a turnaround plan including the redefinition of the business core,
moving from being a product centred company toward a service centred company, in
order to capitalise the emerging opportunities brought by IoT.

This period was characterised by the re-invention of products and services offered,
bringing adjustments in company’s structure, the investments in R&D and new acqui-
sitions. Notwithstanding, in this process the company struggled to explain its strategy
to the world, making impossible to external stakeholders and clients to observe the
company’s vision. Therefore, the company choose to develop a new campaign. Ac-
cording to Blair Christie, CMO of Cisco, the first step was to rethink Cisco’s brand,
from a marketing perspective “the story has shifted toward the value of connections”
(Hesseldahl, 2012).

74
 Seeking for a differentiation of the competitors offer, the company opted to change
the generic name Internet of Things for Internet of Everything, implying that all hu-
man and non-human actors will be connected to Internet in some fashion, “from
helmets to ambulances to traffic lights”, achieving enhanced communications that
improve decision time and productivity. The new Cisco strategy was denominated
Tomorrow starts here, and it was globally released on December 2012 (Cisco, 2012).
It combined print, web, social, podcast and augmented reality apps. The develop-
ment of the new campaign served to align all the communication efforts with Cisco’s
strategy which centred its attention in IoT, turning Cisco into a service company in
the industrial sector. Table 4.2, presents the different stages of the campaign Tomor-
row starts here specifying the set of stories that formed each stage and their release
date.

Findings

In order to understand the narrative constructions used in the advertisements devel-

oped by Cisco, it is important to present each one of the sets of stories used in the
campaign “tomorrow starts here”. The first set of stories called tomorrow starts here
was released within 2012 and 2014 mainly, and it started with the anthem that ques-
tions the audience about “what if the next big thing isn’t a thing at all?” answering
that “it’s a lot of things, all waking up” that becomes part of the global phenomenon
of Internet of Things. Thus, the campaign used a narrative hook that attracts the
viewers to know more about the solutions presented by Cisco in which technology
is humanised, offering abilities to hear, to communicate, to understand, etc. This
anthem serves as a master narrative that presents the different scenarios in which
IoT can be employed and will be dissected and explored in detail in each one of the
following stories of this set of commercials. The following advertisements depict a
brighter and utopic future in which all things are connected to internet presenting a
seamless world without complications.

The successful customer cases stories were released throughout 2014 and presented
multiple stories with customers that have implemented some kind of IoT solution. The
tone of the narrative became more realistic and less fictional, placed in the present
time, thus, the narrative used a documentary style that mixed the storytelling with
argumentative explanations about the rate of growing populations in the cities, the
percentage advantages gained, etc. The stories showed the advantages that customers

75
had achieved since the implementation of the IoT solution. The customer cases
focused in the beginning in smart cities and moving at the end of the year to other
industrial sectors including; mining, hospitality and manufacturing.

The third set of stories was called the museum of the lasts and took place in
the near future, in which the temporal line was ambiguous, showing problems that
humanity faced nowadays such as traffic jams, product recalls or missing delivery
into a museum, positioning the story receiver in a future museum that examines the
past and how humanity overcome those issues thanks to the adoption and use of IoT
solutions. The final set of stories is denominated the next wave of the internet and
the focus vary to the security aspect of IoT, this set of stories responds to a market
situation in which in 2015 the security and the risk to have an interconnected world
could bring to different industries. Thus, the firm develops a series of advertisements
in which Cisco shows how hackers can attack companies and how Cisco is providing
security solutions that respond quickly to avoid information breaches. Finally, the
set of stories the next wave of the Internet, focus exclusively in security solutions
provided by Cisco and finally, the never better campaign continues with the narrative
but positioning the story receiver in the present time and focusing more on how IoT
is a technology that already exists and has been implemented in the last years.

The results of this research are divided into two sections. The first one presents
the recurrent narrative elements employed in the advertisements, showing which type
of stories were constructed and different narrative resources that Cisco resorted to
depict a market representation for the IoT technology market. The second section
focuses on the analysis of the meaning assignation portrayed through the narrative
advertisements, three major themes were found; support, efficiency and sustainability.

Narrative elements
Three narrative components appeared recurrently in the narrative advertisements of
the campaign “Tomorrow starts here”, the analysis of those elements (Epic narrative,
Temporal Ambivalence, Binary opposition) provides relevant information to under-
stand the role of the stories in the advertisement campaign, showing how the firm
positions itself in relation to the story and the market.

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Epic narrative

The initial point to analyse a story is to establish under which typology the narrative
has been created, this helps to understand the purpose and the narrative arc that
the story will follow. Gabriel (2000) identified four modes of story or “generic poetic
modes”; comic, tragedy, epic and romantic. The epic narrative focuses on agency, por-
traying a heroic character that goes through a series of challenges in order to restore
balance or resolve a conflict. Thus, the epic narrative focuses on the achievements of
the hero, becoming a heroic centred narrative.

Cisco employs the epic narrative presenting an alternate future in which the world
is fully interconnected and humanity has reached an utopic and brighter future thanks
to the adoption of IoT technology, showing a new societal model in which problems
that humanity faces nowadays have disappeared. Cisco positions the adopters of the
technology as the heroes, as the world is interconnected in this futuristic scenario the
human race is the heroic character.

The narrative uses four main characters; the hero, the helper, the magical tool and
the narrator. The hero is represented by the adopters of IoT, creating a story centred
in the customers rather than in the company. By doing so, the character of Cisco
becomes secondary and the focus of the story is in the heroic quest, exploring the
challenges that the main character went through, showing the early benefits and how
the hero was able to obtain the magical tool that permits to achieve the utopic future
presented. Depending on the set of advertisements the hero is a particular client or
an industrial setting or the entire humanity. In the “tomorrow starts here” story set
the hero is represented by the humanity that has decided to create an interconnected
world that decides to adopt IoT, in “successful customer cases” the hero is represented
by particular companies or cities that have engaged in the adoption of IoT solutions.
This characters distribution is also found in the campaigns of IBM, and SAP in
which the narrative is customer centred and the firms become a helper in their path
to digitalisation.

The helper or guide is incarnated by Cisco, which presents itself as a partner that
is able to guide the hero in his quest, showing multiple solutions that can be used
to solve the challenges. Thus, the company became an ally that goes together in the
process of adopting IoT solutions, being relegated to a secondary character within
the narrative. This is evident in the story set of “successful customer cases” in which
representatives from the companies or the cities recognise the importance of working

77
with Cisco, this is the case of Sinclair Holdings, where its president, Faruk Aslam
express that “working with Cisco, has open my eyes to the unlimited possibilities out
there to connect various building functions”.

The magical tool is the representation of IoT solutions, the technology developed
by the helper is introduced to the hero as the tool that will help to restore balance
and overcome all the challenges. Furthermore, the technology provides magical abil-
ities to in-animated objects (communication, forecasting, suggestion, etc) creating
connections among them to establish an interconnected world free of the problems
and smarter “the banana anticipated the earliest harvest, which told the servers to
alert the trucks, and they arrange the new delivery time with the supermarket chain,
which put the current stock of bananas on sale. So the shopping cart just to be extra
helpful, suggested a delicious dessert recipe” (Banana story).

Finally, the narrator plays a crucial role in the narrative advertisements developed
by Cisco, the narrative uses as Genette (1988) called a heterodiegetic narrator which is
an omnipresent narrator who is not a character in the story; nevertheless, it seems like
he or she knows everything about the story and the characters. The narrator carefully
drives the story receiver’s through the unveiled events, connecting the characters, the
actions and the technologies in a coherent and articulated plot that enact the imagery
of the narrative and reduce the possibility that the story receiver loses the focus in
what the story pretend to highlight. Thus, the narrator’s role is vital to create
boundaries for the story and the meaning assignation from the story receiver.

Ambivalence in temporal narrative structures

Cisco deconstructs linear time to facilitate transportation to a brighter utopic future.

Time references are absent and present, past and future collapse. The utopian world
described by Cisco becomes inevitable giving the story receiver a sense of natural and
logical evolution, regardless of people’s resistance. At a metalevel, the destructuration
of the usual linear timeline places Cisco as a master of time, conferring the company
magical and/or divine powers.

Using this resource, the plot of the advertisements does not follow the traditional
beginning, middle and end (BME) style, on the contrary, the campaign starts in
the end of the story, showing the final result of a world that has fully adopted IoT
technology. Thus, Cisco is able to transport the story receivers to different alternative
realities positioned in different times, playing with a brighter future that can be

78
reached only in the present, or showing the past placed in a museum settled in the
future. Using flashbacks and flashforwards the narrative is able to travel to the
future and returns to the present or the past to illustrate the benefits of the adoption
of technological solutions.

Throughout the campaign, Cisco explores the quest that the hero goes through to
reach that utopic future. Using diverse fictional and realistic scenarios placed in the
past time. By doing so, the narrative advertisements are able to present the diverse
challenges that humanity overcame (traffic jams, long ques, product recalls, missing
deliveries) in diverse industrial settings. This is evident in the set of stories “the
museum of the lasts” present in detail the challenges that humanity faced nowadays
“The traffic jam, scourge of twenty century city life, razor of blood pressure, disruptor
of supply chains, stealer of bedtime stories, polluted, frustrated, time thief” ending
with the introduction of the solution “Cisco is building the Internet of Everything to
connected cities today that will confine the traffic jam to yesterday”.

Likewise, the narrative examines the beginning of the utopic world showing the
origins of the utopic world through the lenses of “successful customer cases” that
occurred in the present time of the story receiver (2015). The narrative leaves behind
its fictional tone and moves to a documentary style. The advertisements of “successful
customer cases” present the challenges that real customers have experience and how
the IoT adoption has brought benefits to their businesses. By using the realistic
cases, the story receiver understands that the technology is already functional and it
is endorsed by recognised brands or governments.

Binary opposition

This resource is predominant in the narrative arc, Lévi-Strauss (1967) argues that
the opposition of the binary forces (good versus bad, hero versus the villain, new
versus old, etc) is necessary to drive forward the narrative, becoming the aim of
the main character to restore the balance lost. In Cisco’s campaign, the binary
opposition occurs between the good and the bad represented by the future and the
past. The past incarnates the negative connotations, showing a dark and inarticulate
world with a lack of connection between human activities and devices that generate
traffic jams, product recalls and long queue waits, problems that impact efficiency
and steal time. In contrast, the future is highly connected and allows communication
between devices to anticipate human difficulties and to provide support and efficient
responses. This has repercussions on the sustainability of the utopic future where

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everyone lives calmly, without stress and together in an articulated way with the
others, turning the problems of the past into a remembrance of other times. In this
utopic scenario the balance has been restored and the past only remains as scenes
exhibited in the museums. By doing this comparison other binary oppositions are
presented in the narratives,for example the idea of new versus old, where new is
represented by highly technology scenarios, while old is incarnated by non-technology
or old fashion technology scenes.

This opposition is showed visually as well, thus the tonalities of the advertise-
ments changed according to the diverse scenarios showed in the advertisements. The
colours palette employed in the story set of “the museum of the lasts” are darker,
using grey cold tonalities to represent a sad and complicated era, emphasising human
expressions of desperation, sadness and stress. Reinforcing the idea that the past was
a darker era that possesses negative implications. Meanwhile, the future is colourful,
brighter and visually appealing, showing a future that is mostly shinning with blue
sky, depicting the future as simple but warmer and approachable. Likewise, the mu-
sic is an important element that facilitates the story receiver transportation into the
narrative advertisements, thus, the past has a depressive music, played by classical
tones of string elements and emphasising the annoying noises of the problems that
mankind faced. On the contrary, the future and the customer cases present a more
dynamic and happy music that hide sounds from the environment, reinforcing the
idea of the brighter future without problems.

The meaning behind the narratives

The case of Cisco elucidates how narratives are used to develop fictional scenarios
aiming to facilitate the understanding and convince the story receivers of the uses
and benefits of IoT solutions. Thus, the narrative advertisement has as an end the
meaning assignation in the story receivers minds by showing possible scenarios in
which the technology can operate, unravelling the interrelations and interactions be-
tween the technology and the actors involved, focusing on presenting a new model
of society and lifestyle which seems like a natural progression and evolution of the
human race. In that way, the narrative reinforces specific ideas that allow the audi-
ence to assign meanings to the technology. The narrative shows three major themes:
support, efficiency and sustainability.

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IoT to support human activities

The technology’s role in humanity is central in the narratives, depicting a technology

that works together with humans rather than replaces them. The advertisements
show how IoT is providing new capabilities to inanimate objects that facilitate tasks,
from easy and regular ones such as brewing the coffee to complex ones as forecast
medical treatments for injured patients or predicting variability in supply chains. The
temporal ambivalence proposed within the narrative enact the transportation of the
story receiver to multiple scenarios in which Cisco depict a futuristic world in which
the technology has been fully implemented showing the entire capabilities of IoT if
the entire world adopts those solutions. Likewise, recreates in the present how the
technology is changing the way in which diverse industries are managed.

In the set of advertisements “re-imagining businesses”, the narrative depicts the

same story in three different context; manufacturing, financial services and retail
business. Thus, the story shows the difficulties to digitalise an industry “to pull
this off, we need to upgrade our infrastructure, so it will do more than just connect
everything. It will understand the data, security, analytics and automation have to be
embedded in the infrastructure. Think of it as a foundation, it will give you everything
and more in less than have of the time”, showing how IoT will support and enhance
each one of those industries to reach new goals and providing new business models
for organisations “as all the systems talk each other, we can predict any variance
in inventory and demand and make adjustments in real time, minimising impact on
production”. By doing so, the advertisement reinforces the advantages and benefits
that a fictional company can obtain with the adoption of IoT solutions.

Only in few cases (e.g. dangerous jobs), it is shown that the technology is replacing
human tasks. However, in these advertisements, the story framed the technology
under the idea of safety and security, showing that technology will occupy jobs that
are dangerous and can attempt against human lives. Thus, the story occurs in a
copper mine “everyday they put twelve thousand explosives in the ground and send
half a million rocks into the air. Back then we drive straight into those blast sides.
But now, out trucks drive itself. There is never been a better time to make dangerous
jobs safer”. Using safety of human lives the idea of machines taking human jobs is
neutralised, diminishing the negative conception that technology will replace humans
in jobs.

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 More realistic stories with current customers show how those fictional scenarios
depicted in the narratives are becoming a reality. Thus, the advertisement shows the
problems that the company faces and how Cisco and IoT technology are contributing
to tackle those issues that serve in the present and create the basis for a utopic
future. In the case of smart cities, Manel Sanroma CIO of Barcelona city shows how
city digitalisation is improving citizens lives “we want to tackle problems of the city
with technology, putting sensors in parking spots allow us to get less cars, less traffic,
people happy, so that the city becomes a more liveable place”.

One important aspect is the preferential treatment to complex problems using

metaphorical representations that appeal to the collective consciousness to create
associations between the complex situation and the metaphor presented Cornelissen
et al. (2011). In that way, the metaphor contributes to making sense of the technology
benefits while simplify a complex subject. This is well illustrated in the set of stories of
“Never better”, where an advertising present how security is developed and employed
in Cisco solutions through the use of metaphors “You can’t stop every security attack,
no one can. Try asking a seal to stop a shark attack, lights out seal, that shark is
still going to attack. What if you teach the seal how the shark thinks, where it hunts,
where its kids go to school, then the seal has the advantage”.

IoT to enhance efficiency

The narratives depict continuously the enhancement in efficiency that IoT will bring
to industries and their impacts on mankind. The advertisements present how IoT
will permit to achieve maximum productivity in diverse industrial scenarios by inter-
connecting objects and humans to Internet “cars will talk to road sensors, will talk
to stoplights about traffic efficiency” (Anthem Tomorrow starts here). The term of
efficiency is explored in a broader way showing consequences of this technology in
terms of immediate changes (big data analysis, centralised management, preventive
repairing, among others). While shows a futuristic and utopic scenario that portray
new society model in which efficiency has been achieved in every aspect of human
life.

By starting the campaign in a futuristic scenario, the narrative established an

image of the desired future envisioned by Cisco. An interconnected future, in which
every object provides relevant insights that contribute to improve the management
of industries (logistics, transportation, manufacturing, retail, cities, etc.) Thus, the

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narrative becomes a representation of what the world should be and how the tech-
nology is the primordial tool to achieve it. Some of the advertisements (Circle story,
Storm and Skater) presents a wide perspective of how multiple actors interact daily
to deliver efficiently their products and services in an interconnected world where IoT
is fully adopted.

Real customer cases strengthen this vision by presenting how IoT is improving
their businesses, for example, Faruk Aslam, president of Sinclair Holdings said “once
we had everything connected on a network, then we can do wonders with it. We
can build a central monitoring system from energy management to guest room au-
tomation. To enhance that feeling of a luxury hotel we emphasised on technology”.
Likewise, cities as Chicago highlight the importance of IoT for smart cities, Brenna
Berman, CIO of the City of Chicago argues that “there’s a lot of areas in city ser-
vices, where predictive analytics can help us to be more efficient and effective”. The

narrative of “the museum of the lasts” is designed to emphasise the main difficulties
that mankind and industries face nowadays. Showing, in that way, the main aspects
where industries can lose efficiency and profitability. Thus, illustrating scenarios
where customers need to face long waits, traffic jams, missing deliveries or product
recalls in which industries loss efficiency and profitability, showing where IoT can be
helpful for industries. “The product recall, breaker of gleaming promises, destroyer
of reputations, dealer in danger and disappointment, fire-starter, party breaker and
one day soon we will see the last one ever. Cisco is connecting the Internet of Ev-
erything, building solutions for manufacturing today that will confine the product
recall to yesterday” (The last product recall). Furthermore, the negative stories of
these advertisements are linked to the emotional consequences that customer faces in
this kind of scenarios and showing IoT as the available solution to solve them. Thus,
the story attempt to transport to the story receiver to close scenarios and create an
emotional connection with the situations presented.

Broadly speaking, by assigning the meaning of efficiency to IoT, the narrative per-
mit to create a rational hook for potential customers that are interested in improving
their operations. The concept of efficiency is presented as broader as possible, so sim-
ple tasks can be understood as an efficiency enhancement. Furthermore, the narrative
tries to create an emotional link that shows how customers life can be improved by
adopting IoT and making more profitable industrial operations.

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IoT to obtain sustainability

The third theme found in the narrative of the advertisements is the idea that IoT will
permit the creation of a more sustainable world. The word sustainable is understood
in a broader context that embeds not only environmental sustainability but also
social and economic aspects, which are translated in the well-being of citizens. This
idea of overall sustainability is recurrently presented in the customer stories related
to the development of smart cities. “getting information on the flow of citizens,
on noise, on pollution, on traffic, on weather conditions allows cities to streamline
the city operations, reduce costs and also improve overall sustainability, economic
sustainability, social sustainability and environmental sustainability” (Anil Menon
- President of smart+connected communities of Cisco. Successful customer cases
Barcelona). Thus, Cisco depicts a more liveable city “smart cities represent places
where people will want to live by connecting the unconnected, cities will be completely
transformed” (Successful customer cases Milan). And through the use of realistic
scenarios is able to translate the idea of a technology that serves to the people to
obtain a better life quality, “Hamburg is very keen with the smart city concept to
improve quality of life for the citizens, but also to create an environment where
they can stimulate innovation, generate economic value and competitive advantages”
(Michael Ganser - VP Cisco for Central Europe. Successful customer cases Hamburg).
Additionally, representatives from the city endorse this idea, providing likelihood to
the story. For example, Cristina Tajani, from the municipality of Milan said “the
idea is to leave behind a city that is more digital, more intelligent, more inclusive and
more accessible”.

