How Optimal is Distinctiveness? Category Heterogeneity and the Distinctiveness-Performance Curve

Prior work investigating whether or not organizations should strive to be moderately different from others in their market category has yielded fundamentally contradictory results, with some identifying such an inverted U- shaped relationship between distinctiveness and performance, yet with others finding U-shaped relationships. In this paper, I show how the delegitimation and competition reduction mechanisms jointly driving the...