WYSIWYG—Seeing is Believing: Consumer Responses to Levels of Design Newness, Product Innovativeness, and the Role of Country-of-Origin

ABSTRACT

There is a dearth of new product design research that investigates the impact of varying levels of design newness coupled with technical newness on consumer evaluations for incremental and radical innovations across utilitarian and hedonic product categories through the lens of country-of-origin (COO). In today's world, innovation may originate from both developed and emerging economies. Our research investigates consumer responses when incrementally new and/or radically new products come from developed as well as developing countries. Through four experimental studies, we found that consumers preferred high level of design newness in incrementally innovative utilitarian product category and low level of design newness in radically innovative utilitarian product category when products originate from developed countries (developed COO situation). High level of design newness was preferred for both incrementally new and really (radically) new utilitarian products originating from developing countries (emerging COO situation). In contrast, consumers preferred high level of design newness in both incrementally and radically innovative hedonic product categories during developed COO situation; and consumers preferred high level of design newness for incrementally new hedonic products while avoiding radically new hedonic products completely during emerging COO situation. The results have important implications for researchers and managers in developing incremental and radical innovations by understanding differential performance effects of levels of design and technical newness with respect to developed versus emerging COO situations and consumer purchase intentions.

KEYWORDS:

• Country-of-origin
• design newness
• experimental design
• incrementally new products
• purchase intentions
• really new products
• technical newness
• utilitarian versus hedonic product categories

Notes

1. http://johntree.net/projects/rowenta-brunch/

2. http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/hitech/rice/rice01.html

3. Official Website: http://mumbaidabbawala.in/