Scientific Communities in High-Tech Product Promotion: A Conceptual Model of Cultural and Institutional Moderators

High-tech products are promoted under heightened uncertainty and information asymmetry: prior to purchase or implementation, audiences often lack the hands-on experience needed to independently assess the claimed effects. Expert interpretation, trust building, and the market legitimation of innovations are therefore critical to high-tech marketing. This article conceptualizes scientific communities as epistemic networks that produce and validate knowledge, establish standards of evidence, and disseminate expert assessments through professional communication channels. Based on a synthesis of the literature on innovation and high-tech marketing, technology acceptance and diffusion, the sociology of science, and institutional theory, the article proposes a conceptual model of how scientific communities influence high-tech product promotion. The model identifies three mechanisms: the translation of expert knowledge and the resulting reduction in information asymmetry, trust building through scientific authority, and product legitimation within professional and market fields. The article also highlights a research gap: high-tech marketing, research on epistemic communities, and institutional theory have largely developed in isolation, and the connections among them remain underexplored. Scientific communities are therefore viewed not as a passive resource but as independent actors in their own right in process of recognition, with their own logic of interpretive and reputational competition. The proposed model links the three mechanisms to the cultural and institutional conditions that determine their effectiveness and helps explain variations in marketing outcomes across different settings. The strength of these mechanisms depends on cultural norms concerning technology interpretation and trust, as well as on institutional rules of recognition, incentive systems, and infrastructures supporting interaction between science and business. The model may provide a basis for further empirical testing and for operationalizing the role of scientific communities in high-tech product promotion.