Making Sense of Nanotechnology: The Homophilous/Heterophilous Marketer

The pervasive use of complex technical terminology and concepts within B2B nanotechnology sales relationships has resulted in numerous sensemaking challenges for sellers and buyers. Using a discourse analytic multiple case study methodology, fourteen self-identified ‘scientist’ sellers and buyers from different nanotechnology companies, were interviewed to better understand how culturally close (homophilous) or culturally distant (heterophilous) sales talk influences sensemaking. With all respondents enacting centralized identities as scientists engaged in selling and buying, sales discourses were predominantly claimed to be homophilous. However, poor sensemaking was still evident when poorly understood terminology and themes were used, often from specific talk related to being a particular type of scientist. Focusing on how sellers and buyers worked towards maintaining homophilous sensemaking, showed the joint use of linguistic tools such as metaphor, and references from popular culture, where specific technical knowledge could be avoided. While these spoken tools cannot necessarily create ‘true’ technical understanding, they can provide simpler and preferred views of easily misunderstood high technology products, where being the scientist is enough to achieve a functional level of homophily for sensemaking. This study suggests a highly nuanced and negotiable marketing practice between sellers and buyers to enable increased sensemaking of high technology products.