How Today’s Consumers Perceive Tomorrow’s Smart Products

This manuscript investigates consumer responses to new smart products. Due to the application of information technology, smart products are able to collect, process and produce information, and can be described to ‘think’ for themselves. In this study, consumers respond to smart products that are characterized by two different combinations of smartness dimensions. One group of products shows the smartness dimensions of autonomy, adaptability and reactivity. Another group of smart products are multifunctional and can cooperate with other products. We measure consumer responses to these smart products in terms of the innovation attributes of relative advantage, compatibility, observability, complexity and perceived risk. A study among 184 consumers shows that products with higher levels of smartness are perceived to have both advantages and disadvantages. Higher levels of product smartness are mainly associated with higher levels of observability and perceived risk. The effects of product smartness on relative advantage, compatibility and complexity vary across product smartness dimensions and across product categories. For example, higher levels of product autonomy are perceived as increasingly advantageous while a high level of multifunctionality is perceived disadvantageous. The paper discusses the advantages and pitfalls for each of the five product smartness dimensions and their implications for new product development (NPD). The manuscript concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the study and it provides suggestions for further research

Product Intelligence: Its Conceptualization, Measurement and Impact on Consumer Satisfaction

In the last decade, companies have developed a large number of intelligent products. Due to the use of information technology, these products, for example, are able to work autonomously, cooperate with other products, or adapt to changing circumstances. Although intelligent products appear an attractive category of products, they have received little attention in the literature. The present article provides a conceptualization of the new construct of product intelligence and describes the development procedure of a measure for the construct. In addition, the article sets up and empirically tests a conceptual framework in which product intelligence leads to consumer satisfaction through the innovation attributes of relative advantage, compatibility, and complexity. Managerial implications for new product development and marketing of intelligent products are considered and suggestions for further research provided

Understanding a Two-Sided Coin: Antecedents and Consequences of a Decomposed Product Advantage

This article investigates the antecedents and consequences of two product advantage components: product meaningfulness and product superiority. Product meaningfulness concerns the benefits that users receive from buying and using a new product, whereas product superiority concerns the extent to which a new product outperforms competing products. The authors argue that scholars and managers should make a deliberate distinction between the two components because they are theoretically distinct and also have different antecedents and consequences. The authors collected data through an online survey on 141 new products from high-tech companies located in the Netherlands. The results reveal that new products need to be meaningful as well as superior to competing products in order to be successful. This finding is consistent with the prevailing aggregate view on product advantage in the literature. However, the results also show that the effects of the two components on new product performance are moderated by market turbulence. Although each component is important in that it forms a necessary precondition for the other to affect new product performance under circumstances of moderate market turbulence, meaningfulness is most important for new product performance in turbulent markets where preferences have not yet taken shape. In contrast, when markets become more stable, the uniqueness of meaningful attributes decreases and new products that provide advantage by fulfilling their functions in a way that is superior to competing products are more likely to perform well. In addition, the study shows that the firm’s customer and competitor knowledge processes independently lead to product meaningfulness and superiority, respectively. The findings also reveal that under conditions of high technological turbulence, the customer and competitor knowledge processes complement each other in creating product meaningfulness and superiority. This implies that the level of technological turbulence puts requirements upon the breadth of firms’ market knowledge processes in order to create a new product with sufficient advantage to become successful. The authors conclude that neglecting the distinction between product meaningfulness and superiority when assessing a new product’s advantage may lead to an incomplete insight on how firms can improve the performance of their new products

Businessman or Host? Individual Differences between Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners in the Hospitality Industry

Prior research has identified individual characteristics that distinguish business owners from non-business owners. We tested our contention that not every successful business owner can be characterized by such typical “entrepreneurial” characteristics. Multiple Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) on a unique dataset of 194 business owners in the hospitality industry revealed that several individual characteristics discriminated between entrepreneurs and small business owners. Entrepreneurs possessed higher levels of independence, tolerance of ambiguity, risk-taking propensity, innovativeness, and leadership qual

Organizational Controls and Performance Outcomes

Managing employees and external partners effectively has been a primary concern for organizations and their managers. Many studies have investigated the effectiveness of organizational controls in a wide variety of contexts. Using organizational controls literature that discriminates among outcome, behavior, and clan control, this study synthesizes the research on the effectiveness of these controls. In particular, the study examines 23,839 organizational controls–performance relationships from 120 independent samples, and tests several new hypotheses using advanced meta-analytic methods. The results indicate that outcome, behavior, and clan controls generally enhance performance, with each control having a distinct performance effect. Our analysis also demonstrates that controls function as complements to one another. This finding indicates that one form of control increases the effectiveness of other forms of control. We also examine the organizational controls–performance relationships across various contexts, and our results show that they vary according to the type of task. The paper concludes with a discussion on the theoretical and managerial implications of these findings

Development time and new product sales: A contingency analysis of product innovativeness and price

Opposing theories and conflicting empirical results with regard to the effect of development time on new product sales suggest the need for a contingency analysis into factors affecting this relationship. This study uses a unique combination of accounting and perceptual data from 129 product development projects to test the combined contingency effect of product innovativeness and new product price on the relationship between development time and new product sales. The results show that for radically new products with short development times, price has no effect on new product sales. When the development time is long, price has a negative effect on the sales of radical new products. The findings additionally show that price has no effect on sales for incremental new products with short development times and a negative effect for incremental new products with long development times. Together, these findings shed new light on the relationship between development time and new product sales

Absorbing customer knowledge: how customer involvement enables service design success

Customers are a knowledge resource outside of the firm that can be utilized for new service success by involving them in the design process. However, existing research on the impact of customer involvement (CI) is inconclusive. Knowledge about customers’ needs and on how best to serve these needs (articulated in the service concept) is best obtained from customers themselves. However, codesign runs the risk of losing control of the service concept. This research argues that of the processes of external knowledge, acquisition (via CI), customer knowledge assimilation, and concept transformation form a capability that enables the firm to exploit customer knowledge in the form of a successful new service. Data from a survey of 126 new service projects show that the impact of CI on new service success is fully mediated by customer knowledge assimilation (the deep understanding of customers’ latent needs) and concept transformation (the modification of the service concept due to customer insights). However, its impact is more nuanced. CI exhibits an “∩”-shaped relationship with transformation, indicating there is a limit to the beneficial effect of CI. Its relationship with assimilation is “U” shaped, suggesting a problem with cognitive inertia where initial learnings are ignored. Customer knowledge assimilation directly impacts success, while concept transformation only helps success in the presence of resource slack. An evolving new service design is only beneficial if the firm has the flexibility to adapt to change

An Empirical Comparison of Consumer Innovation Adoption Models: Implications for Subsistence Marketplaces

So called “pro-poor” innovations may improve consumer wellbeing in subsistence marketplaces. However, there is little research that integrates the area with the vast literature on innovation adoption. Using a questionnaire where respondents were asked to provide their evaluations about a mobile banking innovation, this research fills this gap by providing empirical evidence of the applicability of existing innovation adoption models in subsistence marketplaces. The study was conducted in Bangladesh among a geographically dispersed sample. The data collected allowed an empirical comparison of models in a subsistence context. The research reveals the most useful models in this context to be the Value Based Adoption Model and the Consumer Acceptance of Technology model. In light of these findings and further examination of the model comparison results the research also shows that consumers in subsistence marketplaces are not just motivated by functionality and economic needs. If organizations cannot enhance the hedonic attributes of a pro-poor innovation, and reduce the internal/external constraints related to adoption of that pro-poor innovation, then adoption intention by consumers will be lower