Are innovative consumers emotional and prestigiously sensitive to price?

Abstract

Understanding the consumer’s tendency to adopt new products is an ever-present essential for successful marketing campaigns. This paper presents the findings from two empirical studies that investigate the relationship between consumer innovativeness, price-prestige sensitivity, and need for emotion. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data in both studies from a sample of 668 respondents in two cities in England. The findings show that consumer innovativeness is determined by an individual’s sensitivity to price and their need for emotion. While innovative consumers are sensitive in relating price to prestige, this dispositional relationship varies across products. Furthermore, the findings suggest that enjoyment, which facilitates emotional openness and receptivity, influences innovative consumers to take the emotional route, besides the price-prestige route, to the adoption of new products. These findings have a number of important implications for marketers, particularly for the success of marketing campaigns targeted at innovative consumers who find enjoyment in using new products and are prestigiously sensitive to price.

Keywords:

• consumer innovativeness
• price-prestige sensitivity
• need for emotion
• hedonic enjoyment
• structural equation modelling
• mobile phones

Notes

1. ¹However, early research (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982) argues that most groceries and household goods are bought on the basis of functional utility, while leisure activities and recreational services are bought on the basis of hedonic fulfillment, such as fun, satisfaction, or enjoyment (Wakefield & Inman, 2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lukman Aroean

Lukman Aroean is a lecturer in international marketing at the Bournemouth University Business School, UK. His research interests focus on the innovative behaviour of contemporary consumers, experiential behaviour, and consumer marketing within the advanced technology product and international contexts. His work has been published in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour. Prior to his academic career, he worked in variety of firms in international environment.

Nina Michaelidou

Nina Michaelidou is a reader in marketing at Loughborough University School of Business and Economics, UK. Her research interests lie in the area of consumer behaviour and specifically personality traits such as variety seeking and innovativeness, emotions, and health behaviours, as well as social media usage and consumers’ responses to advertising appeals and promotions on social media. She is the leader of the Academy of Marketing Special Interest Group on Consumer Research, and has published papers in various journals, including the Journal of Marketing Management, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Strategic Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Food Policy, Journal of Consumer Affairs, International Journal of Advertising, and Journal of Consumer Behaviour.

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