Likewise, the narrative intents to restore the relationship between technology and
nature, showing that technology can support initiatives that help to reduce climate
change or animal extinction “trees will talk to networks, will talk to scientists about
climate change” (Tomorrow starts here, Anthem). The advertisements of “connected
conservation” show how Cisco has created in alliance with Dimension Data an inte-
grated network of sensors and devices that provides a centralised management for a
natural reserve of rhinos placed in South Africa, arguing that until the appearance
of IoT the efforts to stop rhino poaching have been unsuccessful and only this tech-
nology has provided the tools to act proactively against hunters and save rhino lives
“Dimension Data and Cisco has come to the party and they’ve made things avail-
able to us that we’ve never thought possible” (David Powrie, Warden - Connected
conservation). This narrative connects at more emotional level with the audience by

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presenting the massive problem of poaching “we are losing three a day, one every
eight hours which is a massive number. If we continue at the rate we go, by 2025
rhino will be extinct, which is a desperate situation” (Bruce Watson, Group executive
dimension data - Connected conservation). Additionally, it brings the Rhino as part
of the African cultural heritage “the Rhino is one of the big five and it forms part of
my African heritage” (connected conservation).

Thus, the use of IoT permits to improve sustainability at social and environmental
levels, which, to certain extent, defies the idea presented by Kozinets (2008) of Green
Luddite where the technology consumption is considered as a destroyer of the nature
and the traditions. The narrative advertising tries to show how technology can be used
to preserve animals from extinction, but at the same time serves as a tool to preserve
the traditions and the African heritage. One important aspect of these advertisements
is that the technology solutions to achieve sustainability are not exclusive of IoT, but
it is the result of multiple technologies acting together in which IoT permits the
intercommunication of all the devices and provides relevant data in a simple way to
analyse and be able to make well-informed decisions which are translated in smarter
and wiser decisions for organisations and cities that impact the well-being of citizens
or protect the lives of animals in danger of extension.

The sustainability theme resonates with the other themes (support and efficiency)
because it demonstrates how technology is providing different tools that support
human activities, improving processes and efficiency of companies and cities that
impact directly or indirectly the life quality of citizens, providing in that way a path
to create a more sustainable world. In that sense, the three themes permit a guided
meaning assignation that is continuously reinforced through the entire campaign.

Discussion
The advertising campaign developed by Cisco confirms the use of narratives in the
industrial context, possessing similar characteristics to narrative advertising created
in the consumer context (Padgett and Allen, 1997; Van Laer et al., 2014; Kim et al.,
2017) with a clear narrative structure that includes characters, plot and verisimili-
tude. Similarly to the consumer context, the industrial narrative advertisements of
Cisco aims to create an emotional connection with the story receiver (Lynch and
De Chernatony, 2004), appealing to the problems of everyday life and the ideal of
an utopic future. Three elements of the narrative advertising were presented in the

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Cisco’s campaign; (1) an empathetic process, (2) a transportation to the narrative
world and (3) the mental stimulation for meaning assignation. These elements are
aligned with the current research on narrative advertising and branding.

The campaign seeks to create empathy with the story receiver by developing a
narrative that depicts an everyday life in different moments in time. Using futuristic
scenarios in “tomorrow starts here”, the narrative is able to depict a utopic future
without problems, a future where everything is interconnected through IoT, invit-
ing the audience to imagine a seamless world that humanity can reach if adopt IoT
technology. Likewise, the series of advertising called “the museum of the last” appeal
to quotidian problems that people face as part of everyday life (traffic jams, missing
delivery, product recall, etc) that affect organisations and individuals. Nevertheless,
the narrative relates those situations to intimate situations that people face as a con-
sequence of those main problems, phrases as “stealer of bedtime stories” demonstrate
the desire of the narrative to connect at the personal level with the story receiver.
Additionally, the use of real customer cases grants to the narrative a realistic aspect
that permits to industrial buyers to see the uses and benefits of IoT in diverse in-
dustrial settings endorsed by important firms or cities, which facilitate the audience
to be immersed into the narrative. The use of narrative advertising and the desire
of Cisco to create emotional bonds with the audience demonstrate the interest of the
firm to forge a deep cultural connection (Holt, 2004). The illustration of a new utopic
society and lifestyle, position Cisco as a future maker and a myth creator. Therefore,
brand management can be understood as the continuous construction and assemblage
of narratives (Shankar et al., 2001).

Furthermore, the structuring of the narrative under the typology of epic narra-
tive permits the creation of a narrative arc that depict the quest of a hero to restore
or achieve the balance, creating the basis for the plot and the characters that exist
in the story (hero, helper, magical tool, villain) (Gabriel, 2000). Cisco’s narrative
advertising positions the audience as the hero that receives the call to overcome the
challenges and reach an utopic interconnected future. By doing so, the narrative cre-
ates a dramatic narrative that produces higher levels of empathy, enhancing positive
responses towards the advertising and the brand (Escalas and Stern, 2003). Thus,
the transportation effect is achieved through the creation and interconnection of a
coherent plot, recognisable characters and plausible story (Green and Brock, 2000;
Van Laer et al., 2014). The development of recognisable characters as the creation of

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a customer centred story permits to the audience the generation of an empathy link
for the story and for the characters (Escalas, 2004a; Busselle and Bilandzic, 2008).

The third relevant aspect found was the capability of the narrative advertisements
to embed symbolic representations within the stories presented, in which the story
receiver plays an active role in the unravelling of the meanings decoded in the adver-
tisements. Hence, the advertisements operate as socio-political artefacts that portray
specific meanings to create representations in which the audience must participate in
a co-creation process of meaning assignation (Garland et al., 2013). Thus, the brand
stories provide the opportunity to portrait how consumer can use the products while
the story receiver is able to assign meanings in an entertaining and engaging way
(Singh and S., 2012). This study shows three recurrent meanings that Cisco tries to
create through the narrative advertisements.

The three concepts (support, efficiency and sustainability) exist in an ongoing

interaction which reinforce each other, presenting a new model of society and lifestyle
which seems like a natural progression and evolution of the human race. In that
sense, the narrative depicts a technological determinism Croteau and William (2003),
determining that IoT and the technological advances brought by this technology are
primordial for a societal change. However the narrative oversimplifies the complexity
and the challenges that IoT could bring to society, ignoring, or at least not present-
ing, any of the possible technological paradoxes Mick and Fournier (1998). Likewise,
the advertisements only provide a positive site for the technology representation in
which contradictory ideological positions presented by Kozinets (2008) are nonexis-
tent. For example, the Green Luddite or destruction of the nature (environmental
and cultural) is addressed in the advertisements of “connected conservation” by show-
ing how technology is contributing to animal preservation and sheltering the African
cultural heritage. Likewise, as the stories are developed in the industrial context, the
technology consumption as a pleasure is not a component required in the advertising.
However, it is shown how technology facilitates and enhances life quality, making
quotidian tasks more enjoyable.

The customer cases are a clear representation of how the three meanings are con-
nected to present tangible advantages of the benefits offered by the technology while
combining narrative and argumentative explanations in one advertising. The narra-
tive advertisements allows the introduction of real facts and statistics that offer a
sense of realism. Cisco embeds in the cases the technology as a support tool that

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permits to take smarter decisions based on real-time data and analysis instruments
which enhance the efficiency of the firm and the overall sustainability of the com-
panies and the environment. In the cases of smart cities the narrative emphasises
the role of technology to create a sustainable city in a broader context. Thus, the
narrative permits that the story receiver co-create the meaning of sustainability. As
aforementioned, the smart city concept aims to create a sustainable city that enacts
innovation, economic development, well-being of the citizens and reduction of con-
tamination. The combination of narrative and argumentative explanations within
an advertising provides a robust description about the benefits of IoT adoption and
how the technology can be integrated into the business strategy. By reinforcing the
meanings in the narrative of real cases that occurs in the present, the vision of the
firm presented in the fictional scenarios acquire plausibility.

Despite the acknowledgement that multiple meanings can be elicited by the audi-
ence, the narratives provide a frame in which the story receiver can navigate, estab-
lishing clear boundaries that reduce the possibilities to create new meanings towards
the technology. The narrator fulfils an important role in guiding the story receiver
towards the meanings that the firm and the advertisements expect. The meanings
depicted in the narratives are created as a coherent and integral piece in which each
one of the advertisements reinforces the meanings that have been presented from the
beginning. In that sense, the narratives are interlinked by a master narrative, or a
narrative composed by multiple stories (Stephens and McCallum, 1998), permitting
a continuous and coherent meaning assignation in the audience mind throughout the
advertisement campaign.

The narratives are responsive to changes in the market, showing its plastic abilities
to adapt to different situations in the market, addressing diverse topics or counter
argumentations, generated by doubts or mistrust towards the technology and the
vision of a fully interconnected world proposed by Cisco. In the case of IoT, security
has been a big concern for customers. To counteract those doubts the firm developed
the series of advertisements “The next wave of internet” portraying diverse situations
in which hackers attempt to steal information but the security solutions act efficiently
and provide the support to avoid a leak of information. Thus, the narrative is reactive
to the market situations, understanding and creating new meanings that respond to
the market needs.

Despite that this analysis presents two aspects: narrative elements and meaning
assignation, both elements are fully interconnected and they can not exist one without

88
the other. The structuring of an advertisement campaign that resorts to narrative
elements permits the meaning assignation and the construction of meanings from the
audience. In alignment with the definition of Weick (1995), the use of narratives
allows the assignation of meanings toward the story presented, contributing to make
sense of the new technology and the network of elements and actors that are embedded
in the narrative advertisements.

Thus, the employment of an epic narrative allows to have a customer centred

narrative in which the main actor of the narrative is the customer, and the technology
which is the magical tool provides new capabilities, which are conceived as meanings
by the story receiver. Likewise, the epic narrative provides the possibility to see
the hero’s quest and how it goes through different challenges, which in the Cisco’s
advertisements are presented in the customer cases, and ending in a utopic future in
which the balance has been restored thanks to the magical tool and the guidance of
Cisco in the quest of digitalization.

Finally, we consider that the narrative advertising provides a wider explanation of

how the product operates. By presenting IoT in multiple industrial scenarios, the ad
provides an explanation of the technology’s scope, the possible advantages that can
be obtained, the technology requirements that companies need to maximise the ad-
vantages given by IoT, the interrelations with other actors involved in the process and
the link with the strategy. By employing case stories of firms that endorse the use of
IoT, Cisco is able to create a more plausible market representation that promotes not
only the product but also the firm’s vision of an interconnected world. The customer
cases provide a sense of realism and validate the utopic future scenarios proposed
in the narrative. In this sense, the narrative advertising creates an hyperreality, in
which reality is not only reproduced but also improved (Eco, 1986), contributing to
the development and meaning assignations in a social process of market construc-
tion (Rinallo and Golfetto, 2006). Thus, the narrative advertising contributes to the
creation of market representations that present a tellable story (Simakova and Ney-
land, 2008), providing a simplified explanation of what the market is (Diaz Ruiz and
Kowalkowski, 2014) and depicting how the technology fits strategically in the current
industrial context.

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Contributions and further research
This study contributes to understand the role of the narrative in the industrial adver-
tisement at two different levels. First, it shows the structure of the narrative employed
by a technology firm, showing how different narrative elements are embedded in the
construction of the narrative advertisements not only to create a narrative hook and
make more interesting the story presented but also to create a narrative that is able
to create a market representation that provides a simplified explanation of the market
for the new technology and how it fits in the current industrial context. The narrative
advertisements permit to create a coherent story that explores how the technology
can be used in diverse industrial contexts and its potential advantages.

The use of an epic narrative that is customer centred also shows how technology
companies want to be positioned in the market. The advertisements of three technol-
ogy firms were analysed showing similar narrative construction in which they resort
to the epic narrative in which they position their company as a helper rather than the
centre of the narrative. The increasing use of narratives as part of the communication
efforts delivered by technology companies shows a growing interest to connect with
the customer at an emotional level, challenging the traditional concept that industrial
buyers respond better to expository or argumentative advertisements. What it is oc-
curring in the industrial advertisement is a mixture between a rational and emotional
connection that permits to engage with the organisations but at the same with the
people inside those companies.

The second contribution of this paper is related to the role of the narratives in
embedding symbolic material that is decoded by the story receiver, permitting the
assignation of meanings towards the technology presented in the advertisement. The
analysis shows three recurrent themes that are depicted in the narratives which are
implicitly embedded within the narratives. By showing a futuristic scenario, the
firm is making a statement about its vision and how they want the technology be
understood. In that sense, the narrative advertisement counts with additional tools
rather than expository advertisements.

Thus, the narrative advertisement is able to create a market representation that

not only shows how the market operates but also how the technology is applied and
the benefits obtained in different industrial contexts, the technological requirements
and the interrelations between actors and existent resources. In the same way, the

90
narrative is able to develop meanings that respond to counter argumentations that
emerge as a social process of the introduction of a new product in the market.

The development of this study permits to understand how Cisco has structured
the narratives, showing how the selection of a narrative type guides the structure of
the plot and the type of characters and their role. Likewise, the article shows other
narrative elements that can enhance the advertising and create more engaging content.
Furthermore, the practitioners can understand how other firms in the technology
sector are able to assign meanings towards the technology by using advertising. Thus,
this paper offer guides to practitioners to develop industrial narrative advertising that
permits to connect at an emotional level, increasing the engagement of the audience,
which can be translated in the adoption or buying of products.

This study posses multiple limitations that present an offspring of further research.
First, it is limited to the technology industry, which makes that the results are not
generalised to other industries. Likewise, the number of advertisements analysed, ap-
proximately 70 taking into account the three firms, propose a challenge for the claim
that narrative advertisements are growing and gaining terrain in traditional industrial
advertisements. The robustness of the findings could be improved by collecting addi-
tional advertisements from other industries over time. Second, the study is limited to
television advertisements. Further studies could study the different mediums used by
firms, seeking to understand if the firms continue using narratives in other contexts
and how they are able to orchestrate a transmedia narrative Scolari (2009).

Future studies could examine the effect of the narrative advertisement in managers
and see if that contributes to the adoption of the technology, the meaning assignation
or the creation of a network picture. Possible extensions of this work could involve
the understanding of the relationship of the narration in market creation and other
market practices (exchange and normalisation).

In summary, this study shows the role of narrative in the industrial advertisement
as a tool that permits to create market representations that offer a simplified view
of how the technology and the market operates. Furthermore, the case in use is one
of the multiple efforts that have been developed to humanise industrial marketing
efforts, the use of narrative resources as irony and humour to sell new technology is
a proof of that, blurring the line that divides b2b and b2c advertisement.

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 Tomorrow starts here campaign
Stories set Name of the video Release date
Tomorrow starts here Anthem December 2012
Typical day May 2013
Banana May 2013
Weekend warrior June 2013
Concert August 2013
New years eve December 2013
Circle Story January 2014
Storm April 2014
Skater June 2014
Let’s build tomorrow today February 2015

Successful Customer Cases Barcelona January 2014

Chicago September 2014
Milan October 2014
Hamburg October 2014
Sinclair Holdings December 2014
T-Mobile Arena December 2014
AWNC manufacturer December 2014
Barrick Gold December 2014

The Museum of the lasts The last traffic jam January 2015
The last product recall April 2015
The last long queue April 2015
The last missed delivery April 2015

The next wave of the

Competitor June 2015
Internet
Hackers June 2015
Online factory June 2015
Work from anywhere June 2015
Launch the app June 2015

Never Better Anthem May 2016

Security May 2016
Crisis response May 2016
Dangerous Jobs May 2016
Smart Cities April 2016
Connected Conservation June 2016
Pep Talk June 2016
Re-imagining businesses July 2016

Table 4.2: Timeline of story sets developed by Cisco

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4.2 Summary 2nd essay - Narrative strategies and
B2B technology brands

The objective of the second study is to understand the orchestration of the narratives
created throughout the market shaping process. By developing an analysis of the flow
of the narratives of technology firms (Cisco and IBM) in diverse scenarios (advertising,
blogs, white papers, public speeches, selling discourses, podcasts), it was possible to
observe how the narrative evolves at the same peace of the market, going through
the different market practices: representation, exchange and normalisation, granting
the development of a coherent discourse at all the interaction points between the firm
and the customers. The study was developed in a period of four years (2012 to 2016)
showing how the narratives were important to create a representation of the market
in which meaning is assigned and the technology identity is constructed (Shankar
et al., 2001; Ahuvia, 2005; Giesler, 2008). Thus, the narrative serves as a tool in
representation practices that allows to explain the purpose and the benefits of the
technology while creates an identity for the market.

The data gathered presented the use of the narratives as part of the discourse em-
ployed in strategic and selling instances, where the interviewee resorts to the narrative
developed as part of the representational practice and adapted to the local context
to exemplify and clarify the benefits of IoT in the context of a smart city. Thus, the
initial narrative structure is preserved, adapted to the local context, contributing to
transport the story receiver into the narrative, while shows expertise with the product
that permits the establishment of a bond between the firm and the potential customer
(Gilliam and Flaherty, 2015). Despite the context, the narrative allows the creation
of a coherent link between the market representation developed in previous stages
and the practices of exchange. Therefore, the narrative adapts to these exchange
practices, being adaptable to the buyer’s context.

Likewise, firms resort to narratives in an effort to normalise and stabilise the

market. Therefore, cases studies are developed and communicated through with
papers, podcasts and public speeches. These cases present realistic scenarios about
the implementation of the technology and the benefits obtained in those companies
that adopt the technology. Thus, the narrative evolves to become a tool that enables
legitimacy among actors by generating regulations, routines and habits. In that sense,
the narrative acts as an element of normalisation practices that enact the shaping of
the market and the technology appropriation.

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 This study approaches this phenomenon from a branding perspective, analysing
the importance of narratives in the shaping of markets. It has been previously ac-
knowledged that market construction can be understood as a branding mediated
process (Giesler, 2012), permitting to resolve the research question of how narrative
strategies are orchestrated and the implications of the narrative approach to under-
stand the market evolution of industrial firms.

The goal of this study was to analyse the global orchestration of narrative-based
strategies for brands. By examining the cases of IBM and Cisco, we have shown
that the narrative world of brands is composed of multiple stories that circulate
in the socio-cultural sphere. Thus, the use of a transmedia strategy implies the
re-creation of the narratives rather than an adaptation of the narratives from one
media to the other. This research brought two contributions: first, to understand
and to show the global orchestration of the narrative world of the brand. It echoes
and complements existing works on branding advocating for a renewed approach to
branding (e.g. Diamond et al., 2009; Visconti, 2010). However, this study goes further
by showing how with the use of transmedia and narratives, brands can orchestrate
a gestalt, a multilogue or a polyphony while preserving a coherence and avoiding
the rigidity of dominant branding models. The second contribution is related to
the concept of transmedia, showing that cross-channel communication or integrated
marketing communication can be understood in terms of re-creation and alignment
of the narratives. At the managerial level, the identification of a metanarrative, the
development of multiple stories with a variation on a limited number of components
for specific media and with particular goals can be a roadmap for any manager in the
industrial context willing to embrace a narrative strategy for its brand.

