Crafting Tradition: The Making and Marketing of Oaxacan Wood Carvings

CHAPTER EIGHT: Specializations

c r a f t i n g t r a d i t i o n 124 SPECIALIZATIONS CHAPTER EIGHT Over the past two decades Oaxacan wood-carvers have developed specialties in their efforts to appeal to a diverse clientele. Some artisans make expensive, laborintensive carvings for collectors; others churn out cheap pieces for gift shops in the United States and tourists seeking souvenirs. Artisans vary in their painting and carving styles and the size of their pieces. They make animals, human figures, devils, angels, frames, chairs, tables, and ox-carts. There are carvings of Benito Juárez, subcomandante Marcos (the Zapatista leader), chupacabras (imaginary beings that eat goats), “Martians,” mermaids, and helicopters. The diverse economic strategies that carvers have pursued in recent years are the result of a segmented market in the United States and Mexico that promotes novelty and rewards specialization . Artisans do not, however, have total freedom in their initiatives. They are constrained by their skills and the labor and capital they are able to mobilize. 124 125 s p e c i a l i z a t i o n s MARKET DEVELOPMENT, PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION, AND EVOLUTION Economic development in capitalist societies almost by definition involves attracting customers to new products and expanding the market for alreadyexisting products. Makers and sellers of an increasingly popular product often develop specialties in their efforts to gain a share of the market. Models from two very different fields, market research and ecological succession , may improve our understanding of why such “product differentiation” sometimes accompanies economic growth. Neither of these models precisely fits the evolution of market niches in the trade in Oaxacan wood carvings. Nonetheless, an examination of these models provides insights about the reasons why many carving households have become increasingly specialized in recent years. product life cycles Market researchers (e.g., Capron 1978; Onkvisit and Shaw 1989) have shown that successful products such as automobiles, cameras, and audiotapes ordinarily have certain life cycles. These business-oriented writers usually assume that their units of analysis are the firms making these products. The applicability of the product life cycle model to Oaxacan wood-carvers therefore depends in part on the extent to which the various groups making pieces can be regarded as analogous to firms. The product life cycle model has five stages. Sales build slowly during the first stage of product introduction. The second stage is early growth, characterized by rapidly increasing sales. Sales continue to increase during late growth but at a lower rate. The final two stages are maturity, when sales are relatively constant, and decline, when sales decrease until the product is finally withdrawn from the market. During introduction, there are usually only a few pioneers making the product. The increased sales marking the end of the introductory phase attract competitors, who continue to enter the market through the early growth stage. Because sales come from the growth in the market, this is not a stage of intense competition. During the late growth phase, competition heats up as the market begins to stabilize. The number of firms selling the product decreases as the strong force out the weak. The late growth period is characterized by product differentiation and market segmentation: In contrast to the imitative product strategy of early growth, extensive product modification occurs as competitors seek differential advantage c r a f t i n g t r a d i t i o n 126 through product design. Typically, product variations proliferate as competitors adapt their products to specific customer requirements . . . In contrast to the early growth phase, price becomes a major competitive weapon in late growth. (Capron 1978:5) Market segmentation is an attempt to divide markets into groups of potential customers with similar characteristics with respect to purchasing (Berrigan and Finkbeiner 1992; Weinstein 1987). By making products designed to appeal to particular types of customers, segmenters hope to increase their sales. The maturity stage begins when sales cease to grow. During this phase, most sales are to repeat users, and prices are competitive. Although the maturity stage may last many years, sales eventually decrease. Two common reasons why declines occur are technological obsolescence and changing consumer tastes. ecological succession Suggestive parallels can be drawn between product life cycles and stages of ecological succession as plants invade open fields (Burrows 1990:420–464; Colinvaux 1973:549–572). The first plants in such fields are opportunists...