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Introduction
Firms invest significant resources in marketing programs to enhance innovativeness because innovativeness leads to growth and profitability (Aaker, 2007). Moreover, successful innovations (e.g. Apple iPod, iPhone, iPad) can help a firm create an image of market leadership and establish entry barriers for competitors (Srinivasan et al., 2002). Researchers have also argued that consumer perceived innovativeness might develop sustainable competitive advantage for firms (Danneels and Kleinschmidt, 2001). However, many companies’ new offerings fail within the first three years of innovation introduction (Wilke and Sorvillo, 2005), at an average cost of around US$15 million for each such offering (Steenkamp et al., 1999). Considering these high estimates, clever firms must seek viable opportunities to maximize potential success in terms of a higher level of innovation adoption.
The present research proposes that in many cases, a firm’s success depends on how consumers perceive its brand(s) as offering innovations rather than the mere product attributes of the innovation. For example, both HTC and Samsung use the same cutting-edge technology of Android operating software in their smartphones and they have been hardly different in terms of objective product innovation (e.g. features and functions) (Williams, 2012). Yet, Samsung smartphones are proposed to be more innovative than those of HTC’s (Einhorn and Arndt, 2010). It seems that there is another potential level of perceived innovativeness that consumers associate with brand names rather than product innovations.
Although the strategic impact of branding theory is duly recognized in the marketing literature (Aaker, 1991; Keller, 1993), it is rarely treated extensively in the innovativeness literature. Established conceptualizations of perceived innovativeness from the consumer perspective, such as product innovativeness (Calantone et al., 2006) and firm innovativeness (Kunz et al., 2011), are limited in their ability to explain how consumers perceive innovativeness at the brand level. Moreover, the majority of the conceptualization and operationalization of perceived innovativeness relies on the managerial perspective (Lee and O’Connor, 2003; McNally et al., 2010). Such lack of consideration of the consumer perspective is at odds with the current marketing practice that emphasizes the role of the consumer’s perceptions in the success of innovations (Hanna, 2012).
Therefore, the central argument of the present study is that to have a more complete picture of consumers’ innovativeness perceptions,...