Signals in the Waves of Surf: Category Development and Signals in Surf Music

The aim of this paper is to investigate to what extent the understanding of market categories changes over time and how this is reflected in the importance of different category signals in periods of category maturation and revival. We test the changing influence of different types of category signals on inclusion rates of surf music compilation albums, which represent the understanding of “surf music” from a market-based perspective. We find that “elaborate” signals to the category label of surf music showed to be important during both the stage of maturity and revival. However, restricted category signals using surf slang actually lost their importance over time. Finally, signaling surf-related locations had no effect in early times, but increased chances of inclusion during a revival. By addressing these changes over time in the importance of category signals, we add to recent studies on mechanisms of categorization during different stages of category development.