Really New Product Adoption

Book excerpt: This research focuses on examining the relationships between Consumer Innate Innovativeness, Domain Specific Innovativeness, Vicarious Innovativeness, the Desire for Unique Consumer Products, Opinion Leadership, Consumer demographics and the adoption of really new products. It does so across three countries: Australia, China and Taiwan. The foundation of this research is drawn from Hauser, Tellis, and Griffin (2005), Im, Bayus, Masson (2003), and Im, Mason, and Houston (2007) who suggest that further research needs to be done to clarify the role of consumer innovativeness across product categories, services, and countries. The importance of this research is underpinned by calls from Hauser, Tellis, and Griffin (2005) and others for more research on consumer innovativeness in order to expand our understanding of relationships and approaches to measuring innovativeness and adoption. The purpose of this research is to examine the early adopters and to understand what characterizes them and their adoption behaviour in order to develop a theoretically derived, empirically tested model of the antecedents and implications of consumer innovativeness. Based on the nature of the research problem identified in the literature review section, the research adopts a descriptive approach. Quantitative data were collected to test the hypotheses. Online and face-to-face surveys were both identified as appropriate methods for data collection in the study. The key informants of the study were individuals above age of 18 who are considered to have independent financial status for purchasing really new products. The final sample was 256 usable questionnaires for Australia, 207 for China; and 209 for Taiwan. This study adopted and modified existing scales for consumer innate innovativeness, domain specific innovativeness, the desire for unique consumer products, opinion leadership and vicarious innovativeness. All scales had acceptable psychometric properties including convergent and discriminant validity. Multiple regression and structural equation modeling were used to test the hypothesized relationships. The structural equation modeling supported the various regression analyses and confirmed an acceptable fit between the data and the conceptual model. The principal findings of the study show that only the desire for unique consumer products is a unidimensional scale. There was supports for consumer innate innovativeness as positively related to domain specific innovativeness across the three countries; consumer innate innovativeness has no positive effect on the desire for unique consumer products for the three countries; consumer innate innovativeness has a negative influence on vicarious innovativeness across the three countries; consumer innate innovativeness is positively related to opinion leadership for all three countries; consumer innate innovativeness has no effect on really new product adoption across the three countries. In terms of really new product adoption, domain specific innovativeness was found to have a positive relationship with both ownership and relative time of really new product adoption. Further, the desire for unique consumer products was suggested to have strong impacts on really new product adoption for the three countries. In terms of mediating effects, domain specific innovativeness was found to mediate the relationship between consumer innate innovativeness and really new product adoption. Further, the results of moderation analysis indicate that the desire for unique consumer products moderates the relationship between consumer innate innovativeness and really new product adoption in Australia, while the vicarious adoption aspect of Advertising moderates the relationship between consumer innate innovativeness and really new product adoption in China. The major contribution of this study is the establishment of an empirical link between consumer innate innovativeness and really new product adoption behaviour through DSI. This research adds to the body of knowledge on the theoretical clarification in defining consumer innovativeness. The study demonstrates that consumer innate innovativeness is not the best predictor of really new consumer electronic product adoption behaviour. The antecedents of consumer innate innovativeness should be further investigated in order to gain complete understanding of this specific personality trait.A second contribution involves the concept of measurement invariance which needs to be investigated when conducting cross-country research. The results of measure equivalence support the notion that innovators differ across countries and product categories. Marketers need be aware of the fact that countries differ systematically in both consumer innovativeness. This study found that even though China and Taiwan share a similar cultural background and the same language, consumers in these two countries have different levels of consumer innovativeness and responses to really new product adoption. For this purpose, it is recommended that firms should consider introducing really new products for each country separately with different strategies.