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4.2.1 Essay 2 - Narrative strategies and B2B technology brands

Abstract
With the rise of digital media and content marketing, B2B technology firms increas-
ingly use narratives in their marketing strategy. If research has studied the impact of
narrative on audiences, the structuration of the narrative strategies is still an over-
looked area. The purpose of this paper is to understand the structuration of narrative
strategies. Authors studied the cases of narratives on the IoT produced by two lead-
ing technology firms, IBM and Cisco, between 2012 and 2016. The research highlights
the importance of metanarratives as the core of the structuration of seemingly differ-
ent contents. It also shows how firms tap into fundamental mythic archetypes and
broader sociocultural narratives to try and legitimate the emerging technology.

The results of the research may encourage firms to use more narrative branding
strategies. They also offer directions for the key elements to manage when elaborating
a narrative strategy (defining key metanarratives, identifying and using broader socio-
cultural narratives, designing a transmedia strategy). And contributes to research on
B2B branding and digital branding by bringing narrative into B2B branding research.

Keywords: Narratives, Metanarratives, Transmedia, Artificial Intelligence, In-

ternet of Things, B2B, Technology brands.

Introduction
“Job position: Marketing Storyteller – Digital Story.
Company: Cisco France.
Job Description: [...] You will create engaging content which communicates our story
and drives awareness and demand in France.”

(Job Opportunity, posted on Cisco website, February 2017).

Like Cisco in the example above, technology firms (e.g. General Electric, In-
tel, IBM, Boeing) increasingly go beyond traditional functional or emotional-based
communication strategies and use narrative to legitimize and institutionalize their
technology products and markets. The ability to design compelling narratives is also
an important way for smaller businesses to create an identity and attract investors

95
(Wallnöfer and Hacklin, 2013; Törmälä and Gryd-Jones, 2017). Brands are central
assets for business firms (Seyedghorban et al., 2016), but understanding of the role of
narratives in branding strategies is still limited. The rare investigations have tended
to focus on the impact of narratives on, and their use by, audiences (Lowe and Hwang,
2012; Wallnöfer and Hacklin, 2013; Gilliam and Flaherty, 2015). Simakova and Ney-
land (2008) proposed a rare foray into the issue of narrative making in a B2B context.
But they concentrate on the content of one dominant story. In other words, research
on narratives has mostly taken a “molecular” approach, focusing on one story or one
specific medium, often digital. Narratives are studied as a component of a specific
advertising content. This focus fails to offer a comprehensive view of how the multiple
elements making a narrative are combined, and of the overall structure of narrative
strategies.

The central questions of our research are: how is a narrative strategy structured?
What are the constituents of a narrative strategy, and how are they assembled? What
are the implications of a narrative approach for brands?

To address these questions, we study the case of two high-technology companies,

often cited as exemplary in their use of narratives: Cisco and IBM. We start by
presenting the conceptual background of this research, drawing from branding and
narrative theories. We then detail our case study methodology. Following this, we
detail two main results of our analysis: the creation of a rhizomatic narrative world,
by simple variations on a single basic metanarrative; and the use of transmedia strat-
egy, with a continuous and independent creation of narratives, unlike the adaptation
perspective that prevails in branding theory.

Conceptual Background
Brands and narratives
Branding theories are evolving, and several scholars have highlighted the limitations
of the so-called dominant “strategic brand management” approach and the benefits
of a sociocultural approach incorporating narratives.
The first evolution proposes that brands are not merely conveyors of benefits,
either functional or emotional (Leek and Christodoulides, 2011). They are also pur-
veyors of meaning, which helps people or organization make sense of events and
negotiate identities, especially when they experience tensions or contradictions (Holt,

96
2002; Diamond et al., 2009). Another evolution is the recognition that brand meaning
is constructed by and negotiated with multiple stakeholders. The monolithic, author-
itative model of brand building and management should leave room for branding as
a “gestalt” and brand management as “multilogue” and “continuous stabilisation”
(Stevens and Maclaran, 2007; Diamond et al., 2009; Visconti, 2010; Törmälä and
Gryd-Jones, 2017).

Thus, branding should be approached as a myth-making process, in which brands

are cultural narrators (Holt, 2003; Visconti, 2010; Woodside, 2010). This conceptual
evolution is recent, and research in B2B is rare. While the narrative approach is be-
ginning to gain support, this does not concern branding, apart from the recent work
of Törmälä and Gryd-Jones (2017), who view brand identity as a narrative perfor-
mance. And, while Lipiäinen and Karjaluoto (2015) stress that the content creation,
and its delivery through social media, is an important brand support strategy, they
leave unanswered the question of how this content is structured. Finally, a narrative
approach to branding stems from the challenges raised by the proliferation of media
through which content is delivered and circulates. To account for this phenomenon,
the concepts of integrated marketing communication (IMC) and cross-media commu-
nication have been forged. IMC is generally defined as the “audience-driven business
process of strategically managing stakeholders, contents, channels and results of brand
communication programs” (Kliatchko, 2008, p.140). Research on the content of IMC
concentrates on how the message is delivered through a variety of media, and the
impact of cross-media communication, considered as a subdivision of IMC (Kolsarici
and Varkratsas, 2018; Vandeberg et al., 2015). But research on the consequences of
IMC for the message itself is rare, and it is often understood as a “one-voice, one-
sound, one-sight” process (Orazi et al., 2017; Šerić, 2017) to guarantee consistency.
The question of how to ensure consistency, while incorporating evolution in theories
of branding, remains open.

To sum up, narratives are an essential component of brand strategies. Research

on the topic is rare and leaves unanswered the following questions: how is an overall
narrative strategy structured? How are the different elements comprising a narrative
assembled? What are the implications of a narrative approach for branding strategy?
To answer these questions, we begin with an account of narrative theory.

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Narrative Theory
Since the 1980s, social sciences have recognized that there are two ways of making
sense of the world and communicating: the paradigmatic mode and the narrative
mode (Bruner, 1986; Polkinghorne, 1988). The paradigmatic mode of knowing refers
to formalised, rational, abstract, and often mathematical accounts. Narrative mode
of knowing on the contrary rest on stories, series of actions that refer to specific
contexts (Bruner, 1986; Polkinghorne, 1988).

To offer a fine-grained explanation of various phenomena, organization studies and

strategy researchers (Czarniawska, 2004; Fenton and Langley, 2011; Vaara et al., 2016)
have resorted to narrative theory. In B2B marketing, research has focused on the
innovation process (Araujo and Easton, 2012), investment decisions (Wallnöfer and
Hacklin, 2013), sales relationships (Gilliam and Flaherty, 2015), and the formation of
identities within business networks (Lowe and Hwang, 2012).

But the question of narrative structure itself has rarely been studied, in spite of
its importance (Simakova and Neyland, 2008; Visconti, 2010; Van Laer et al., 2014;
Preece and Kerrigan, 2015; Bublitz et al., 2016; Törmälä and Gryd-Jones, 2017). The
rare endeavours generally focus on a single, often digital, media, or on the content
of one specific narrative, aiming to identify the key features of a good story: charac-
ters (entities that act and react), temporality (chronological ordering of events) and
causality (a causal link between events) (Visconti, 2010; Bublitz et al., 2016). Good
choices for these features will induce emotional reactions and transportation in the
audience (Van Laer et al., 2014).

But brands often deliver more than just one story through one media. The ques-
tion of the overall structure of a narrative brand strategy has not been addressed.
This requires the use and definition of additional concepts from narrative theory.

First, we need to clarify the concept of narrative, and its difference from concept
of story, for they are often used interchangeably. We follow Porter Abbott (2008):
“narrative is the representation of events consisting of story and narrative discourse;
story is an event or a sequence of events (the action); and narrative discourse is
those events as represented”. More precisely, our unit of analysis is the narrative
infrastructure of the brands. Narrative infrastructure is defined as the building blocks
of and links between heterogeneous elementary stories (Deuten and Rip, 2000; Araujo
and Easton, 2012).

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 We present below two further concepts that help to understand narrative infras-
tructure: metanarrative and transmedia.

Metanarrative and transmedia narratives

In marketing, metanarrative has mostly been considered as a set of stories that, when
combined, constitute a master narrative that circulates in society and legitimises
one main idea (Firat and Venkatesh, 1995; Thompson, 2004; Davis and Frances,
2014). This perspective has been endorsed by most marketing research (e.g. Firat
and Venkatesh, 1995; Thompson, 2004; Davis and Frances, 2014). While close to
this, in narrative theory the concept of metanarrative centres on the narrative itself
and is also sometimes referred to as “master plot”, “master narrative” or canonical
story (Porter Abbott, 2008). It accounts more simply for the myriad of forms a story
can take and the incorporation of multiple stories into a broader, and often simple
story (Porter Abbott, 2008; Bublitz et al., 2016). In this sense, metanarrative is part
of the narrative infrastructure, but focuses on the relationship between a higher order
narrative and smaller stories. As far as we know, only Bublitz et al. (2016) and Araujo
and Easton (2012) have taken a systematic approach to the study of metanarratives
in marketing contexts. Yet this concept is promising in that it offers a framework
to explain the articulation between the multiple stories that firms tell about their
brands or products and the construction of an overall brand identity. It accounts for
the flexible, evolutionary, dynamic nature of stories and for the potential for multiple
improvised stories to reinforce credibility (Porter Abbott, 2008; Araujo and Easton,
2012). Moreover, firms often create provisional stories to address particular issues and
communicate with specific audiences, and these provisional stories need to find a form
of relationship with the overarching brand narrative (Vaara et al., 2016). Again, the
concept of metanarrative helps account for this phenomenon. For example, Bublitz
et al. (2016) show how the metanarratives of social impact organizations focus on
their missions and act as umbrellas to other smaller stories of these organizations
that make them more powerful.

More generally, at the highest level of abstraction, metanarratives are simple and
share the same basic structure. For social impact organizations, the metanarrative is
“a social problem that leads to action” (Bublitz et al., 2016). The more basic meta-
narrative is a lack of something and the quest to get it (Porter Abbott, 2015). This
is typically found in myths, which are specific types of society-level metanarratives.

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Myths are collectively constructed narratives of imagined events, whose aim is to give
sense to and represent typical human experiences, and to explain the origins and evo-
lution of things (Campbell, 1991). Myths, like other narratives, provide explanations,
and help to solve contradictions and dilemmas (Campbell, 1991).

The other useful concept for our research objective is the concept of transme-
dia. Jenkins coined the term transmedia in 2003, after he observed the plethora of
narratives told across an increased number of media platform. Jenkins (2003, p.46)
define transmedia storytelling at the most basic level as “stories told across multiple
media platforms”. Scolari (2009) adds that transmedia “is a particular narrative that
expands through both different languages (verbal, iconic, etc.) and media (cinema,
comics, television, video games, etc.)” and that it “is not just an adaptation from
one media to another. The story that comics tell is not the same as that told on
television or cinema; the different media and languages participate and contribute to
the construction of the transmedia narrative world. This textual dispersion is one of
the most important sources of complexity in contemporary popular culture” (Scolari,
2009). In line with our discussion of IMC above, transmedia is more adapted to the
complex, evolving nature of brands considered as narrative worlds (Scolari, 2009).
The stress is less on coherence and control of a message to be delivered to audiences
than on the synergies between multiple complementary stories delivered in different
ways that nurture the main narrative, exploring its different aspects. With a trans-
media strategy, we study how a set of stories, delivered via multiple media, can create
a common storyworld (Von Stackelberg and Jones, 2014).

Methodology
The aim of this research is to analyze the assemblage of the elements comprising a
narrative brand strategy, and the implications of this narrative approach for strategic
level branding. Therefore, we used a case study, because it is especially relevant in
contexts where the aim is to increase understanding of a research area that has been
only partially explored, (Miles et al., 2014).

The two cases selected for this research were the narrative strategies deployed
between 2012 and 2016 by two firms: IBM, for its artificial intelligence solution
“Watson”, and Cisco for its Internet of Things solutions “Internet of Everything”.
The first reason for these choices is that Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of
Things were both emerging technologies. Emerging technologies create a context of

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uncertainty and controversy, in which firms have to legitimise and give sense to their
products. Moreover, the two firms have been pioneers in the use of narratives, using
them continuously over recent decades, and have fully integrated narratives into their
strategy. The last reason for this choice is that both companies are market leaders
and dedicate significant resources to deploy a large array of narratives across different
media. This offered us a comprehensive view of the possibilities and variations of
narrative strategies.

Narratives can take multiple forms and are delivered across a variety of media.
Narratives can be a TV commercial or a discussion between a salesperson and a
potential customer, short or long, formal or informal. The data collected needed to
account for this wide range of narratives. During the data collection phase, we tracked
narratives wherever they appeared, the only condition for their integration being that
they originated from IBM or Cisco. The main sources of data were official company
internet sites: websites, company or employee blogs, official social media sites, official
YouTube channels, company podcasts. We also collected data on information web-
sites (business, technology or general press, blogs) as the companies also used these
media to publish their narratives. Finally, we conducted observation and interviews
at company locations and during events (e.g. technology fairs). We collected data for
the period 2012-2016. The data collected took the form of videos (TV commercials,
web videos, video interviews of managers), audio content (podcasts), written reports
(white papers, customer cases describing the implementation of solutions at customer
locations), and written documents (press articles, commercial leaflets and sales doc-
uments). In addition to this documentary analysis, we video and audio recorded our
observations and interviews. For Cisco, the data set included 26 videos, 57 written
reports/documents, one observation at Cisco France, and three interviews of Cisco
managers. For IBM, data included 29 videos, 50 written reports/documents, one
podcast series, and five interviews with IBM managers.

Each author independently analysed the data in two phases.

The aim of the first phase of analysis was to identify the structure of each nar-
rative, following the principle of structural narrative analysis (Czarniawska, 2004).
We singled out the narrative elements (characters, temporality and causality) in each
narrative (Bal, 1997; Riessman, 2008; Porter Abbott, 2015). Then, we compared
all the narratives to show their relationships (narrative infrastructure), to infer the
underlying metanarrative, and to evaluate the variations across media.

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 The second phase comprised a more traditional qualitative content analysis. We
started by searching for manifest content and main themes (Miles et al., 2014). Then,
we interpreted the narratives using latent content analysis, and based on the manifest
content (Miles et al., 2014). These helped us identify the context of the story (what
is told?), the meanings conveyed, and the links to myths. Concerning myths, we used
reference texts and data banks that list archetypical myths (Encyclopedia Mythica
website: http://www.pantheon.org; http://web.uvic.ca/grs/department_files/classical_myth/inde
see (Robert-Demontrond and Özcaglar Toulouse, 2011). We made particular use of
one of the rare works that analyses these mythical archetypes in marketing (Robert-
Demontrond and Özcaglar Toulouse, 2011). They identified ten archetypal myths.
Only two appeared during our analysis. We detail them below in the findings section.

Concerning the data analysis process, we independently coded a small subset of

data, using the concepts as defined in the literature review (roughly 10% of the data
set). We then compared the results of this first phase of coding. Our analyses were
similar overall, and when our interpretation varied, we discussed them in the light of
the data and previous work on narrative analysis. We recorded our final decision to
ensure that similar cases would be coded in the same way. We then coded the rest of
the data. Again, we compared our coding schemes, finding that our interpretations
converged.

Findings
Two aspects of the narrative strategy were of particular interest. The first is the
assemblage of narratives around a key metanarrative and its articulation within ex-
isting sociocultural narratives. The second is the articulation of narratives broadcast
via different channels, in other words the transmedia strategy used by the brand.

Metanarratives and assemblage of narratives

Brands metanarratives, narratives and their articulations

Both Cisco and IBM produced several hundred narrative during the period of our
investigation, each different from the others, telling a different story. Some of them
were formal (video, ads) while others were informal (conversations during a show or
between salespeople and prospects). In other words, each brand’s narrative world
comprised a myriad of small, apparently loosely related, narratives (table 1 shows
selected examples of the narratives analysed).

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 But our analysis of narrative elements (Porter Abbott, 2015; Bublitz et al., 2016)
revealed a single, simple metanarrative for each firm.

The Cisco metanarrative is: “Humanity and individuals experience problems.

Cisco has developed the Internet of Everything, a technological solution that enables
entities (things, animals and humans) to communicate together. This technology
solves the problems and creates a brighter future for humanity and for individual
people.”

The key components of this metanarrative are:

Characters: Cisco, Internet of Everything, organizations that implement Cisco

solutions, individuals, and humanity.

The temporality: before using the Internet of Everything, after using the Internet
of Everything.

Causal link: The Internet of Everything, developed by Cisco, solves societal or in-
dividual issues and creates a brighter future by making it possible for entities (human
beings, objects).

The IBM metanarrative is similar to that of Cisco: “Humanity or individual have

problems. Watson artificial intelligence has skills that humans do not have and wants
to collaborate with humans. Using Watson augments its users’ skills and helps to
solve humanity or individual issues, and creates a brighter future for its recipients”.

The key components of the metanarrative are also close to those of Cisco:

characters: IBM, Watson Artificial Intelligence technology, organizations that im-

plement Watson, individuals, and humanity.

Temporality: before use of Watson, after use of Watson;

Causal link: Watson does some things better than humans do, collaborates with
them to improve their performance and solve societal or individual issues, and creates
a brighter future.

These metanarratives are simple. They tell the story of a quest for a better life.
As such, they are similar to most narratives, fairy tales, or advertising campaigns.
They are also similar to the narratives studied by (Bublitz et al., 2016). However, the

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contrast with traditional B2B communication is interesting. The potential customer
is not the main protagonist in the narratives, and the benefits for society or final users
are stressed more than the benefits for the customer itself. In addition, the narratives
provide few technical details, or explain how it solves the problems they describe.

The consistency of these multiple narratives is to be found in how they are devel-
oped from the metanarratives, which act like matrices: the narratives are produced by
varying only selected elements of the metanarrative. In the narratives that we anal-
ysed, the causal link was always the same. Temporality changed only occasionally,
when, for example the story was placed in the future (Cisco’s ‘Long wait’ or IBM’s
‘Coping with humans’). The main source of variation originates in characters that
use the technologies: organizations, individuals, or humanity. The story’s protagonist
can be only one of them, or they can be combined. Just changing these characters
enables the development of multiple stories and situations, all within the same meta-
narrative Thus in the Cisco stories, characters include: a cyclist saved by a connected
ambulance (‘Typical day’), humanity (‘Anthem’), and a banana that travels through
the supply chain to offer a delicious desert on demand (‘Banana story’). These sto-
ries also vary in size (from one sentence to several minutes) or in style (fiction vs.
documentary): IBM’s ‘Therapy sessions’ is a science fiction video, featuring Carrie
Fisher, who played in Star Wars movie, in which IBM’s Honda mimics a report in a
news magazine.

But these variations do not impair the brand. On the contrary, by creating a
rhizome-like or web-like structure, comprising elements bound together by their com-
mon link to the metanarrative, they enrich the brand world, enabling it to address
multiple contexts (e.g. industries, functions) and concerns (uncertainty about the
consequences of technological developments, resistance to change, barriers to adop-
tion, and clarity of benefits). As long as they are built from the same metanarrative,
these multiple stories are mutually reinforcing and flexible: stories can vary, but they
remain consistent while addressing specific issues. The web of stories linked by the
metanarrative is ‘liquid’ and pliable.

