Toward a contingency view of new product creativity: Assessing the interactive effects of consumers
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Toward a contingency view of new product creativity: Assessing the interactive effects of consumers Gaia Rubera & Andrea Ordanini & David Mazursky
Published online: 2 September 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract Although creativity is widely recognized as a critical element for firms to develop new products, knowledge about how consumers evaluate product creativity remains far from definitive. The authors analyze how the relevance of novelty and appropriateness—two main elements of creativity—varies according to the characteristics of the consumer. A sample of 283 consumers indicates a negative interaction effect between novelty and appropriateness, suggesting that creativity depends on either, according to contingencies. Novelty is more relevant when consumers are highly involved or have little knowledge of the product. Appropriateness is more relevant when consumers are minimally involved or have significant knowledge. Theoretical and managerial implications are provided. Keywords Creativity . Novelty . Appropriateness . Involvement . Knowledge As competition relies more and more on innovation, the spotlight is shifting from efficiency to creativity (Galunic and Eisenhardt 2001). Firms are rapidly realizing the relevance of creativity when developing new products in order to differentiate their offerings and command premium price. The notion that creativity must comprise both novelty—the extent to which an object differs from conventional practice—and appropriateness—the extent to which it is meaningful in the G. Rubera (*) Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. Ordanini Department of Marketing, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] D. Mazursky Department of Marketing, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel e-mail: [email protected]
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Market Lett (2010) 21:191–206
conventional domain to which it belongs—has received a wide acceptance among marketing and psychology scholars (e.g., Amabile 1983; Im and Workman 2004; Andrews and Smith 1996). However, the few studies that specifically deal with new product creativity limit their analysis to managerial evaluations rather than analyzing consumers’ judgments (Im and Workman 2004; Sethi et al. 2001). Further, the marketing literature assumes that the relative importance of novelty and appropriateness remains invariant across different types of consumers. Thus, while the effects of creativity has been investigated (Im and Workman 2004), knowledge of how consumers evaluate the creativity of a product remains far from being definitive. We adopt a systems view of creativity, which suggests that creativity is not located in the creative product itself but rather in the interaction between the product and the subjects who evaluate that product (Kasof 1995). We, therefore, investigate if consumers with different characteristics tend to perceive either novelty or appropriateness as more relevant to their assessments. Drawing from the consumer behavior literature, w
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