Many new products (e.g., PDA phones) share features with multiple categories, but are also substantially different from each of these categories. When consumers encounter such a product, they may create a new subcategory (e.g., smart phones) to accommodate it. In such situations, consumers must...

We develop a spreading activation model, which we call the category activation model, to predict where within a category structure consumers are likely to position a subcategory that they have created to accommodate a new hybrid product. Based on this model, we hypothesize that the probability...