Another characteristic of this rhizomatic narrative world created by the brand

is its close connections with other types of discourses produced by the brand. The
narrative and paradigmatic knowledge modes described by Bruner (1986) are entan-
gled. Narrative discourses are incorporated into paradigmatic discourses (technical or
business reports for example), narrative discourses refer to paradigmatic discourses,

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and paradigmatic discourses refer to narrative discourses. Each of these types of dis-
courses covers specific areas. The narrative world sets up the future as a spectacle,
except that, since it is presented as inevitable, the distinction between reality and
fiction tends to blur, but nonetheless induces emotion and gives events meaning. For
example, in Cisco’s ‘Typical Day’, it is not clear whether the connected ambulance
already exists, but the situation depicted (rescuing an injured person) demonstrates
the benefits of the Internet of Everything. In IBM’s ‘Coping with Humans’, the situ-
ation is clearly unrealistic (a discussion between robots attending a therapy session),
but it delivers a clear message that Watson is not like other (evil or stupid) robots.
The paradigmatic discourse addresses practical concerns, offering detailed, apparently
rational information about the product itself. For example, a sales meeting at Cisco,
which we observed, started with a narrative discourse evoking Cisco’s ‘Anthem’ and
continued with discussion of the technological features of the Internet of Everything.
An interview with a former key account manager confirmed that Cisco tried to link
paradigmatic, rational discourse to individual narratives in the videos.

Brands narratives articulation with sociocultural narratives

The brand world designed by the firms with the use of the web of narrative is not
closed. As pointed out by Holt (2004), successful brands know how to forge a deep
connection with the culture. The narrative world of each of the brands relates to
other narratives, ideologies or discourses on technology that circulate on markets, in
the media, or in daily life. The two brands recycle existing narratives and try to
counter others. By doing so they further shape these narratives.

As alluded to in the previous section, Cisco and IBM spread similar metanarra-
tives. They both present a utopian future offered by a technology that makes life
easier and solves the problems that humanity faces today. Their webs of narratives
are also entwined, reinforcing and vindicating each other. And this does not only
concern these two companies. Similar metanarratives are used by most high-tech
companies and start-ups. They all refer to an ideology of progress (Kozinets, 2008)
or technology enchantment (Bailey, 2005; Van der Laan, 2016).

But pro-technology narratives are not the only ones circulating in the social sphere
(Kozinets, 2008). Technology is paradoxical (Mick and Fournier, 1998) being both
good and bad, an opportunity and a threat. This creates tensions for people and
organizations. One example of this tension is the debate on artificial intelligence;
many experts, including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and even Bill Gates, argue

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that A.I. is a threat that may end human ascendancy. IBM is well aware of this
debate: “the moment that you talk about artificial intelligence, they all think, ‘Ah,
but it means my work is going to disappear and I’m going to fight people and there’s
no work anymore, and machines take over’. in the end, artificial intelligence is not
there to replace the things that we do for today ... or to replace the humans by
machines” (senior executive at global electronics at IBM).

One of the roles of the narrative world constructed by Cisco and IBM is to offer
narrative resources to help people and organizations reduce the cultural tensions
produced by the paradox of technology. Both firms resort to mythical archetypes
to help customers and stakeholders give meaning to the uncertainty of the changing
world (Thompson, 2004). The Cisco and IBM narratives use mostly two archetypal
myths.

The first is the Gaian myth (Robert-Demontrond and Özcaglar Toulouse, 2011).
In Greek mythology, the goddess Gaia personifies the Earth, and the myth highlights
the mutual dependence between humanity and the earth. One recurring narrative
in western societies is based on the opposition between technology and nature, with
technology being seen as a threat to nature, humans and tradition (Thompson, 2004;
Kozinets, 2008). Both companies use the Gaian myth to defuse such a negative view.
Cisco’s ‘Anthem’ regularly features images of nature, and technology is even presented
as part of nature: “trees will talk to networks that talk to scientists about climate
change.” In IBM’s Therapy Session series, robots tell a psychotherapist that they are
angry with Watson because it collaborates with human. Watson is thus presented
as “on the side of” humans, and willing to “improve” them, unlike other robots,
which at best replace them and at worst aim to destroy them. The two brands also
use the Apollonian myth. In Greek mythology, Apollo is the god of light, defeating
darkness and the forces of evil (Robert-Demontrond and Özcaglar Toulouse, 2011).
In the Cisco and IBM narratives, technology is pictured as enlightening the world,
both metaphorically and literally, by replacing chaos with rationality. For example,
Cisco’s ‘Museum of the Lasts’ series takes place in the future, in a museum where
today’s problems (missed deliveries, traffic jams) are presented as if they belonged to
the dark age of humanity.

The narratives created by Cisco and IBM relate and echo narratives that circulate
in the social world, sometimes countering them and sometimes recycling them. As

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shown by (Holt, 2003; Thompson, 2004), the ability to tap into these ancient nar-
ratives is crucial when the goal is help people make sense of uncertain events and
to reduce cultural tensions. These ancient narratives are widely shared and under-
stood by members of a society Campbell (1991), which facilitates understanding of
the firms’ narratives.

We have shown that the narratives of both firms are connected to a metanarrative
and relate to sociocultural narratives. These narratives are abstract entities. Now,
we analyze the materialisation of these narratives via the media.

Transmedia strategy
Transmedia as creation not adaptation

Our analysis shows extensive use of nearly all the possible media for an overview
of the two companies’ transmedia strategies), enabling them to address most stake-
holders involved in Cisco and IBM businesses (customers, partners, suppliers, re-
search institutes, governments, NGOs, etc.). Of more interest is how the media are
used. Porter Abbott (2015) highlighted the difficulties of translating a narrative
across media boundaries. Traditional branding strategy focuses on adapting a key
message accurately across media (Visconti, 2010). However, IBM and Cisco focus
more on creating narratives for each of the media than on adapting their message.
Even if they adapt, they also undertake a process of “adaptation as creative destruc-
tion”(Porter Abbott, 2015), possible only because the strong metanarrative acts as an
anchor. Coherence does not seem to be the Holy Grail here. The rhizomatic narrative
structure is materialized in the transmedia strategy used, which results in synergies.
For each media used, Cisco and IBM reinvent not only the content, but also the tone
and style of their stories. For example, Cisco imitated super hero comics to illus-
trate the Internet of Everything (‘Super-Smart in the smartest cities’), and proposed
various styles of videos: documentary (e.g. ‘Successful Customer Cases’), comedy
(‘Banana Story’, ‘Circular Story’), and poetic (‘Anthem’). The transmedia strategy
allows for apparently opposing actions (control and user-generated content; paradig-
matic and narrative discourse; mass-communication and customisation), making it
possible to vary genre (science fiction, comedy, documentary), the content, and the
length.

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Organising for transmedia

Both firms support their transmedia strategy by developing of skills and new partner-
ships that help to orchestrate both the media strategy and the creation of narratives.

Both companies have created new positions focusing on the creation and manage-
ment of narratives, within dedicated divisions that work closely with marketing and
top management. The example that opens our introduction is telling: “The mar-
keting storyteller will be a Subject Matter Expert (SME), and a key member of the
EMEAR Marketing team. This is a pivotal role within Cisco’s exciting new content
marketing organisation, and will involve working very closely with Content Manag-
ing Editors (CMEs), Customer Experience Managers (CXEs) and Content Marcoms
Managers (CMMs), as well as global and local marketing, solutions marketing, sales
and technical experts.” (Job Opportunity, posted on Cisco website, February 2017).
IBM has a “creative narrative strategy leader” working with a team of “narrative
developers” dedicated to the creation of narratives, a structure recalling the organi-
zation of cinema studios. But the creation of new divisions and skills was not the
only organizational change at the two companies. Staff, particularly senior executives,
are trained in storytelling, so that the narrative branding strategy is not confined to
media interactions; it also exists in human interactions. For example, one senior
marketing manager at Cisco described himself as “corporate comedian” as much as a
marketing manager.

Both companies employ or work closely with experts from the cultural industries.
Thus Cisco partnered Bloomberg media to develop its video series. IBM works closely
with TED, which helped construct conversations about innovation. Another example
from IBM is the development of their podcast series called “Wild ducks”. The sto-
ries are developed by freelance journalist hired to create and produce audio content
telling stories of companies that used Watson for different purposes (food supply, sup-
ply chain, cognitive computing, connected cars, data security, business intelligence,
personalized medicine, mobile banking, and education).

Conclusion and recommendations

The goal of this paper was to analyze the general structure of narrative-based brand
strategies. By analysing the cases of IBM and Cisco, we have shown that the narrative
world of brands comprises a plethora of little stories. These stories are based on a

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broader metanarrative, with a variation of characters and sometimes temporality.
The causal link stays the same in every story. These stories are also inspired by
broader narratives and myths that circulate in the sociocultural sphere. We have also
shown that both Cisco and IBM use a transmedia strategy, in which they can re-
create narratives, in addition to adapting them, across media. The narrative strategy
of both firms is also supported by developing new skills in narrative design, either
internally, by hiring staff trained in narrative writing, or externally, by partnering
with firms in creative industries.

One limit of this research is that we chose two firms from the high-tech industry,
and that both companies have huge financial resources. The narrative strategy may
not be the same in other industries or for smaller firms. Another limit is our focus on
the story-provider side. We did not analyze how customers or stakeholders react to
this narrative strategy. Nor did we study how customers or stakeholders contributed
to creation of the narratives. But, as mentioned before, our aim was to understand the
structure of the brands’ narratives, not its creation or influence. The two cases chosen
are exemplary because they successfully created a narrative-based brand world, which
we describe. The question of the financial or even sales relevance of such a strategy
will need to be addressed in future research.

While acknowledging the limits of our research, we see the following contributions
to the B2B branding literature. First, recent work on B2B branding has offered a
new perspective on brands, showing that they were better considered as “gestalt”,
“multilogue” or even polyphony (Holt, 2002; Diamond et al., 2009; Visconti, 2010;
Törmälä and Gryd-Jones, 2017). The question this approach raises is: if a brand
is a polyphony, what holds it together? How is the shared understanding of its
sense guaranteed? What is its coherence? Our two cases support the findings of
Bublitz et al. (2016) in a B2B context, showing that the “glue” for the polyphonic
brand is its metanarrative. But we go further, by detailing the process that links
the metanarrative to the smaller stories. Limited changes to selected elements to the
structure of the metanarrative (characters, temporality), and consistency in others
(causal link), hold the little stories together and preserve the coherence of the brand
world, while allowing the possibility of variation, and, hence flexibility.

Our research also extends previous research on the use of myths in marketing (e.g.
Stevens and Maclaran, 2007; Thompson, 2004; Preece and Kerrigan, 2015), in the
B2B context. Firms also use myths as a resource for their business customers. Cisco

109
and IBM use ancient myths to try and reduce the tensions raised by the uncertainty
their innovative technology products induce. One interesting point is the recycling
of archetypal myths considered as opposed to technology. Several IBM and Cisco
narratives echo the ancient Greek myth of Gaia and aim to counter the narrative of
“technology as destruction of the natural” (Kozinets, 2008). The analysis of myths is
also an important way to understand B2B brands.

Our final contribution lies in the use of the concept of transmedia. IMC research
has tended to detail the process of integrated communication, or, in its cross-media
subsection, the media used. Little research has investigated the message itself and its
cross-media variations. The dominant view is often a “one voice, one sound and one
sight” approach (Orazi et al., 2017; Šerić, 2017). As mentioned above, we have seen
how metanarrative is a key concept to understand how brands can offer variations
in their narratives while preserving coherence. The concept of transmedia is another
central concept. It is the twin of cross-media, but for the message. Narratives are not
only adapted to different media, but are often re-created for specific media. Narratives
vary considerably in form, style, and content across media. Transmedia analysis
allows firms to break free from the rigid view of the brand message often implicitly
conveyed by IMC. It is closer to new brand realities and the multiplication of new
kinds of media.

At managerial level, we believe our research can inform B2B brands, especially
smaller ones, on how to design their narrative strategies. Narratives are important
for B2B firms, especially in the technology industry, where the ability to reduce un-
certainty and make sense of innovation is crucial to company growth. Our analysis of
IBM and Cisco provides managers with a number of steps to follow when developing
their narrative strategies. First, create a metanarrative by identifying key charac-
ters (the firm, customers, and other stakeholders) and a causal link (how the firm’s
product solves a problem). While seemingly obvious, this step is essential, for it is
the heart of the brand. Then, firms can decide how to vary its narratives to create a
myriad of small stories that will be delivered across channels. They also can identify
potential counter-narratives, by monitoring the press and social media, and obtain
inspiration from classical myths, from the lists we alluded to above, to counter the
counter narratives. Another managerial lesson is the cohabitation of the two types of
discourses: narrative and paradigmatic. A narrative only strategy may be a mistake.
Our findings show that an important feature of the narrative strategies of the two
brands is their ability to mix narrative and paradigmatic discourse. The narrative

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strategy does not oppose other types of discourses. Its strength lies in its ability to
incorporate other types of discourse.

4.3 Summary 3rd essay - Markets as narrative con-

structions

The third and final study has the aim to identify the role of the narrative in the assem-
blage of market practices and its role in the shaping of the market from a multi-actor
perspective. While the two initial studies analyse in depth the production of the
narratives from the technology firms about smart solutions, this study focuses exclu-
sively in the shaping of the smart city market, taking into account multiple actors
that are involved in this process: technology firms (IBM and Cisco), cities (Amster-
dam, Barcelona and Lyon), consulting firms (McKinsey, PWC, EY and Arup), media
(Forbes, The Guardian, Wired UK), international organisations (BID, European com-
mission and centre for cities) and other actors of each city (start-ups and residents).
This analysis grants the possibility to understand multiple perspectives and how to
interact in the shaping of the market; it also permits to observe how contestations
emerge towards the smart city, turning into counter-narratives and how the firm or
the city develop new narratives to reduce those counter argumentations.

This study analyses the smart city market shaping, using actor-network theory
(Callon, 1986) to analyse how the narratives navigate through the market practices
and how the actors shape those narratives for different purposes according to the
dominant market practice that is in place. Showing a holistic and comprehensive view
of the role of different actors in the market shaping and the evolution of the market,
elucidating changes in the roles, in the power relationships and how the narrative is
plastic to those changes and is able to adapts to each market practice, providing and
maintaining a coherent link between the market practices and the actors throughout
this market shaping process.

The essay shows the flow of the narratives in the market practices, examining the
narratives created by the technology seller to create a representation of the market,
that depicts how the market operates, the technologies and actors involved, while
assign meanings. Likewise, a re-creation of the narratives is used in commercial
exchanges permitting to make the story more realistic, permitting to create trust
bonds with the customers. In the same manner, the narratives are employed to

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stabilise the market by presenting successful customer cases that endorse the benefits
of the technology and the firm. This study also provides an explanation of how
the buyer, in this case, the city, appropriates the narrative and constructs a new
narrative that is initially used to gain political and financial support to develop the
smart city initiative. At this point, the city’s role suffers a transformation, passing
from buyer to a seller of the smart city concept, entering in a new cycle of market
shaping that aims to attract and engage business, startups, residents and other actors
in the development of smart city initiatives.

At the theoretical level, this paper contributes to the literature of market shap-
ing, by presenting an alternative view in the assemblage of market practices, showing
how narratives are employed in each market practice for different purposes, acting as
an assemblage tool that gives sense and permits to assign meanings to the actions
developed in a coherent manner through time. This paper permits to practitioners
to observe the role of the narratives in the shaping of the market, understood as a
cultural and dialectic process that can be managed to avoid counter argumentation
and to increase the adoption rate of new technologies. By creating a narrative that is
aligned with the vision of the buyer, it is possible for sellers to maintain their perfor-
mative power and provide the technology as the seller imagine it. This macro-level
perspective offers a vision of how the market construction of smart cities operates,
showing how market practices are interrelated, and the importance for practitioners
to understand how each of those market practices operates in order to develop strate-
gies that facilitate the adoption, use and appropriation of the technologies. For city
managers, this study highlights the importance of governmental agency and external
actors in the stabilisation of the market.

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4.3.1 Essay - Markets as narrative constructions

Abstract
This paper investigates how the market is shaped for smart city technologies, using
actor network theory to examine the role of narratives as an assemblage tool between
the market practices of representation, exchange and normalisation. This research
understands market shaping as a process that combines a series of market practices
into an assembled, coherent, logical construction. This structure makes sense of how
actors allow a new good to enter the market. The case in point, the smart city tech-
nology market, shows how narratives shape a new market by creating representations
that are then employed in exchanges between sellers and the cities. Thus, the narra-
tive is transformed into material for normalisation practices creating policies, habits
and routines. The paper contributes to discussions on market shaping by showing
the assemblage of market practices through narratives.

Keywords: Market Shaping, Market construction, Market Practices, Narratives,

Smart City, Actor Network Theory.

Introduction
The shaping of markets has been recognise as an important element for successful
commercialisation and stimulate the use of innovations (Chiesa and Frattini, 2011;
O’Connor and Rice, 2012). The study of markets has been developed arguing that
markets are the result of the arrangement and translation of three distinct and in-
terconnected market practices: representational, exchange and normalising (Kjellberg
and Helgesson, 2006, 2007; Araujo, 2007). Despite its importance Azimont and Araujo
(2007) have recognised that the link between the different market practices remains
unclear. Despite its importance, only few studies (e.g. Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007;
Doganova and Karnøe, 2015) examined the articulation of the market practices and
its influence on market construction.

Rinallo and Golfetto (2006) highlight that the ideas on representation market
practices are recent because it existed a perception that industrial buyers were more
rational and less prone to be reached by emotional and seductive messages. How-
ever, researchers from economic sociology such as Muniesa et al. (2007) and Caliskan
and Callon (2010) have recognised the role of the discourse and the narratives in the

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assemblage of markets. In that sense, this paper aligns with the vision that mar-
ket construction is a dialectic and socio-cultural process that includes a discursive
aspect in which narratives are created with different purposes throughout market
construction.

Scholars from economic sociology such as Muniesa et al. (2007) and Caliskan and
Callon (2010) have recognised the role of discourses and narratives in the shaping and
construction of markets. In this sense, this paper aligns with the vision of markets as
a dialectic and cultural construction that includes a discursive aspect in which nar-
ratives are created with different purposes. It has been argued that the creation of a
market requires the narration of “a tellable story: a story which narrates boundaries,
relations, agency and identities for entities”, permitting the assemblage of people and
material objects.(Simakova and Neyland, 2008, p.96). Furthermore, narratives and
stories have been analysed as part of market construction as a device for sensemaking
affirming that market stories permits to make sense of the changes in the market
and its evolution (Theoharakis and Wong, 2002), additionally, the use of stories con-
tribute to generate a shared understanding of the market that permits to obtain a
stability that allows the participation of multiple actors in the market shaping process
(La Rocca et al., 2015).

This research selected the case of the smart city market in order to study the
role of narratives in market practices. It aims to answer the following question: how
does the use of narratives contribute to market shaping for emerging technologies in
industrial settings? This study uses Actor Network Theory to analyse four moments
in the construction of the smart city market. Consequently, this paper contributes
to the discussion on market shaping by presenting the role of the narratives in the
assemblage of market practices throughout time and its impact in the shaping of new
technology markets.

