| New product innovation is the key to the survival and long-term development of enterprises.However,companies generally face high failure rates.The important reason is that consumers cannot understand the benefits and risks of new products,especially innovations that are really new and extremely incongruent with consumers’ schema.How to improve consumers’ adoption of new products has become a matter of great concern to both corporate practice and academic research.There have been a lot of explorations on new product communication strategies from perspective of product characteristics and consumer characteristics,yet most of which focus on marketing instruments to help consumers understand new product innovations.However,consumer adoption of new products is not only a trade-off between benefits and risks,but also closely related to consumers’ preferences for innovation.Related studies have shown that consumers’ low adoption of new product innovations is related to the consumers’ resistance to change and the tendency to maintain the status quo.Combined with the Rogers decision model,the influence of consumers’ innovation preferences is formed before the persuasion process.The adoption process of the new products ends before it really has begun.It can be seen that consumers’ innovation preferences are important reasons for their acceptance of new products with different levels of innovation,but there is still a lack of research in this area.From the perspective of percieved innovation utility,this research explores how consumer mindsets affect their adoption of new products with different levels of innovation.Mindsets are psychological orientation that affects consumers’ choice,coding and retrieval of information,which influenc consumers’ product evaluations,brand preferences and complaints.Mindsets can be divided into growth mindset and fresh start mindset based on consumers’ preferences for innovation.Under the growth mindset,people pay more attention to the process of learning and growth,while consumers with fresh start mindset mindset are pursuing new beginnings and changes.Based on the matching of consumer mindsets and new product innovations,this research explores the interaction effect of two different mindsets(growth mindset vs.fresh start mindset)on the willingness to adopt new products of different levels of innovation(incremental new innovations vs.really new innovations)and the mediating mechanism of this effect.Exploring the adoption of new products from the perspective of innovation preferences provides a new path for the effective adoption of new products.Through five experiments,this research examines the interaction of growth and fresh start mindsets on consumers’ adoption of new products.Experiment1 and 2 examine the interaction effect of mindset and the innovation newness on new products adoption.The main difference is the measure of consumers’ adoption intentions.Experiment 1 uses between subject design,while experiment 2 uses behavioral variables,specifically the choose between incremental new product and really new product,as dependent variables to further examine the effect of consumer mindset.The results show that consumers with growth(vs.fresh start)mindset prefer incremental new products while consumers with fresh start(vs.growth)mindset prefer really new products.Experiment 3 and experiment 4 further explores the mediating mechanism of the interaction effect.The results show that perceived innovation utility,that is,the matching degree between the innovation of new products and the mindset of consumers,plays a mediating role.Incremental innovation brings greater perceived innovation utility to consumers with growth mindst,while really new innovations brings greater perceived innovation utility to consumers with a fresh start mindset.Experiment 3 and 4 use different manipulation method(advertising appeal)and different new products to examine the main effect and mediating mechanism to ensure the robustness and external validity of the research conclusions.Finally,Experiment 5 discusses the boundary conditions of the above effects.The moderation effect of time distance was tested by a laboratory experiment.The results show that when the time distance is low,the interaction between mindsets and innovation newness on new product adoption is significant;when the time distance is high,the interaction between mindsets and innovation newness on new product adoption is weakened.This is because consumers are more focused on results and ignore processes and methods when time is far away,which weakens the matching relationship between mindsets and innovation newness.In conclusion,the main results of this research are as follows: For incremental new products,consumers with a growth(vs.fresh start)mindset are more willing to adopt and for really new products,consumers who are fresh start(vs.growth)mindset are more willing to adopt.The matching of mindset and innovation newness enhances consumer perception of innovation untility and thus improves the adoption of new products.Specifically,for incremental new products,consumers of the growth(vs.fresh start)mindset can percieve higher innovation utility and thus have a higher willingness to adopt.For really new products,consumers of the fresh start(vs.growth)mindset will perceive higher innovative utility and thus are more willing to adopt.Finally,when the consumer’s decision-making takes place in the distant future,the interaction effect between mindsets and innovation newness of new products on new product adoption is weakened.This research has several theoretical contributions and practical implications.In theory,first,current study expands the researches on adoption of new products.Prior researches focus on communication strategies of product characteristics and consumer characteristics,yet most of which try to help consumers understand new product innovations.However,consumer adoption of new products is not only a trade-off between benefits and risks,but also influenced by consumers’ preferences for innovation.This study explores how two innovation-related mindsets influence the adoption of new products,which helps broaden the perspective of new products research.Second,it reveals the mediating role of consumer perceived innovation utility on the adoption of new products.Existing researches seek explanations based on risks,benefits and consumers’ schema,while this paper explores the formation mechanism of the matching effect of minsets and innovation newness based on the perceived innovation utility.It helps the understanding of consumers’ new products adoption.Third,current study enriches the researches on the temporal distance.Most of previous researches focus on how temporal distance influence the feasibility and benefits of new products when consumers make decisions.But these are still lacking of concerns about the effect of temporal distance on psychological utility.This study has contributions to the application of time distance and contrual level theory.In practice,this research also has certain management implications.When launching new products,companies must fully consider the match between new product innovations and consumer mindsets.This can be achieved through two ways.First,when promoting new products,it is necessary to select target customers more effectively according to the newness of products.Second,enterprises can comprehensively apply various ways to promote consumers to form certain mindset. |
PDF Full Text Request