David L. Alexander, John G. Lynch Jr., and Qing Wang
Executive Summary
The authors examine how psychological differences in consumers’
thinking about really new products (RNPs) versus incrementally new products (INPs) alter formation of long-term new-product purchase intentions and affect the likelihood that consumers follow through on their stated intentions to buy products and use them as they expect. Really new products promise greater benefits than INPs but also greater potential costs because consumers are uncertain of whether the benefits will actually be delivered and how to trade off the promised benefits against costs and anticipate that they will need to change their behavior to attain potential benefits. The authors connect this theory of what makes a product really new with psychological research on construal theory that shows that people represent temporally distant actions in terms of abstract, high-level considerations of the desirability of the action.
In four field studies, the authors show that consumers are less likely to express intentions to purchase entertainment and communication technology products that were really new rather than incrementally new. Positive intenders follow through on their intentions less often for RNPs than for INPs; this difference in follow-through grows stronger over time. Notably, for INPs, people who say that they will buy are increasingly likely to buy in each month after stating an intention, but the opposite is true for those who state intentions to buy RNPs. The authors find that people who intend to acquire INPs are significantly more likely to think concretely about their intentions. Finally, the authors show that consumers who actually buy RNPs think more abstractly about how they will use them in the first week of ownership than those who actually buy INPs. Moreover, people who buy INPs are accurate in their estimations of how much they will use the products in the first week of ownership, but those who buy RNPs are not.
These results are important for both consumer researchers and marketing practitioners. For consumer researchers, the findings from Study 2 show how construal theory can provide insights into how temporal distance differentially affects the intention–behavior link for RNPs versus INPs. The findings from Studies 3 and 4 contribute to work on construal theory by showing that psychological newness of products produces abstract thinking similar to other factors that affect construal level, and this insight is used to connected work on implementation intentions with construal theory.
For market researchers, Study 2 shows that for long-term purchase intentions, the intention–behavior link grows weaker as consumers experience greater uncertainty in evaluating the products they intend to buy, but only after a delay. Few product-newness-driven differences in purchase intention follow-through would be expected when consumers’ expect to buy a product shortly after expressing a purchase intention. However, significant product-newness-driven differences in follow-through rates would be expected when purchase intentions are formed well in advance of expected purchase opportunities.
For marketing managers, the findings from Study 2 suggest that for RNPs, purchase intentions formed long in advance result in little follow-through. Study 2 implies that prelaunch buzz may be more successful for INPs as follow-through increases over time, whereas the opposite is true for RNPs. Furthermore, consumers’ more abstract thoughts about using RNPs lead to dramatic errors in their expectations of how much they will use the product after acquisition, whereas their expectations are more accurate for INPs. This implies that RNPs will suffer more from high rates of return and negative word of mouth compared than INPs.
Biography
David L. Alexander is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas. He received his MBA and is completing his PhD in Marketing at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. His research focuses on how an innovation’s psychological newness affects consumers’ considerations of that innovation at each step in the innovation adoption decision process.
John G. Lynch Jr. is Roy J. Bostock Professor of Marketing in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Lynch is past president of the Association for Consumer Research, past associate editor for Journal of Consumer Research, and past associate editor and coeditor of Journal of Consumer Psychology. His published work focuses on consumer behavior and validity issues in behavioral research methodology. His current research focuses on consumer decision making. He is the 2003 recipient of the Society for Consumer Psychology’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award and the 2004 recipient of the American Marketing Association’s Paul D. Converse Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Science of Marketing. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and fellow of the Society for Consumer Psychology. Four of his articles have been honored as outstanding article of the year, twice by Journal of Consumer Research, once by Journal of Marketing Research, and once by Journal of Marketing. His 1997 article on Internet shopping is the second-most-cited work to appear in any marketing journal from 1997 to the present, and his 2000 article on price sensitivity on the Internet is the second-most-cited paper to appear in any marketing journal from 2000 to the present. He is a member of the editorial boards of Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Marketing.
Qing Wang is Associate Professor of Marketing and Innovation in the Business School at the University of Warwick in Britain. She is also a visiting professor in the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University in China. She received her doctoral degree in Marketing from Warwick University in Britain and bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Xian University of Technology in China. She was faculty member at the University of Sussex in Britain from 1995 to 1999 and visiting scholar at Duke University from 2004 to 2005. Her current research focuses on marketing research methods and consumer adoption behavior of really new products and services, the innovative capabilities and branding strategies of Chinese high-technology firms, and the coevolution of consumer learning and firm strategies in high-risk, high-return industries (e.g., the pharmaceutical industry).
Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. XLV, No. 3, June 2008
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