Conceptual background
The study of market shaping has been examined under the economic sociology per-
spective, where markets are defined as socio-technical assemblages that possess, among
others: rules and conventions; texts, discourses and narratives; technical and scientific
knowledge, as well as the competencies and skills embodied in living beings (Caliskan
and Callon, 2010, p.3). Likewise, markets are recognised as dialectical construction
that uses market devices as “material and discursive assemblages” (Muniesa et al.,

114
2007, p.2). Furthermore, the assemblage of market constituencies requires the narra-
tion of “a tellable story which narrates boundaries, relations, agency and identities
for entities” (Simakova and Neyland, 2008, p.96). Thus, the definitions highlight the
discursive relevance and narratives as an assemblage in market shaping.

Market shaping and market practices has received attention by Kjellberg and
Helgesson (2006, 2007) and Araujo (2007), suggesting that markets are the result of
the arrangement and translation of three distinct and interconnected market practices:
representational, exchange and normalising. Representational practices depict the
way in which the market operates producing a shared image of itself among the
actors. Exchange practices comprise economical exchanges of goods between actors,
involving the object of exchange, the price and the activities developed by each actor.
Normalising practices aim to establish normative objectives including regulations and
activities that institutionalise the use of the good (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006) and
enacting practices, routines and habits (Geiger et al., 2012; Kjellberg et al., 2015).

The study of market construction has been dissected in the market practices,
allowing to study in depth each practice. Representational practices have been un-
derstood as a human intended creation that shares structural similarities with the
reality, without the need of mimicking it (Mitchell, 1995). In that sense, market
representation practices are a tool of sense and meaning-making embedded in the
cultural context. This definition open the door to the discussion on performativity
proposed by Kjellberg and Helgesson (2007) and how markets are material construc-
tions that translate ideas into real exchanges of goods in a profitable way. Within the
existent literature of representational practices, Rinallo and Golfetto (2006) analyse
how the clothing fabric industry shapes the fashion market through the development
of a set of hyperreal representational and normative practices that are able to so-
cially construct and establish the trends in the fashion industry. In a similar way,
Diaz Ruiz (2013) explores the role of market research as a representational practice,
indicating that the correct assemblage of market representations provides a simplified
explanation of what a market is and privilege a reality’s vision that impact the firm
marketing strategy.

Literature on exchange practices is extensive in industrial marketing, focusing pri-

marily on sales and commercialisation (e.g. Haas et al., 2012; Aarikka-Stenroos et al.,
2014; Virtanen et al., 2015; Geiger, 2017). Few researches have explored the use of
narratives in this context, Van den Hende and Schoormans (2012) demonstrated that

115
narratives provide a vivid imagery of initial technology prototypes, generating positive
responses similar to the final product. Likewise, Gilliam and Zablah (2013); Gilliam
and Flaherty (2015) demonstrate the value of stories in commercial exchanges argu-
ing that stories inform, persuade, reduce counter argumentations and are adaptive to
different situations. Furthermore, La Rocca et al. (2015) highlight the importance of
stories as a tool of meaning construction among actors in business relationships.

Normalising practices gained more importance recently, considering it as a process

of stabilisation which is fundamental for market shaping, in which market construc-
tion is recognised as an ongoing social process. Kjellberg and Helgesson (2007) argues
normalising practices permit the establishment of regulations and activities that in-
stitutionalise the use of the good. However, Kjellberg et al. (2015) expands the
definition affirming that markets stabilisation ins achieved through the institutionali-
sation of norms, development of technical infrastructures, dissemination of knowledge,
representations and enacting practices, routines and habits. And Humphreys (2010)
demonstrate in a new market, the role of normative, regulatory and cultural-cognitive
practices as a cultural process of legitimation. Doganova and Karnøe (2015) shows
the importance of policy development to institutionalise new technologies and its
impact in the market construction as an assembled process.

This research shows the role of narratives in market shaping providing a coherent
assemblage among market practices that permit the shaping of markets. Despite the
importance of the narratives in market shaping, its study is still scarce. Few works
have explored the narratives’ role in marketing. Rosa et al. (1999, p.68) argue that
market stories are used in the origins of markets, working as “sense-making tools
among participants in a social system”, Shankar et al. (2001) affirm that narratives
permit to structure and make sense of our lives, allowing to understand consumption
models and in the industrial context La Rocca et al. (2015) state that stories reduce
complexity in unclear contexts in business relationships. Therefore, this research
approaches to the phenomenon of market construction through the lenses of narrative
theory.

Narratives as assemblage devices

If many definitions of narrative have been proposed, a generally accepted definition is
that “narrative is the representation of an event or a series of events” (Porter Abbott,
2008). A structured story is essential for the development of coherent and appealing

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narratives. It is comprised of three elements (Bublitz et al., 2016). (1) The construc-
tion of identifiable characters with well-defined features that allows the story receiver
to resonate with the characters and relate his personal experiences with the situations
presented, granting a level of empathy with the narrative. (2) A plausible plot that
raises interest in the audience, presenting a story with unanswered questions, unre-
solved conflicts or depicting an incomplete activity that will be resolved (Green and
Brock, 2000). The plot connects events, activities and characters in a coherent struc-
ture that accounts a series of events that occurs with a clear purpose (Czarniawska,
2004; Araujo and Easton, 2012). (3) The level of likelihood of the events presented
is pivotal to grant the recreation of mental imagery which allows the transportation
effect of the narratives (Van Laer et al., 2014).

The increased interest to study narratives in social sciences, rests on the observa-
tion that they are an essential mean of knowing the world, communicating and assign
meanings (Bruner, 1986; Polkinghorne, 1988; Phelan, 2005), integrated in strategy
(e.g. Fenton and Langley, 2011), organisation theory for long (Gabriel, 2000; Czarni-
awska, 2004; Golant and Sillince, 2007; Vaara et al., 2007; Polleta et al., 2011; Boje,
2014), the use of narrative theory in marketing is more limited, and even more so in
B2B. Since the paper of Padgett and Allen (1997), research in marketing has stud-
ied the role of narratives in consumption (e.g. Shankar et al., 2001; Ahuvia, 2005;
Giesler, 2008; Epp and Price, 2008, 2011), the phenomenon of narrative transporta-
tion (Phillips and McQuarrie, 2010; Van den Hende and Schoormans, 2012; Van Laer
et al., 2014; Schweitzer and Van den Hende, 2017) and, concerning B2B, the role of
narratives in the innovation process Bartel and Garud (2009); Araujo and Easton
(2012) and in the formation of identities within business networks (Lowe and Hwang,
2012).

According to Law (2009), assemblage can be understood under the frame of tech-
nology studies as complex associations among diverse constituencies that include
technologies, ideas, discourses and people that can be arranged to form a unified
whole. Thus, assemblages are able to connect objects, social phenomena and dis-
course into constructions that emerged from the interaction among people, things
and concepts. Likewise, Latour (2005) proposes that assemblages are stable struc-
tures that are constantly scrutinised. Thus, this research explores the concept of
narrative as assemblage device in market construction, permitting to market prac-
tices to have a coherent and aligned discourse that allow the different actors to make
sense of the actions developed at different stages. This study is not concerned with

117
the constituents of a story, but rather focuses on the global narrative structuring and
its impact on market construction analysed through Actor-Network Theory (ANT).

Understanding Actor-network Theory

ANT provides an analysis framework that permit to analyse the actors, their relation-
ships and the emerging narratives associated with the introduction of socio-technical
innovations in the market shaping process (Tatnall, 2011). Technological artefacts are
recognised not only as conceived technical objects rather than socio-technical projects
embedded in actor networks designed to enable and constrain some actions (Latour,
1992). Therefore, the successful entrance of a technology into a market depends on
the ability to bind together the interest of multiple actors overtime through a pro-
cess known as translation (Callon, 1986). Four moments of translation are described:
problematization, interessement, enrolment and mobilisation. Those moments oc-
cur throughout the market shaping process where focal actors create alliances that
permit the appropriation of the technological devices within their cultural context.
Problematization refers to the project conception by redefining a problem in which
the proposed solution becomes indispensable. Interessement is related to the actions
developed to align other actors or objects with the focal actor’s interest, imposing a
vision defined in the problematization. Enrolment only occurs if the interessement is
successful. Then, the focal actor persuades diverse actors to engage and obtain con-
crete alliances. Lastly, mobilisation seeks to ensure that the engagement of involved
actors remains stable, acquiring the status of taken-for-grantedness.

ANT has been used to analyse processes of market shaping related to technol-
ogy developments, permitting to understand the cultural contradictions that emerge
and their resolution. Lagesen (2012) shown how ANT permits to make sense of the
technology’s role in the assemblage of personal identity and the interrelation between
people and technology. Similarly, Bettany et al. (2014) argues that ANT permit to
understand the technology’s role in processes of identity definition and change. Fur-
thermore, Giesler (2012) uses ANT to theorise the contradictions developed in the
establishment of the botox industry, showing contradictions in which the focal actor
create advertisements to neutralise them and achieve legitimacy in an ongoing market
construction.

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Methodology
The goal of this research is to understand the role of the narratives as an assem-
blage tool of market practices in the smart city market construction. This research
resorts to a case methodology which permits to understand a research area only par-
tially explored so far (Gummesson, 2000), when new perspectives are needed (Patton,
1999), and capable of relating the phenomenon studied to its context (Dubois and
Araujo, 2004) and in situations where complex and multiple variables and process
exist (Yin, 2013). The development an a cross case analysis allows to gather different
perspectives and counter argumentations enabling to produce robust constructs that
are generalisable.

Thereby, a single case study with multiple units of analysis (Yin, 2013) seems
the most suitable option, allowing to understand the smart city market construction
from the perspectives of multiple actors: technology firms (IBM, Cisco and Microsoft),
cities (Amsterdam(AMS), Barcelona(BCN) and Lyon), consulting firms (McKinsey,
PWC, EY, Arup), media (Forbes, The Guardian, Wired UK), international organisa-
tions (BID, European commission and centre for cities), and other actors of each city
(start-ups and residents). The data was gathered between 2014 and 2017, conducting
a real-time study that permits to see how the phenomenon is unfolding (Halinen and
Törnross, 2005). The data collection used a variety of sources as advertisements,
public speeches, white papers, customer cases, reports, presentations and news. The
videos were transcribed for analysis, their duration range is from one minute to one
hour, with a total amount of 763 minutes. The reports, customer cases and white
papers sum together 120 documents. Additionally, eleven interviews with technology
firms (Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and Intel) and with cities (Amsterdam and Lyon) were
conducted, with an average duration of fourty minutes.

In addition to the case study approach, this research employs a narrative analy-
sis (Czarniawska, 2004; Creswell, 2007; Bamberg, 2007; Riessman, 2008) aiming at
understand the role of narratives in the market construction and the structures em-
ployed in the narratives and particular elements as the plot, the characters’ role and
other incorporated elements. Clandinin and Rosiek (2007) argue that narrative anal-
ysis allows to grasp clues regarding sensemaking process at individual and collective
level. Thus, a cross-case analysis leads us to determine the role of the narratives in
the market construction as a tool to assemble market practices through time. The

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documents selected were analysed following a narrative analysis (Creswell, 2007), per-
mitting to understand the contextual use of narrative elements placed in the data set.
An initial step seeks to find similar keywords that could be used to classify elements
of the narratives into categories. Nevertheless, the diversity of the data impedes to
find common keywords. Therefore, the data were analysed in terms of actions, find-
ing recurrent structural patterns of the narratives and its orchestration that allow to
elaborate an analytic interpretation of the narratives constructed. The authors inde-
pendently coded the data and then triangulated it to revise the first coding scheme,
using a constant revision process to establish robust constructs. The analysis was
performed manually and using the (QDAS) NVivo 11, a software that permits the
organisation of the data gathered and its subsequent analysis (Dean and Sharp, 2006).

Findings
Gathered data was analysed through the four moments of translation proposed by
Callon (1986) in ANT: problematization, interessement, enrolment and mobilisation.
Figure 4.1,summarises the results obtained, presenting how market practices, actors
and narratives tie together throughout the process of market construction. The com-
plexity of the industrial contexts where multiple actors are involved in the adoption
process impedes that ANT can be considered as a linear process. The case of smart
cities adds an additional layer of complexity to the analysis, represented in figure 4.1
by the arrow that goes from mobilisation towards interessement. After the technology
adoption, the city enters in a process of market shaping for the city itself, seeking to
attract and engage new actors interested to invest in the development of the smart
city. Therefore, to facilitate the understanding of the market construction process
under the ANT perspective, the findings are divided into two sections. The first
one focuses on the efforts developed by technology firms and the second part pays
attention to the cities.

Actions taken by technology firms to frame the market shap-

ing process
Technology firms engage in the creation of a problem (problematization phase), re-
sponding to existing issues, leading to the development of a technology solution.
Therefore, smart city solutions are based on current understanding of what a city is,
its evolution and the challenges that exist to manage a city. Roberts and Kanaley

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 Figure 4.1: Smart City market construction process

(2006) affirm that a city is “the engine room of economic growth and the centres
of culture, entertainment, innovation, education, knowledge, and political power”.
Thus, the urbanisation process lead the cities “to develop social institutions, such
as businesses and government, to support themselves” (Orum, 2004). Despite the
novelty of the urbanisation process it has changed country dynamics, creating nodes
within the country where economic and social activity is centred. The United Nations
(2014) argues that the phenomenon of urbanisation tends to increase, forecasting that
“urbanisation could add another 2.5 billion people to urban populations by 2050”.

Technology firms have built upon this reality, where overpopulation and the need
for efficient and sustainable cities, are critical problems that directly impact the citi-
zens life quality. Firms have developed solutions of Internet of Things (IoT), including
smart city solutions which promises as part of their narrative that the connection of
sensors and devices to the network (Internet) will optimise the city processes, mak-
ing them more manageable, efficient and intelligent. Despite the importance of the

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origins of this concept, none of the firms clearly state the beginnings of this idea.
In the problematization phase, the narratives are almost nonexistent and only a few
websites explain the origins of the smart city concept. Vallianatos (2015) affirms that
the concept of Smart cities emerged in the 70’s in California with an initial attempt to
combine data with city management and Falk (2012) argues that in 2005, the Clinton
foundation challenged Cisco to develop a technology that makes cities sustainable,
leading to the creation of smart city solutions.

At this stage, technology firms resorted mainly to the creation of specialised ma-
terial with technical definitions that do not include any narrative structure. On the
one hand, IBM defines a smart city as “a city that connects the physical infrastruc-
ture, the IT infrastructure, the social infrastructure and the business infrastructure
to leverage the collective intelligence of the city” (Harrison et al., 2010). On the other
hand, Cisco defined it as those cities that adopt scalable solutions to take advantage
of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to increase efficiency, reduce
costs, and enhance the quality of life (Falconer and Mitchell, 2012). These definitions
proposed a technology centred vision that is reflected throughout the market shaping
process. However, buyers have a citizen centred vision, creating contradictory ideo-
logical positions towards the smart city which are translated into counter-narratives,
which impact the construction of narratives developed by technology firm and cities.

The interessement phase, occurs at an early stage of solution release, in which the
market representation needs to be built. Three actors take part in this phase. First,
technology firms engage in the creation of the market representation through the use
of narratives that address the major concerns of the cities: overpopulation, efficiency,
sustainability and life quality of citizens. Thus, the narrative depict fictional scenarios
where smart city solutions have been implemented. In the stories the city incarnates
the heroic character, the technology represents the magical tool that will help restore
the balance and the IT firms act as the helper who guides the hero in his quest.
Additionally, the firms engage in the creation of white papers proposing a narrative
with a scientific tone, offering the appareance to be more realistic, in order to push the
definition of smart city that serves its own agenda. Table 4.3, presents the narratives
developed by each firm.

Second, consulting firms fulfil an important role in the creation of market repre-
sentations. They offers a less bias perspective of the technology and become a figure
that provides legitimacy, while reinforce the narratives developed by the technology

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 Company Narrative

The firm employs the epic narrative that shows the hero’s quest
and resorts to the use of binary oppositions to present an
alternative future in which the world is fully interconnected and
humanity has reached a utopic and brighter future. Thus, Cisco
positions the technology’s adopters as the heroes that restore
balance by implementing smart city solutions that interconnect
Cisco city operations that permit to improve cities and residents life
quality. Multiple city’s and industrial scenarios are illustrated
allowing to observe interconnections of benefits brought by the
technology. “the man who drove the car (in driverless mode) that
found the parking spot that alerted the door that opened the control
room” (Cisco circular story, 2012).

Cities are evolving and governments are looking for ways to

improve their cities, IBM is helping cities to face the most
challenging issues by using a new technology that is able to
analyse information, make it understandable, forecast trends and
make suggestions. This technology will create smart and cognitive
IBM
cities that are efficient and sustainable. “Robert is teaching cars to
cooperate with one another so they can do more than transport
passengers, he wants to tap into their computing power so they
can help find missing objects, detect gas leaks and make our homes
more secure” (IBM People for smarter cities, 2016).

Table 4.3: Narratives developed by IBM and Cisco

firms and creates a common language between all the actors. “Our point of view was
in fact that this is not a trend that is overhyped, in fact, there is potentially, even
more value than many people might realise, but associated with that value there are
a set of challenges, obstacles and enablers that have to be put in place” (McKinsey
Global Institute, 2014).

Third, specialised media and trade fair events contribute to disseminate the nar-
ratives provided by the technology firms. Non paid media offers a holistic vision
that presents aligned and contradictory positions towards the smart city solutions.
“The smart city sounds like a digital utopia, a place where data eliminates first-world
hassles, dangers and injustices. But there are some problems with smart cities, and
no one, to my knowledge at least, has pointed them out.” (Forbes, 2017). The con-
vergence of these three actors permits to create a narrative that provides a clear

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representation of the smart city market; how the technology operates, which actors
need to be involved, benefits and difficulties of becoming a smart city. Thus, the
narrative becomes a vehicle to give sense to the market, opening the doors to enter
into the enrolment phase where negotiations with clients take place.

The enrolment phase only occurs if the interessement phase is successful in the
creation of an appealing market representation, that attract potential customers to
acquire smart city solutions. At this stage, the firms (IBM and Cisco) continues
adding possible scenarios to apply smart solutions. Exchange practices are devel-
oped between the technology firm (seller) and the city (buyer), with technology firms
resorting to narrative elements employed in the interessement phase including addi-
tional elements, commonly rational and statistical data, that support the investment
value. The narrative employed in this stage resorts to a documentary style that is
framed in realistic scenarios closer to the buyer, using the epic narrative structure.
The realistic tone provides tangible examples of how smart city improves the efficiency
and sustainability. The stories are developed in the present time, showing how cities
are starting to implement the solutions, presenting the advantages and promoting the
technology as an element of progress.

This idea resonates with the “technopian” and the “work machine” concept of
Kozinets (2008) in which technology is illustrated as an element of social progress
which also ignites economic progress. A strategic director from a technology firm
presented an example placed in a credible scenario in Paris that might occur, ex-
plaining the benefits of the solution, “Imagine you want to go to the Gare de Lyon,
which is on the other side of the city. You plan to take your car, but there is a lot of
traffic, so is not a good idea. So, you decide to take the RATP (train), but well, there
is a strike. So you decide to take a bike, but all the bikes are away. This is to give you
an example that is no central management for the traffic in the city. This shows what
we can do if we connect and exchange the information between the different systems.
Just imagine an interconnected and informed city, this is what we provide with the
Internet of Things”. Thus, the narrative becomes a transmedia construction that is
malleable and adaptive to different contexts offering a coherent discourse from the
firm regardless the place and context in which is employed.

