I think that it is impossible to get inside the heads of these old rifle stockers. They were businessmen though so adaptation to markets is important.
I agree that the term "businessman" probably fit somebody like Dickert. But I'd like to hear a case made that we should think of Albrecht as a businessman, since:
Albrecht deliberately chose for most of his adult life--until he was in his mid-fifties--to live in a community in which he could not make any profit whatsoever. He choose, presumably for spiritual reasons, to live in a place where he would never sleep alone (but, instead, in a room filled with other people); where his meals, while guaranteed, would be meager, at best; where others made his marriage choice for him--and, most important here, where others would decide who his apprentices were and what happened to the things he produced and where others earned the profit from his own industry. He chose to make no money.
Did this all change, as if a switch was flipped, when he moved to Lititz in 1771 at the age of 53? Maybe? Some people in Moravian communities left because they could not tolerate economic constraints and wanted to make money. But this does not seem to have been the case with Albrecht (he expressed full satisfaction with the economic arrangements earlier). In Lititz he had to find a way to make a living (for the first time), since no communal economy existed to support him.
So would he have adjusted to prevailing styles? Would it have even occurred to him that, by adjusting the stock profile and other non-functional details, his sales would have improved? Or would he have recognized that his problem arose because he was (for the first time) competing with a very large number of competent and in some cases prolific gunsmiths in his proximity? Adjusting the profiles of his stocks would not really give anybody a reason to haul themselves to Lititz to purchase a rifle. It seems highly unlikely, anyway.
This rifle under discussion, with the
barrel alone signed by Albrecht, is the only reason anybody would even imagine that Albrecht did adapt his style. Indeed, if I understand correctly, the only reason it is dated after 1771 is because of the Albrecht barrel and the unexpected Lancaster-style: all this reasoning is a bit circular, no? Maybe he made this rifle, on a whim, in 1760 when he was still in Christian's Spring?
So, sure it's possible that he adjusted his style after his mid-life move to Lititz. But this rifle is thin evidence, especially coupled with the problem that we don't even know that consumers cared about or made decisions about what they purchased based on regional styles (any more than we care about the shape of functional object, a toilet or a suitcase, that we buy).
