Halting the Momentum? The Effect of Social Buffering on the Craft Focus of Wholesaler Portfolios

We identify which specific types of wholesalers were distributing products from anincreasingly important niche segment of the beer industry, namely craft beer. As traditional recommendations of the strategy literature disregard lock-ins from previous market ties are present, we introduce the notion of social buffering to indicate the embeddedness of organizations into their history of cumulative relationships. We use longitudinal data on distributor establishments and their local portfolio composition between 1997–2016 from three different U.S. states. Our results reveal that it is distributors that are able both to leverage positional strategies in their local portfolios and free themselves from the lock-in associated with their historically beneficial social and market relationships with the large brewers who distribute craft.