Initial counter positions emerges as part of the deconstruction of the narratives

created by technology firms, where the city determines if the technology fits with the
city’s vision and objectives. Permitting to identify ideological underpinnings towards

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the smart city, reflecting cultural aspects that influence market construction which
become part of the narratives, acting as counter-narratives. Table 4.4 shows the
counter narratives of the cities.

City Counter-narratives

“Every company that comes here and tells us how it works. They’re wrong
because they don’t have a clue how a city works. There’s a big difference
AMS
between how people think it works and how it works” (Fitzgerald, 2016).

“when you use the words smart city you are buying an ideological package,
and therefore, it is not about one single measure which is positive or negative,
BCN the point is that this is driving society or the city towards an agenda, that I
do not like it” Ramon Ribera, Researcher and resident

“the ambition of Lyon is really not a vision on how to control all

infrastructures through technology, because, I think that’s more past vision.
It’s more the vision that was carried out by IBM or Cisco. The vision for
Lyon
Lyon smart city is about how do we work together to develop the city in a
collaborative way” (Emilie Gerbaud, Smart city project manager of Lyon)

Table 4.4: Counter-narratives of cities

At the end this phase the city takes the decision to adopt the technology. Con-
sultancy firms enter in order to reorganise city’s processes to obtain the maximum
benefit from the solutions. Consultancy firms becomes a translator that aligns the
expectations towards solutions acquired. A consultancy firm affirms that “there is an
opportunity to use ubiquitous urban sensing, big data and analytics to better under-
stand the real-time functioning of our cities, as well as inform longer-term planning
and policy decisions”. Likewise, recognises the existent counter narratives “much of
the criticism stems from a feeling that the smart city has been portrayed as a techno-
utopian ideal dreamt up by ‘self-congratulatory’ technology companies marketing their
products” (Arup and UCL, 2014). Thus, consultancy firms enable processes of mo-
bilisation that permit to bind together multiple actors to define policies related to
technology implementation and city development.

Finally, in the mobilisation phase, the engagement between involved actors is

ensured and alliances remain stable acquiring the status of taken-for-granted. There-
upon, technology firms sign agreements of collaboration with the cities, starting the

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implementation of the smart city, providing a continuous accompaniment to solve
doubts and correct possible mistakes while attempt to generate interessement in other
solutions. Thus, the city engages in a legal process that permits the correct imple-
mentation of the technology, creating or improving laws that facilitate smart solutions
citywide. However, the mobilisation phase is not shown within the narratives devel-
oped by the technology firms. Extracts of alliances are used as part of successful
customer cases to generate interessement in new cities seeking to acquire this tech-
nology. Thus, the city transforms from being a buyer of the smart city solutions
into a seller of the smart city concept, entering in a new cycle of the market shaping
process.

Actions taken by smart cities to frame the market shaping

process
The city’s issues are recognised by city managers for a long time. Nevertheless, the
problematization of the smart city occurs when this specific technology is considered
by the city as a potential solution for the city problems. This in some cases is
a response of the technology hype and in other cases responds to the exchanges
practices with the technology firm. It starts with a deconstruction process of the
narratives generated by the technology firm, in which the city is able to establish its
own vision as a smart city, leading to the acceptance or rejection of the technology.
This vision is not only the anchor to develop the strategy and the city’s narrative but
also permits to enter into normalising practices that are necessary for the technology
implementation. In the three cities (AMS, BCN and Lyon), a political support,
governmental and private funding was required. Therefore, the city elaborates a
draft or initial narrative, which will evolve in the interessement phase, serving to
explain the vision to the city’s internal stakeholders. In Lyon that discussion took
place in the earlier stages: “on the operational side, it’s a lot of legal frameworks,
that we need to build on. For example, what are the new way of contracts that we can
build with the private sectors, with the end users and the citizens?” (Emilie Gerbaud).
From this normalising process emerges the first set of legal regulations that serve as
a framework for the city and the actors involved.

The construction of the smart city starts as an invisible stage in which the tech-
nology infrastructure begins to be implemented. The city’s role goes through a trans-
formation, passing from being the buyer of the smart city solutions to become a seller
of the smart city concept, aiming to attract investors, business, start-ups and citizens

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that help to construct the smart city initiatives. Therefore, the cities require to create
a new representation of themselves that embedded the smart city concept, entering
into process of creating interessement among business and citizens.

Next, the city enters into the interessement phase. The cases resort to the use of
new narratives that fulfil different purposes; from attracting investors, business and
start-ups that want to move to the city and participate in the construction solutions
to engaging residents, as Amsterdam did: “When we started, we realised that the
most important thing about a smart city was creating insight, giving people insight
into the things that are happening in the city”. The city engages in a representational
practice, to create a narrative that gives sense to the city’s vision, the models of
participation, innovation and governance. However, modifications on that vision are
possible throughout the construction of the smart city. The cities present a narrative
that focuses on the citizen’s life quality from different approaches.

The city’s narratives follow the same epic narrative structure than those of technol-
ogy firms, emphasising the smart city origins, how the city recognises the importance
to adopt the solutions and the different models of participation for stakeholders, invit-
ing them to innovate and co-create the city. The narratives are diffused in trade fairs,
through digital channels, brochures and meetings with the community. However, the
city’s narratives present differences with those of the technology firms. For example,
in Amsterdam and Lyon is more evident the social approach. Table 4.5 presents the
narratives developed by the cities that are implementing smart city solutions.

However, the narratives at this stage present some contradictions with the existent
representations of the smart city. For example, Amsterdam does not consider itself
as a smart city, Ger Baron argues that “there’s no such a thing as a smart city, a
smart city is in general. I would say, a city that provides all the services and the
quality its citizens need. A smart city is basically the same city as we used to have
only integrated with communications infrastructure, is still providing the quality of
life people want”. Spaces as trade fairs open a room for contradictory visions towards
the approach taken by the city. Tomas Diaz, director of the Fablab at Barcelona
affirms “If you think what the smart city expo was, it was mainly a promotional tool
for governments and large companies of products, mainly promoted by the Intel’s, the
Cisco’s, etc. Intel wants a world full of devices because each device will have an Intel
chip. Cisco wants more connected devices because then they will be the infrastructure

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 City Narrative

AMS have a historical reconstruction approach, using the past to sell the
future, showing the innovative history of the city and how is entering into the
digital era that permits to create a sustainable city in which a collaborative
approach ignites innovation and transformation “Sharing information was the
AMS reason why 400 years ago AMS became the richest city in the world, we were
sharing information but cargo and trade and enable us to started the first
stock exchange and the first newspaper so it was basically open data as we
would call it nowadays” (Baron, 2017).

BCN was one of the most prolific smart cities with a technology centred
view, that shared a similar approach with technology firms. Thus, BCN
focused on showing the city’s transformation into the digital era, where
smart centralised management permits to become a smart city, improving
efficiency and economic growth, positively impacting life quality. Manel
BCN
Sanroma Former CTO of BCN says “we face the problems that every city
faces, so we tackle these problems with technology. By putting sensors in
parking spots allow us to have less cars, less traffic and people happy, so the
city becomes a more liveable place” (Cisco, 2014).

Lyon is presented in a period of transition in which is building a city able to

respond to the challenges of tomorrow with a clear desire to promote the city
and bring new investors. Thus, Lyon is “constantly evolving and becoming an
innovative, sustainable and vibrant smart city by deploying an approach to
innovation built on the ‘working together’ model, a decidedly co-smart city.
Thus, the final goal is to create economic, social and societal value for the
Lyon
Greater Lyon metropolitan area by bringing together all territorial
players”(Greater Lyon, 2014). For Emilie Gerbaud, “the vision for a Smart
City is how do we work together on the territory in order to develop the city
in a collaborative way, thus the city becomes a tool for innovation, for the
renewal of the city, a real tool to provide a better life quality, but also to
foster innovation and development for the territory”.

Table 4.5: Narratives developed by smart cities

into the city to make that possible. Citizens are just playing a secondary role, they
are clients under this model of smart city”.

Those contradictory visions are the reflection of technological paradoxes Fournier

(1998) towards Smart cities as a real solution for city’s urbanistic urbanistic problems.
In Barcelona, the smart city is seen by some actors, as an invalid solution that only
responds to commercial purposes of technology firms that do not take into account
the citizen and the real needs of the city. For instance, Renk (2014) see in this

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initial phase of interessement a city that is becoming technology oriented, that does
not care for urban design and could bring digital segregation. In that sense, this
opposition shows resemblances with the concept of Kozinets (2008) of “green ludite”
where technology is shown as a destructive and harmful tool. Contradictions keep
appearing throughout the construction of the smart city.

The enrolment phase occurs as a positive response to the interessement phase, in

this phase initial policies are improves and adapted to the advances of the smart city.
Likewise, a new set of exchanges occurs between the city government and new actors
that exist within the city interested in participate in the construction of smart city
initiatives. Therefore, a negotiation between all the actors is conducted, seeking to
establish the models of collaboration and participation (open collaboration, public-
private partnerships), the actor’s roles and their approach to the construction of the
smart city. The development of collaboration networks has been preponderant in the
construction of the smart city, “The biggest challenge all the partners in the differ-
ent projects faced was to engage the people; in other words to involve the residents,
the entrepreneurs, the employees in the office buildings and also the visitors of the
city”(Amsterdam Smart City, 2011).

In this phase, exchange practices are present and the city uses the narrative estab-
lished to show the advances in the city. It also resorts to realistic cases of how the city
has engaged different actors to develop initiatives, acknowledging difficulties and is-
sues that need to be resolved, permitting to bend together the perspectives of diverse
actors and aligning them under the city’s vision. “Nuon, IBM and Cisco initiated the
West Orange project in which 500 Amsterdam households test an innovative energy
management system. Home Automation Europe is supplier of the display, Far West
and Ymere are housing co-operations and partner in the project: their tenants will
participate in the test. Grid operator Liander is responsible for the implementation
of the smart meters. From an earlier small-scale pilot it is expected that the energy
management system will yield energy and CO2 savings of about 14%” (Amsterdam
Smart City, 2011, p.30).

New counter-narratives emerges, expressing fears or dissatisfaction towards the

smart city development “BCN seems from the outside as a very innovative city and
with a big reputation of smart city, but when you land in BCN the impression that you
have is just the opposite, nobody talks about the smart city. First, because from the

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smart city policies there is not a clear understanding of the needs of the citizens. Sec-
ond, because they do not how to define a citizen, and third because maybe the problems
of the citizens do not need high tech technology” (Ramon Ribera - Professor Universi-
tat Oberta de Catalunya). These counter-narratives reinforce the initial oppositions
that emerged in the interessement phase and incorporate more disagreements that
citizens possess, which in some cases are resolved by the city with the creation of new
initiatives or the re-positioning of fundamental aspects.

Thus, the narrative becomes an important aspect of the exchange and normalisa-
tion practices, permitting to give sense citywide and enact a cultural transformation
about the development and use of the solutions. Amsterdam and Lyon have entered
in a process of cultural transformation that facilitates the appropriation of the smart
city solutions “the smart city it’s also a new culture. The digital culture, it’s also the
culture of making quickly on all the fab labs, in the collaborative approach. It means
that it breaks barriers between different industries, between different actors, and also
between different spaces. That’s also this culture is that we work on Smart City”
(Emilie Gerbaud).

The phase of mobilisation comes next, where the set of laws established in the
enrolment phase are revised, updated and new elements are added in order to legally
reinforce the participation and governance models. In Amsterdam, an update of
laws was required in which “An early app had pointed out the best places to burgle
houses, by triangulating data about public street lighting, the most expensive houses,
and distances from police stations. The burglar app was a sign that the city needed
to refine its approach to using its troves of data to address city management issues”
(Fitzgerald, 2016). This lead to a new series of regulations on the use of access to
open data. Assessment measures were developed to analyse the real impact in the city,
being included in new narratives that emerged as part of the smart city construction
and evolution.

The mobilisation phase occurs in different moments in time. It is important to

highlight that at this point, it does not exist a fully operational smart city and some
cities have changed its perspective radically towards the smart city as is the case
of Barcelona. The city went through a political change, impacting the smart city
consolidation. Thus, Barcelona’s new government rethink the smart city perspective
leading to stop multiple initiatives, starting again the construction process, entering
into an interessement phase and the narrative reconstruction. Barcelona became “the

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digital city” with a citizen-centred perspective, a city that “utilise technology and
data to provide better, more affordable services to citizens, making government more
transparent, participate, and effective. Strike a new deal on data to expand socially
beneficial uses of data. Provide access to Internet for all, high-speed internet is not
a luxury but a right for all citizens” (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2017). This change
takes into account the existent counter narratives, related to the social impact and
the technological segregation generated by the smart city.

The mobilisation phase occurs after the initial solutions are implemented and the
city resorts to narratives with two aims. First, to reinforce the city’ representation,
seeking to attract investors and companies that want to establish their operations in
the city. Likewise, the narratives have the purpose of generate interest within city
start-ups and companies for the development of new solutions. Second, to normalise
the smart city initiatives, permitting the technology to be institutionalised and ap-
propriated within the community. Thus, the narrative becomes a reflection of the
normalising practices, in which the city is presented as a co-construction model of
society, showing how actors engage in collaboration networks to build the smart city.
The narratives evolve with the city, showing the advancements and new solutions that
will be developed. In the case of Barcelona, the narrative reflects the new ideological
position, Pilar Condesa, curator of the BCN smart city expo affirms that “the concept
of the smart city has evolved from a vision more focused on the technology to a vision
more people-centred, in fact we cannot talk of intelligent cities without talking of the
people, who are the root of the intelligence. Thus, the technology is a medium, but
not an end. In the last two years we have been seeing a change towards the concept
of a smart social city, a human city, in which the smart city focuses on values, on
solutions on how to improve the quality of life of the people who live in that city, and
also with a focus on social equity and on reducing the social imbalance” (Moreno,
2017).

Normalising practices become the most relevant market practice in the mobilisa-
tion phase, not only for the development of regulations but also for the creation of
enabling practices. Normalising practices include the revision of current legal frame-
works where new elements are incorporated. This reviewing process permits the city
to be responsive towards the cultural responses and changes in the market while re-
inforcing models of participation and governance. Likewise, the city engages in the
development of enacting practices that generate routines and habits in the citizens,

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allowing the appropriation and engagement of citizens towards the solutions imple-
mented. The development of physical and virtual spaces permits to the community
to be part of the agenda establishment and consolidation of the smart city and to
understand citizen’s needs and opinion about current and new initiatives Francois
Collar, Lyon’s resident affirm that “this exchange permit also to identify the problems
and go further in the solutions for the Metropolis of Lyon” (Grand Lyon, 2016).

Furthermore, the city utilises events, such as hackathons, workshops, meetings

with the community to disseminate and promote the smart city initiatives. AMS
develops workshops to engage and give sense of the new collaboration model. Natasha
Sena, Programme Developer at AMS Institute argues that “this workshop is about the
combination of different stakeholders in solving metropolitan solutions, we combine
different stakeholders from academia, the private sector, the public sector, society and
the community to solve urgent human problems, so in this workshop we want to show
what are the best practices” (AMS Institute, 2016).

In this phase, the narrative becomes a fundamental part of the cultural transfor-
mation and fulfils a role of knowledge and information diffusion. The city engages
in a narrative construction that permits to explain to the community the new model
of the city, the technologies that have being implemented, how they work and their
expected benefits, while aligning those explanations with the other programs that
exist in the city. The narrative is spread within all the actors in existent spaces per-
mitting its socialisation and validation, allowing narrative consolidation. In the case
of Amsterdam and Lyon, the narrative shows a city in a transformation process, that
is becoming smarter with and for the citizens, showing with realistic examples how
different actors are working together to rethink the city, to discover the problems and
to find how the technology solutions are helping to resolve city’s issues and enhance
life quality of the residents. Lyon created a story called “the day of the Easy fam-
ily” in which shows how the different solutions and spaces are used in a daily basis,
“Here is the Easy family, they live in ‘Hikari’, the first buildings of positive energy in
Lyon... Today, Sarah takes the train to go to work and she consults Optymod’ Lyon
before leaving, so she finds the train route and if it is on delay, then she compares
the different modes of transport to go to the station and opts for the electric car shar-
ing, so she doesn’t need to worry to find a parking space. The smart city is already
running in Lyon, for everyone and involving everyone. And yes, life in the city is
easier, more pleasant, more collaborative. Well thought out and well used, the new
technologies help to live better every day and to participate in the construction of the

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city. A city that responds to the needs of the inhabitants, businesses and faces the
social and environmental challenges”.

Multiple narrative constructions emerge from the different actors that help them
to promote their own smart city solutions. Thus, the city puts together all the sto-
ries and shapes them into one coherent narrative about how the smart city is being
implemented. Other actors, such as international organisation create a narrative to
promote the implementation of sustainable cities offering guidelines to standardise
and institutionalise the construction of smart cities, providing legitimacy among the
international community. Therefore, the normalising practices become fundamental
for the stabilisation of the market and its construction. The creation of regulations
and procedures permit to guarantee the safety of the solutions, the city and the cit-
izens. In the same way, the development of enacting practices, routines and habits
enhance the community’s participation, creating a sense of empowerment in the cit-
izens that facilitate the appropriation of the solutions implemented and enable the
construction of a unified vision of the smart city, that guarantee the ongoing partici-
pation of the different actors.

Discussion
Drawing on the literature on market shaping and market practices proposed by Kjell-
berg and Helgesson (2006, 2007); Araujo et al. (2008), this paper studies the shaping
of the market taking into account certain principles relevant for the discussion and
the contributions. First, markets are cultural an dialectical constructions that exist
in an ongoing social process (Peñaloza and Venkatesh, 2006; Nenonen et al., 2014).
Second, the shaping of markets exists as a single process in which market practices are
entangled and remain as a continuous construction (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007).
Third, multiple practices can co-exist simultaneously, despite that dominant market
practices exist in specific moments of the market shaping. Fourth, the shaping of
markets requires the narration of a tellable story that allows the assemblage of people
and material objects (Simakova and Neyland, 2008).

The selection of the case of smart cities grants to observe and analyse how an
emerging market is structured and the interaction among market practices. This
kind of market presents important differences with the markets studied by Kjellberg
and Helgesson (2007), offering an alternative perspective on the assemblage and in-
teraction of market practices and how the market is shaped. By taking a macro

133
perspective of the smart cities, this case elucidates the interaction between market
practices and how the narratives are used as an assemblage tool that permit to give
sense to the actions taken by different actors, allowing a coherent articulation among
market practices. The smart city cases describe a particular form of market shaping
that presents a double cycle of market shaping because the city starts being a po-
tential buyer of the technology solutions, but once the solution is adopted, the city
becomes a promoter and a seller of the smart city concept, starting again with the
market shaping process for a different set of actors. In that sense, this case presents
how different actors engage over time in diverse market practices that resort to nar-
ratives with two aims. First to explain the technology and how it works, enabling the
creation of a market representation. Second, to give sense of new the actions taken
by actors and the new models of collaboration and governance that will be part of
the smart city construction.

