Seeking the Ideal Level of Design Newness: Consumer Response to Radical and Incremental Product Design
Seeking the Ideal Level of Design Newness: Consumer Response to Radical and Incremental Product Design
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DOI：
10.1111/jpim.12062
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发表时间：
2013-12-01
影响因子：
10.5
通讯作者：
Dahl, Darren W.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Mugge, Ruth;Dahl, Darren W.
为了开发成功的新产品，新产品开发经理需要对消费者采用过程有透彻的了解，特别是消费者如何评估新产品。本研究探讨产品设计对于消费者评价激进式创新与渐进式创新的价值。主要目标是实证检验设计新颖性如何影响消费者对产品创新的反应。设计新颖性（也称为新奇或重复性）是指产品设计偏离某一产品类别的当前设计状态。虽然先前的研究表明，较高水平的设计新颖性可能会对消费者对新产品的评价产生积极影响，但较高水平的设计新颖性也可能会对消费者对激进创新的反应产生负面影响。一个实验的背景下（n=130），使用系统设计的产品为三个产品类别，用于测试消费者如何应对高和低水平的设计新颖性的激进和渐进的创新。研究结果表明，对于激进的创新，体现在设计中的产品与低（相对于高）水平的设计新颖性导致更积极的评价和更少的学习成本的推论。由于突破性创新的功能属性与现有产品不一致，消费者发现很难访问相关的产品类别图式，以便将知识转移到新产品。由于这种知识转移不佳，消费者可能会觉得他们缺乏有效利用突破性创新的能力，从而导致更大的学习成本。在这种情况下，设计新颖度较低的产品设计可以为消费者提供理解突破性创新的参考框架。对比这一结果，没有发现差异之间的低和高水平的设计新颖性的增量创新。对于渐进式创新，根据定义，创新的功能属性特征与那些已经存储在消费者记忆中的产品具有高度可比性。因此，没有必要通过产品设计对预先存在的模式进行额外的再确认，并且消费者能够访问相关的模式，而不管产品中固有的设计新颖性的水平如何。这些研究结果被整合到一个讨论的管理影响和未来研究的潜在途径。
To develop successful new products, new product development managers need to have a thorough understanding of the consumer adoption process, specifically in how consumers evaluate new products. This research examines the value of product design for consumers' evaluation of radical and incremental innovations. The primary goal was to empirically test how design newness affects consumer response to product innovations. Design newness (also referred to as novelty or atypicality) is defined as the deviation in a product design from the current design state of a certain product category. Although prior research has suggested that higher levels of design newness may have a positive effect on consumers' evaluations of new products, higher levels of design newness may also have negative consequences for consumer response to radical innovations. An experimental context (n=130) using systematically designed products for three product categories was used to test how consumers respond to high and low levels of design newness for both radical and incremental innovations. The findings show that for radical innovations, embodying the product in a design with a low (versus high) level of design newness led to more positive evaluations and less learning-cost inferences. Because the functional attributes of a radical innovation are incongruent to existing products, consumers find it difficult to access the relevant product category schema in order to transfer knowledge to the new product. Because of this poor knowledge transfer, consumers may feel that they lack the ability to make effective use of the radical innovation, resulting in greater learning costs. In this case, a product design with a low level of design newness can provide consumers with a frame of reference for understanding the radical innovation. Contrasting this result, no difference was found between a low and a high level of design newness for incremental innovations. For incremental innovations, by definition the functional attributes characteristic to the innovation are highly comparable with those products that are already stored in consumers' memory. Thus, there is no need for an additional reconfirmation of the preexisting schema through product design, and consumers are able to access the relevant schema regardless of the level of design newness inherent in the product. These findings are integrated into a discussion of the managerial implications and the potential avenues for future research.