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Contemporary markets are increasingly structured around fragile and contested value categories, eg, localness, sustainability, or authenticity. Yet marketing scholarship has paid limited attention to how such categories become operational and durable in decen-tralised contexts without dominant orchestrators. Drawing on a Market System Dynamics perspective, this study examines how the boundary of localness becomes operational. We investigate the 100% Valposchiavo initiative in a Swiss Alpine Valley, where the distinction between local and non-local is negotiated among several actors. Based on interviews, field observations, and online reviews, we identify three recursive dynamics (boundary work, boundary operationalisation, and boundary materialisation) through which symbolic distinctions are translated into practices. We conceptualise the mechanism sustaining these dynamics as boundary intermediation, a distributed process of market stabilisa-tion under institutional ambiguity.
Gioia et al. (Wed,) studied this question.