In the early stages of market construction, the technology firms employed narra-
tives to create interessement as part to the representational practices that resemble
epic stories. By doing so, the firms where able to explain the use of the technology
by recreating fictional scenarios in which the buyer could understand not only how
the technology operates and its benefits but also showing a network of interrelations
between actors, systems and technologies that coexist in the city and will be improved
by smart city solutions. Drawing on the concept of performativity of Kjellberg and
Helgesson (2006), it is possible to affirm that the use of narratives as sense giving
tool permit to translate ideas and innovations into needs that permit the construction
of profitable markets. In that sense, this article supports the assumptions of Giesler
(2012) which present ANT as a process that can be applied to understand technology
consumption and market marking. Using ANT is also possible to see the performative
role of the narrative. First, the narrative is able to present the created needs pro-
moted by technology firms. Second, the narratives are disseminated through different
channels to create interest, which in many cases ends in a technology hype. Third, in
the enrolment phase the actors align their interests with the narratives proposed and
fourth, the narratives serve as a tool to give sense to the smart city model, permitting
to mobilise the different actors to stabilise the smart city market.

As Storbacka and Nenonen (2011) suggest the performative power depends on

the actor-network position, this study extends their contribution by showing how the
actor’s power position vary throughout the market shaping process. Technology firms
had a stronger position in the early stages of market construction. In the enrolment

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phase, this power is diminished and the city (buyer) acquire an equal position of
power in the technology adoption. In the case of Amsterdam and Lyon, it is possible
to observe a variation in the power of the actors and their influence in the market
shaping. Thus, the performative power of the technology firm decrease due to the
technology needs to adapt to the city’s management vision.

The cases also present the relevance of governmental agency in normalising prac-
tices. This article understands normalising practices as a set of regulatory processes,
enacting practices, routines and habits that enable the institutionalisation of the tech-
nology solution. By doing so, this study combines the initial definition of normalising
practices established by Kjellberg and Helgesson (2006) and add elements of market
stabilisation Kjellberg et al. (2012). The cases showed the need of political support
for the adoption, implementation and appropriation of the smart city. In the enrol-
ment phase, the narrative become a translator between the technology firm and the
city, permitting the establishment of a narrative that embeds the city’s vision towards
the technology and the construction of the smart city. Which serves as a tool for the
obtaining of political support and funding by giving sense to the efforts that the city
wants to develop. Thus, the city is able to convince governmental actors to engage in
the smart city construction and the development of a set of regulations that permit
the implementation of the solutions. Likewise, as Lyon expressed the appropriation
of the smart city is a cultural process in which the narrative is able to create an
appealing and engaging explanation about the technology, the uses, the benefits and
permit to translate the city’s vision for the coming years while generating a sense of
belonging within the different actors.

As Doganova and Karnøe (2015) affirms the central challenge of market making
is create an alignment among market practices that become “mutually supportive”
contributing to create irreversibilities. This article expands the importance given to
the regulatory process arguing that regulations per se are not enough to construct and
stabilise a market. On the contrary, is the continuous construction of socio-cultural
practices such as routines and habits enacted by the different actors involved in the
market construction and the narratives that circulate around the city which permit the
market construction and posterior stabilisation. Likewise, the creation of the models
of collaboration and co-creation generate spaces that citizens appropriate to develop
economic and entrepreneurial activities, showing the government agency in technology
development. Therefore, this paper supports the affirmation of Caerteling et al. (2013)
related to the importance of the government behaviour in the promotion of technology

135
developments and how those environments contribute to the commercialisation of
technology (Chiesa and Frattini, 2011).

Additionally, to the role of the narratives as assemblage tool of market practices

in the case of the smart city market construction. As reality can be considered as a
plastic construction (Storbacka and Nenonen, 2011; Nenonen et al., 2012), the market
inherently exists as an ongoing socio-cultural process that continuously changes and
retain forms (Peñaloza and Venkatesh, 2006; Venkatesh and Peñaloza, 2006; Geiger
et al., 2012; Sigala, 2015) in which actors, activities and narratives evolve continu-
ously, adapting to changes in the market. The narrative is able to embed and respond
to those changes and evolution in the market, being able to elaborate narrative expla-
nations that not only enhance the shaping of the markets, but also permit to elaborate
narratives that are able to challenge contradictory ideological positions generated by
doubts and mistrust towards the technology, working as a tool that permits to battle
the innate fears of technology paradoxes (Mick and Fournier, 1998). Additionally,
the narratives are transversal to the market shaping process, thus, the same narrative
structure can be employed without losing coherence and permitting the assemblage
of market practices.

Contributions and further research

At the theoretical level, this research provides a contribution to market studies by
presenting an alternative explanation and perspective to understand the assemblage
of market practices in the case of emerging technology markets. By taking the case of
an emerging market, this study extends the current research on market studies which
mainly focuses on the analysis of well-established markets in which the normalising
practices have a deep implication in the market shaping process. This research per-
mits to observe a different assemblage of market practices (Kjellberg and Helgesson,
2006, 2007) for this specific market of emerging technology. This paper presents a new
assemblage of market practices that heavily relies on representation practices which
resort to the narratives as a tool that permits to explain the product and the market,
persuade and convince potential buyers and assign meanings to the technology. The
use of the narrative perspective permits to observe how the narratives offer a coherent
and articulated link between market practices, granting a chain of translations that
give sense to the actions taken by all the actors in different instances of the market
shaping process. Thus, the narratives are able to create market representations that
support exchanges practices to sell goods, but also to create collaborative relations

136
among diverse actors. Likewise, the exchange practices permit to the city to translate
the technology firm vision into an institutional construction that makes sense with
the city’s vision and objectives, creating narratives that contribute to obtain polit-
ical support that permits create regulations, routines and habits that allow market
stabilisation.

For practitioners, this study provides and demonstrates the relevance of the use of
narrative strategies in the industrial context. It was presented how narrative allows
to shape the market for the entrance of emerging products. Therefore, companies
that resort to the elaboration of a narrative strategy can creates stories that are
transversal to the market practices, being possible to re-create those narratives in
representational, exchange and normalising practices with a coherent articulation
within market practices. Thus, by resorting to the creation of a narrative strategy,
the firms are able to create stories that facilitate the market shaping stories due to
the transversality of the narratives, permitting to introduce goods into the market.
By creating a narrative that is aligned with the vision of the buyer is possible for
sellers to maintain their performative power and provide the technology as the seller
imagine it. Likewise, it is important that practitioners understand how each of those
market practices operates in order to develop strategies that facilitate the adoption,
use and appropriation of the technologies. For city managers, this study highlights
the importance of governmental agency and external actors in the construction and
stabilisation of the market (Granovetter, 1985; Caerteling et al., 2013). Thus, best
practices from the cases studies can be taken into account in the development of smart
cities or the adoption of technologies at smaller scale.

This paper offers an offspring for future research on market construction and
shaping at different levels. First, a depth analysis of the governmental role in market
shaping is necessary due to the literature in industrial market about governmental
agency is scarce, by bringing back the concept of embeddedness proposed by Gra-
novetter (1985) and being analysed under the frame of markets as a socio-cultural
construction proposed by Peñaloza and Venkatesh (2006) the discussion for industrial
marketing can be enriched and nurtured from multiple perspectives. Likewise, this
paper resonates with the idea proposed by Harrison and Kjellberg (2016) of market
shaping by users. However, this requires a depth analysis that permits to enhance
the conceptualisations provided by scholars.

By taking a macro level approach for this study, is clear that the market construc-
tion process has been oversimplified, which omits the recognisance of nuances among

137
actors, a more in-depth study could permit to obtain more insights and enhance the-
oretical contributions for each market practice. However, as it was stated the aim
of this paper is to contribute to the market construction literature and the analysis
of the market practices assemblage by showing how the narratives allow a coherent
articulation of the market practices.

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Chapter 5

Discussion and contributions

Contents
5.1 Contributions for Market studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
5.2 Implication for marketing practitioners . . . . . . . . . . 147
5.3 Limitations and future avenues of research . . . . . . . . 148

The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the role of the narratives in

the assemblage of market practices that enable the market shaping process. To that
end, three research questions were formulated: (1) How are narratives employed and
which is their role in industrial advertising? (2) How is narrative strategy globally
orchestrated? What are the implications of a narrative approach for industrial firms
and for our understanding of marketing evolution? (3) How does the use of narratives
contributes to shape the market for emerging technologies in the industrial context?
This section reviews and condenses the insights obtained in each study by addressing
these questions and discussing the implications for marketing theory, market studies
and practitioners. This section concludes with a description of the limitations found
and suggesting future avenues of research.

Drawing on the literature on market shaping and market practices (Kjellberg and
Helgesson, 2006, 2007; Araujo et al., 2008), this dissertation studies the shaping of the
market taking into account certain fundamental principles that shape the discussion
and the contributions. First, markets are cultural an dialectical constructions that ex-
ist in an ongoing social process (Peñaloza and Venkatesh, 2006; Nenonen et al., 2014).
Second, the shaping of markets exists as a single process in which market practices are
entangled and remain as a continuous construction (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007).
Third, multiple practices can co-exist simultaneously, despite that dominant market
practices exist in specific moments of the market shaping. Fourth, the shaping of

139
markets requires the narration of a tellable story that allows the assemblage of people
and material objects (Simakova and Neyland, 2008).

It is important to highlight that the case of smart cities presents a double cycle
of market shaping because the city starts being a potential buyer of the technology
solutions, but once the solution is adopted, the city becomes a promoter and a seller of
the smart city concept, starting again with the market shaping process for a different
set of actors. The analysis was developed employing Actor Network Theory and the
moment of translations proposed by (Callon, 1986). In that sense, this dissertation
supports the assumptions of Giesler (2012) who presents ANT as a process that
can be applied to understand technology consumption and the market making. The
figure 5.1 presents the dominant market practices, actors and narratives tied together
throughout the market shaping process.

Figure 5.1: Smart City market shaping process

The selection of the case of smart cities grants to observe and analyse how an
emerging market is structured and the interaction among market practices. This

140
kind of market presents important differences with the markets studied by Kjellberg
and Helgesson (2007), offering an alternative perspective on the assemblage and in-
teraction of market practices and how the market is shaped. This dissertation claims
that narratives fulfil an essential role in the shaping of emerging technology markets
because they enact the assemblage of market practices, granting to give sense in a
coherent and articulated way to an unknown technology and the market in which it
will operate. Furthermore, drawing on the concept of performativity of Kjellberg and
Helgesson (2006), it is possible to affirm that the use of narratives as sense giving
tool permits to translate ideas and innovations into needs that allow the shaping of
profitable markets.

This research shows that the shaping of an emerging technology market starts
with representational practices in which technology firms resort to the use of narra-
tives to explain, give sense and assign meanings towards the technology. Thus, the
narratives recreates fictional or realistic scenarios that depict how the market oper-
ates, explaining the technology and its benefits, the network of interrelations that
exist among actors 1 , systems and technologies, that coexist in the city and will be
improved by smart city solutions, and cities that already adopt those technologies,
providing best practices and potential relationships. In other words, the narrative
allows to give sense and assign meanings towards a technology while depicting how
the technology will operate in a current market. Likewise, the city engages in the use
of narratives to create a market representation after the smart city technology has
been adopted, with the same purposes of explaining and give sense to the smart city
while attempting to engage actors in the new collaboration and governance models
that are developed as part of the smart city construction.

Multiple channels are used to create those market representations; with the tech-
nology firms analysed, it was possible to observe a transmedia strategy (Scolari, 2009)
based on narratives that permits to create a coherent story through all the different
channels used by the companies including: podcast, advertisement, blogs, customer
cases, interviews, reports, white papers and public speeches, among others. How-
ever, the transmedia narrative strategy requires a correct orchestration that enacts
the creation of content for each channel, addressed to specific audiences and demands
not only the adaptation of the same story but a re-creation of the story for each
channel. The technology firms examined in this research presented a strong use of
1
The actors within the city includes technology firms, businesses that operate in the city, gov-
ernmental agents, international organisations, media, start-ups and residents

141
advertisements in the earlier stages to create the market representation. By present-
ing IoT in multiple industrial scenarios, the advertisement provides an explanation
of the technology’s scope, the possible advantages that can be obtained, the technol-
ogy requirements that companies need to maximise the advantages given by IoT, the
interrelations with other actors involved in the process and the link with the strat-
egy. By employing case stories of firms that endorse the use of IoT, Cisco is able to
create a more plausible market representation that promotes not only the product
but also the firm’s vision of an interconnected world. The customer cases provide a
sense of realism and validate the utopic future scenarios proposed in the narrative.
In this sense, the narrative advertising creates a hyperreality, in which reality is not
only reproduced but also improved (Eco, 1986), contributing to the development and
meaning assignations in a social process of market construction (Rinallo and Golfetto,
2006). Thus, the narrative advertising contributes to the creation of market repre-
sentations that present a tellable story (Simakova and Neyland, 2008), providing a
simplified explanation of what the market is (Diaz Ruiz and Kowalkowski, 2014) and
depicting how the technology fits strategically in the current industrial context.

Despite the acknowledgement that multiple meanings can be elicited by the audi-
ence, the narratives provide a frame in which the story receiver can navigate, estab-
lishing clear boundaries that reduce the possibilities to create new meanings towards
the technology. The narrator fulfils an important role in guiding the story receiver
towards the meanings that the firm and the advertisements expect. The meanings
depicted in the narratives are created as a coherent and integral piece in which each
one of the advertisements reinforces the meanings that have been presented from
the beginning. In that sense, the narratives are interlinked by a metanarrative, or a
narrative composed of multiple stories (Stephens and McCallum, 1998), permitting
a continuous and coherent meaning assignation in the audience mind throughout the
advertisement campaign. In that sense, the use of narratives grants the development
of market representations that create an emotional connection with the story receivers
(Lynch and De Chernatony, 2004), in which the audience plays an active role in the
unravelling of the meanings decoded in the narratives. Hence, the advertisements
operate as socio-political artefacts that portray specific meanings to create represen-
tations in which the audience must participate in a co-creation process of meaning
assignation (Garland et al., 2013). Nevertheless, the advertisements only provide a
positive site for the technology representation in which contradictory ideological po-
sitions presented by Kozinets (2008) are nonexistent. Thus, this perspective allows to
analyse representational practices and market shaping from a branding perspective.

142
 The narratives developed as part of the market representations are recreated in
the exchange practices by salespeople who resort to employ similar narrative struc-
tures as part of their selling speech, providing coherency and articulation between
the market representation and exchange practices incarnated in the discourse behind
the selling of the technology. In the exchange practices the tone of the narrative is
more realistic, incorporating rational data 2 that support and strengthen the sales
pitch and adapts to the particular conditions of the potential buyers, embedding cul-
tural elements which shows that the technology firm understands the problematic,
facilitating the persuasion and creation of empathy with the customers (Gilliam and
Zablah, 2013; Gilliam and Flaherty, 2015). Hence, the use of the narratives within
selling speeches demonstrates expertise and knowledge about the customer and the
industry in which operates. By recreating familiar scenarios in the narrative it is
possible to transport the story receiver to the narrative world, reducing counter ar-
gumentations and providing additional explanations to doubts and fears that can
exist towards the new technology. In that sense, the narrative facilitates the naviga-
tion towards technological paradoxes (Mick and Fournier, 1998), allowing salespeople
to offer an explanation to possible counter argumentations and enhance the selling
argumentation and the exchange of the good.

In this sense, it is possible to consider that a transmedia narrative strategy goes

further than the traditional concept of transmedia. It allows not only the recreation of
the narratives in different channels, but also permits that the story is transformed and
retold in diverse scenarios, being adaptable to particular circumstances in customer
interactions, and serving as a link among market practices. Thus, the use of a narra-
tive strategy permits to plan the orchestration of multiple stories that circulate in the
socio-cultural sphere, granting a multilogue that reinforces market representations,
facilitates commercial exchanges and also permits the development of normalising
practices that include the creation of regulations, enabling practices, routines and
habits (Kjellberg et al., 2015).

The cities enter in the exchange practices aiming to sell the smart city concept
to their internal stakeholders which need to be attracted in order to obtain resources
from international organisations, so the city retold the narrative created to promote
the smart city and the story is re-created to obtain the participation of businesses,
star-ups and the residents in the development and testing of technology applications
2
e.g. statistics of the technology adoption per industry, potential benefits, market studies, scien-
tific reports, among others.

143
that enhance the services offered by the smart city. Likewise, a negotiation occurs
among the actors involved in the smart city to determine the models of collaboration
and governance within the city.

As it was aforementioned, at the moment of this dissertation, it does not exist any
smart city fully functional, therefore, the market still is in a process of normalisation
in the most advanced cities and continues in phases of interessement and enrolment
with other potential cities interested in adopting these technologies. For the tech-
nology firms, the normalisation practices occur at two levels. First, as a response
of the adoption of the first smart city solutions, that permits to see in reality which
are the problems of the technology that need to be regulated. These regulations are
developed individually by each city, but international organisations contribute to cre-
ate a frame of best practices and guidelines for the adoption and implementation of
those technologies. In that sense, the support of international agencies contributes
to the regulation and process standardisation, that is used to enhance the market
representation, permitting to obtain external support that endorses the adoption of
these technology to improve city management. Technology firms also capitalise on
the implementation of the smart city solutions, despite the evolution of the imple-
mentation in a particular city, using those cities as part of the narrative in the form
of successful customer cases that support the adoption of smart city technologies pro-
viding legitimacy. Likewise, the normalisation offers additional tools to salespeople
in their discourse and the customer cases become part of the stories used as part
of commercial exchanges, demonstrating that market shaping exists as an ongoing
process (Geiger et al., 2012; Nenonen et al., 2014; Doganova and Karnøe, 2015).

As the smart city solutions represents an emerging technology in the market, the
narratives serve as a tool used within normalisation practices. In the early stages in
the exchange between the technology firm and the city, the city requires to build an ex-
planation for governmental actors (e.g. municipality), which implies a deconstruction
of the narratives proposed by technology firms to understand the potential benefits of
implementing the solutions in the city and require the elaboration of a new narrative
that embeds the vision that the city has of itself as a smart city. That narrative
accompanied with rational and financial arguments permits the city to persuade and
convince the internal governmental actors to adopt the emerging technology. Later,
when the technology is implemented in the city, a new set of regulations is taken in
place, adapting to the changes found by the city that permit to legitimate the market
(Humphreys, 2010). Likewise, a cultural management process is developed in the

144
city, aiming to explain the technology benefits and create engagement and a sense of
belonging towards the smart city. Additionally, the development of co-creation spaces
or exchanges with the community can be considered as enabling practices that allow
the establishment of routines and habits in relation to the smart city solutions, which
permit users to appropriate the technology (Kjellberg et al., 2015).

