Lock-In Effect of Regional Public Brands for Agricultural Products: According to Grounded Theory Approach

After years of sustained government support, China has cultivated numerous agricultural regional public brands, yet many have struggled to develop and achieve breakthroughs. Identifying the factors hindering their growth has thus become urgent. This study aims to uncover the influences behind the lock-in effect that has led to widespread stagnation following rapid expansion. It focuses on 20 consistently low-ranking struggling brands as a sample. Using grounded theory, over 40,000 words of qualitative data were collected through in-depth interviews and text analysis, with systematic three-level coding conducted via NVivo.The findings reveal that developmental bottlenecks arise not from a single cause, but from the synergy of five embedded factors: natural resource disadvantages, policy rigidity, regional cultural constraints, consumer cognitive rigidity, and industrial cluster decline. While supportive in early stages, these factors become rigid constraints later due to “over-embedding,” ultimately locking brands into their original paths through path dependence and hindering innovation. Drawing on embeddedness theory together with path dependence theory, the study builds a systematic framework capable of explaining why regional public brands stagnate at a particular stage of their life cycle; constructing such an explanatory framework is, in our view, the principal academic contribution of this work. This addresses a literature gap that often highlights success while overlooking dilemmas, and provides a theoretical basis for diagnosing bottlenecks and designing unlocking strategies in policy and brand management practice.