5.1 Contributions for Market studies

At the theoretical level, this research provides a contribution to market studies by
presenting an alternative explanation and perspective to understand the assemblage
of market practices in the case of emerging technology markets. By taking the case of
an emerging market, this dissertation extends the current research on market stud-
ies which mainly focuses on the analysis of well-established markets in which the
normalising practices have a deep implication in the market shaping process. This
research permits to observe a different assemblage of market practices (Kjellberg and
Helgesson, 2006, 2007) for this specific market of emerging technology. Thus, the
studies present a new assemblage of market practices that heavily relies on represen-
tation practices which resort to the narratives as a tool that permits to explain the
product and the market, persuade and convince potential buyers and assign meanings
to the technology. The use of the narrative perspective permits to observe how the
narratives offer a coherent and articulated link between market practices, granting a
chain of translations that give sense to the actions taken by all the actors in different
instances of the market shaping process. This contribution also relates to the role
of ideas in the shaping of markets or the concept of performativity (Kjellberg and
Helgesson, 2006). This research shows how the narratives enable the translation to
ideas into more tangible constructions that permit to create representation practices
and later are re-created in other market practices, that allow the exchange of the tech-
nology and the elaboration of a normative and regulatory legitimacy for the market
(Humphreys, 2010).

This case depicts the cultural influences in the market shaping process, which are
clearly reflected in the way that the cities built their perspective as a smart city,
shaping in different ways the manner in which the smart city initiatives were con-
ceived, going from technology centred cities to citizen-centred cities. These cultural
influences present ideological differences in the consumption of technologies in the in-
dustrial context. The ideological elements proposed by (Kozinets, 2008) were reflected

145
in the narratives developed by cities and technology firms that showed the technol-
ogy as an engine for cultural and economic development, presenting a technological
deterministic view, while the counter-narratives illustrate the negative sides of the
technology related to the lack of real solutions of the technology and the possibility
to generate technology segregation. Thus, the multiple counter-narratives, emerged
from diverse actors, permitted to technology firms and the cities to create new nar-
ratives that include responses to those contestations, enabling the legitimacy of the
technology as a brand-mediated process (Giesler, 2012) and demonstrating that the
legitimisation of markets occurs as a socio-cultural process (Humphreys, 2010).

Next contribution refers to the plasticity of the narratives and its importance in
the market shaping process. As reality can be considered as a plastic construction
(Storbacka and Nenonen, 2011; Nenonen et al., 2012), the market inherently ex-
ists as an ongoing socio-cultural process that continuously changes and retain forms
(Peñaloza and Venkatesh, 2006; Venkatesh and Peñaloza, 2006; Geiger et al., 2012;
Sigala, 2015) in which actors, activities and narratives evolve continuously, adapt-
ing to changes in the market. The narrative is able to embed and respond to those
changes and evolution in the market, being able to elaborate narrative explanations
that not only enhance the shaping of the markets, but also permit to elaborate nar-
ratives that are able to challenge contradictory ideological positions generated by
doubts and mistrust towards the technology, working as a tool that permits to battle
the innate fears of technology paradoxes (Mick and Fournier, 1998). Additionally,
the narratives are transversal to the market shaping process, thus, the same narrative
structure can be employed without losing coherence and permitting the assemblage
of market practices.

Lastly, this dissertation contributes to extend the use of narratives not only as a
phenomenon of analysis, but also as a methodological approach to market theory and
the studies of markets. The importance of the narratives has been recognised as a
fundamental element that permits the assemblage of socio-technical elements within
the markets (Caliskan and Callon, 2010), while permitted to create a tellable story
that narrates the market interactions, depicting the boundaries, the actors agency and
their identity (Simakova and Neyland, 2008), generating a shared understanding of
the market among the actors involved and facilitating the market stability (La Rocca
et al., 2015). Thus, the narratives can be understood as a pivotal tool of sensegiv-
ing and sensemaking used in the origins of the markets (Rosa et al., 1999; Shankar
et al., 2001). Furthermore, the studies of narratives have been widely explored in

146
other social sciences as organisational behaviour, providing important insights for
the understanding of multiple phenomena from leadership to change (Gabriel, 2000,
2004; Czarniawska, 2004; Abolafia, 2010; Polleta et al., 2011; Humphreys and Brown,
2008; Humphreys and Latour, 2013; Czarniawska, 2014). This research emphasises
the importance of narratives in market theory and expects to expand the use of
organisational research into marketing research.

5.2 Implication for marketing practitioners

For practitioners, this dissertation provides and demonstrates the relevance of the use
of narrative strategies in the industrial context at different levels. First, it was shown
how the narrative allows to shape the market for the entrance of emerging products.
Therefore, companies that resort to the elaboration of a narrative strategy can creates
stories that are transversal to the market practices, being possible to re-create those
narratives in representational, exchange and normalising practices with a coherent
articulation within market practices. Thus, by resorting to the creation of a narrative
strategy, the firms are able to create stories that facilitate the market shaping stories
due to the transversality of the narratives, permitting to introduce goods into the
market, assign meanings to those goods, connect emotionally with customers and
create a cultural alignment between the good, the firm and the customer, which will
reduce counter argumentations that can emerge at any point.

Second, the development of a transmedia narrative strategy permits to create

and orchestrate multiple stories simultaneously, granting the possibility to create
relevant and valuable content for different audiences without losing coherence within
the existent stories. In that way, the use of a transmedia narrative strategy provides
a similar experience in every point of interaction that customers have with the brand.
Thus, the use of a narrative strategy allows to orchestrate a multilogue or a polyphony
while preserving cohesiveness and avoiding the rigidity of dominant branding models.
In that sense, this echoes and complements existing works on branding, advocating
for a renewed approach to branding (e.g. Diamond et al., 2009; Visconti, 2010) in
which cross-channel communication or integrated marketing communication can be
understood in terms of narrative re-creation.

Third, this dissertation provides a basic toolkit of the narrative elements and
structures that can be used, as a starting point, in the construction of a narrative
strategy and the elaboration of stories. It shows multiple cases that serve as a guidance

147
and where is demonstrated that the selection of a narrative type guides the structure
of the plot, the type of characters and their role. Likewise, offers a perspective on the
narratives as tools of sensemaking and meaning assignation that can be used as part
of industrial advertising strategies. Despite that the studies are developed with firms
with a considerable amount of financial resources, it is considered that these insights
obtained in this research can be used for any firm regardless their size or sector. Thus,
the elements provided in this research can be a roadmap for any marketing manager
in the B2B industry willing to embrace a narrative strategy for its brand.

Finally, for city managers, this research highlights the importance of governmental
agency and the influence of external actors in the construction and stabilisation of the
market (Granovetter, 1985; Caerteling et al., 2013). The creation of co-creation and
innovation ecosystems improve the commercialisation of the goods developed (Chiesa
and Frattini, 2011), contributing to obtain stability. Furthermore, the narratives
permit to persuade and convince multiple actors involved in the construction of the
city and are used as part of normative and regulatory legitimacy (Humphreys, 2010)
while enacts practices that permit the elaboration of routines and habits (Kjellberg
et al., 2015) that facilitate the market stability.

5.3 Limitations and future avenues of research

This research possesses some limitations that can be understood as opportunities for
the development of future avenues of research. First, this research focuses exclu-
sively on the technology market, more specifically in the smart city market, reducing
the possibility to make generalisable contributions that can be applied to different
industries. However, the method of theorising selected for the case study was the
interpretive sensemaking which focuses on understanding the subjective experiences
of the actors involved, paying attention to the context as a relevant element within
the phenomena studied (Welch et al., 2011). Likewise, it is important to highlight
that technology firms have been recognised as remarkable cases of industrial branding
and advertising (Lynch and De Chernatony, 2004; Brown et al., 2012). The second
limitation is related to the macro level approach used in the analysis of the data
gathered, in which the market shaping process has been oversimplified to being able
to understand the flowing of the narratives and the assemblage among the market
practices. Despite this, it is recognised that some nuance among actors was omitted
because it was not considered relevant and also the focus was on the outcomes of
the negotiations rather than the interactions between the seller and buyer. A more

148
in-depth study could permit to obtain more insights into these topics and enhance
the theoretical contributions.

Additionally, three future avenues of research have been identified. First, as the
smart city market does not achieve yet a full stabilisation, it will be interesting to
understand the practices of normalisation and legitimacy employed to obtain the
stability of the market. This will contribute to extend the research on normalising
practices developed by (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006, 2007; Kjellberg et al., 2015;
Doganova and Karnøe, 2015; Vargo et al., 2015; Onyas and Ryan, 2015) and to under-
stand the role of the narratives in legitimacy processes (Vaara et al., 2007; Golant and
Sillince, 2007; Vaara and Tienari, 2008; Humphreys and Latour, 2013). Second, this
research identified how big technology companies were able to create market repre-
sentations, however, it could offer an additional perspective to understand how SME’s
are able to create those market representations, examine if those companies resort to
narratives and their purpose. This resonates with extant research on entrepreneurship
(e.g. Loounsbury and Glynn, 2001; Garud et al., 2014). Third, the analysis of the
role of the users in the shaping of markets, in the case of Amsterdam, it was possible
to vaguely observe how the citizens were determining the agenda of the type of smart
solutions that they want for their neighbourhood. This implies that users can have
a strong influence on how the market is shaped, as proposed by (Harrison and Kjell-
berg, 2016). Finally the fourth avenue of research is related to the development of a
depth analysis of the governmental role in market shaping. Literature in industrial
market regarding governmental agency is scarce and by bringing back the concept of
embeddedness proposed by Granovetter (1985) and being analysed under the frame of
markets as a socio-cultural construction proposed by Peñaloza and Venkatesh (2006)
the discussion for industrial marketing can be enriched and nurtured from multiple
perspectives.

149
Chapter 6

Annexes

Contents
6.1 Coding scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
6.2 Interview protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
6.3 Timeline of firm’s advertising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
6.4 Documentation links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

6.1 Coding scheme

Table 6.1, shows the coding structure for first and second cycles. The first cycle
of coding includes an initial coding structure that was used to analysed an initial
part of the data collected mainly composed of documents and videos from the selling
firms. Additionally, the table presents and contrasts first and second cycles of coding
allowing the reader of this research to observe the evolution of the coding structure.
The second cycle of codes exhibits new codes and sub-codes developed to examine
in depth seller and buyers narratives that give and make sense of new technology
markets, in this case, the market of smart technologies.

150
 Coding references
First coding schema Second coding schema
- Narratives taxonomies - Narratives taxonomies
+ Characters Narrator
Heroic character
Mentor character
+ Temporalities Present
Past
Future
+ Mythic archetypes Gaian
Promethean
Apollonian
+ Types of narratives Documentary style
Cyclical narratives
Metanarratives
Satire
Romance
Comedy
Tragedy

- Market construction - Market construction

+ Representation practices
+ Exchange practices
+ Normalization practices
Firms representation
City representation
City consolidation
Negotiation firm-city
Negotiation city actors
Creation of norms
Creation of routines and habits
Legitimacy strategies

- Network actors - Network actors

+Sellers +Business network model
+Buyers +Government
+Others +Sellers
+Entrepreneurs
Citizenship

Table 6.1: First and second cycle coding structure

6.2 Interview protocol

The objective of this research is to comprehend the impact of Internet of Things
ecosystem / Digital transformation for your company, your customers and for you. I
would like to understand how was the selling process from the marketing strategies

151
used by the suppliers in the selling process of this solution. Likewise, I am interested
in the internal process of adoption or rejection of smart technology solutions.

The Interviewee

1. Could you introduce yourself?

2. Tell me about your background?

3. Tell me about your relationship with technology?

4. Which technology devices do you have and use (in the office or in your house)?

The Company/organization/city

1. Tell me about your company?

2. Can you tell me about your role in the company?

3. How long have you been in the company?

4. Could you tell me about the vision, mission and challenges for your company
in the next years?

5. What technologies do you see as impacting your business/activity? How do they

impact? Is this integrated in your strategy? What are difficulties? What are
facilitating factors? How does the organization react? How do you go beyond
difficulties? (examples of projects)

IoT and smart products Now I would like to focus on smart technologies and IoT

1. Your view toward these technologies: How do you see these technologies: what
does they mean to you?

2. How do you see them impacting your business/activity? Examples? Has your
view changed on these facts?

3. Where is your company/organization with IoT/SP? Particular solution consid-

ered? Areas of application?

4. If adoption of IoT/SP: tell the story of integration of IoT within the organiza-
tion?

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 5. What was the goal of the integration of IoT? (if several projects, focus on one
or two)

6. Can you describe the selection and decision process? Supplier? Why the specific
supplier? Were there other suppliers considered? Which? Type of relationship
with the selected supplier (co-construction)?(examples)

7. Can you describe the buying process? What made you choose this solution?
How did the buying process influenced your view toward IoT?

8. Network: Companies involved? Partners? How do you evaluate the results?

How did you work with partners? What was the ecosystem? The impact on
the choice? (examples)

9. Internal adoption: Can you describe the reaction internal to your organization?
Barriers? How did you go beyond these barriers? What did you say? (examples)

10. How are you planning to monetise the investment in IoT

11. If not adoption of IoT/SP: Why? What is the status?

12. Do you know other companies which has already implemented this kind of
solutions? Do you find relevant?

13. Which other solutions do you believe can be applied to solve the issues that
your company faced nowadays?

IoT CISCO / IBM I would now talk about two of the main suppliers in the
domain, and I would like to have your view on them. First we will talk about Cisco
and afterwards about IBM

1. What do you know about them? Have you ever worked with them? If yes, tell
me the story of the relationship?

2. Have you seen the campaigns related with IoT? Which one? (IY) What do you
think about them? Could you tell me one piece( commercial ) that you really
liked or caught your attention? Why was that piece special for you? Why was
it appealing to you?

3. I am going to show you two ads. Please tell me what do you think about them

153
4. What do you know about them? Have you ever worked with them? If yes, tell
me the story of the relationship?

5. Have you seen the campaigns related with IoT? Which one? (IY) What do you
think about them? Could you tell me one piece (commercial ) that you really
liked or caught your attention? Why was that piece special for you? Why was
it appealing to you?

6. I am going to show you one or two ads. Please tell me what do you think about
them

Conclusion

1. Are there any firms or people that you would recommend us to approach?

2. Do you have any documentation that you can share with me?

3. Do you have anything to add?

4. Do you think that we cover the majority of the adoption process of smart or
IoT solutions in your company?

5. Do you have any questions?

Thanks

154
6.3 Timeline of firm’s advertising
Table 6.2, presents in detail each one of the stories developed by Cisco, specifying
the set of stories to which they belong and including their release date and table
6.3, presents in detail each one of the stories developed by IBM, specifying the set of
stories to which they belong and including their release date.

155
 Tomorrow starts here campaign
Story set Video Name Release date
Tomorrow starts here Anthem December 2012
Typical day May 2013
Banana May 2013
Weekend warrior June 2013
Wired The connective June 2013
Concert August 2013
Circle Story January 2014
Storm April 2014
Skater June 2014
Let’s build tomorrow today February 2015
New years eve
Cleveland match

Successful Customer Cases Barcelona January 2014

Chicago September 2014
Milan October 2014
Hamburg October 2014

The Museum of the lasts The last traffic jam January 2015
The last product recall April 2015
The last long queue April 2015
The last missed delivery April 2015

The next wave of the

Competitor June 2015
Internet
Hackers June 2015
Online factory June 2015
Work from anywhere June 2015
Launch the app June 2015

Never Better Anthem May 2016

Security May 2016
Crisis response May 2016
Smart Cities April 2016
Conservation June 2016
Pep Talk June 2016
Re-imagining businesses July 2016

Table 6.2: Detail timeline of Cisco’s story sets

156
 Watson cognitive computing
Story set Video Name Release date
Introducing Watson Watson and the Jeopardy! February 2011
What will you do with
August 2014
Watson
IoT changing the world August 2014
How it works? October 2014
World of Watson May 2015
Cognitive IoT is ready October 2015

Conversations with Watson Anthem October 2015

Bob Dylan October 2015
Ken Jennings October 2015
Serena Williams January 2016
Todd Spaletto January 2016
Frank Abignale January 2016
Ashley Bryant January 2016
Richard Thaler January 2016
Ridley Scott February 2016
Stephen King April 2016

Coping with Humans Anthem February 2016

Gadget boot February 2016
Muscle boot February 2016
Other 7 ads February 2016

Successful IoT Industry

Sports March 2016
Cases
Education April 2016
Automotive May 2016
Fashion May 2016
Boat June 2016
Port June 2016

Other video material Watson at work August 2013

Watson at work in Health
August 2013
care
Watson at work in Finance August 2013
Smart cities January 2016
Message Sight January 2016
Cognitive IoT January 2016

Table 6.3: Detailed story’s timeline sets developed by IBM

157
6.4 Documentation links
If the reader require more information, all the documentation is available in the
following link https://bit.ly/2MzqPuD. The data is organized by sellers, buyers
(cities), consultancy firms and european commision. Inside each folder you will find
documents, videos and podcasts from the technology firms, the cities and the divers
actors analysed as part of this research.

158
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LES MARCHES COMME CONSTRUCTIONS NARRATIVES
Cette thèse étudie l'évolution du marché pour les technologies de la ville intelligente, en décrivant l'évolution du marché comme un processus
intégrant des pratiques dans lesquelles le récit permet leur assemblage en tant que construction cohérente et logique permettant de donner
un sens aux actions des acteurs. Le marché technologique des villes intelligentes illustre les multiples rôles des narrations dans la formation
des marchés. Ainsi, les narrations sont utilisées pour créer des représentations du marché expliquant son fonctionnement et les interrelations
entre acteurs et technologies. Celles-ci sont ensuite recréées dans les échanges commerciaux en ajoutant de nouveaux éléments qui
résonnent pour le client. La narration devient un outil pour convaincre, faire preuve d’expertise, réduire les incertitudes et développer des
liens de confiance. Les nouvelles recréations du récit jouent un rôle dans les pratiques de normalisation qui permettent la création de normes,
de politiques, d'habitudes et de routines. Ainsi, le récit est présent tout au long du processus de mise en forme du marché, agissant comme un
outil d'assemblage. Cette recherche contribue à fournir une perspective alternative dans le processus de formation du marché, en présentant
la façon dont ce processus est développé pour les marchés technologiques émergents, en faisant des narratives un outil essentiel dans
l'assemblage des pratiques du marché, et en montrant le rôle de l'agence narrative dans le processus de formation du marché.

évolution du marché, pratiques de marché, narrations, ville intelligente, technologies émergentes, théorie du réseau d'acteurs

MARKETS AS NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

This dissertation investigates the market shaping for smart city technologies, understanding market shaping as a process that embeds market
practices in which the narrative permits their assemblage as a coherent and logical construction that allows to make sense of the actors'
actions, granting the entrance of new products or services into the market. The case in point, the smart city technology market depicts the
multiple roles of the narratives in the shaping of markets. Thus, narratives are used to create market representations that explain how the
market operates and interrelations between actors and technologies, those representations are later re-created in commercial exchanges by
adding new elements that resonate with the customer the narrative becomes a tool to persuade, convince, show expertise, reduce uncertainty
and develop trust bonds. New re-creations of the narrative fulfil a role in normalisation practices that allow the creation of norms, policies,
habits and routines. Thus, the narrative is present throughout the market shaping process acting as an assemblage tool. This research
contributes to provides an alternative perspective into the market shaping process, presenting how this process is developed for emerging
technology markets and by bringing narratives as a pivotal tool in the assemblage of market practices and demonstrating the narrative agency
in the market shaping process.

Market shaping, Market Practices, Narratives, Smart City, Emerging Technologies, Actor network Theory

Discipline : SCIENCES DE GESTION

Spécialité : Marketing

Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne

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