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.Adoption;Innovation;Intelligent products;New product development;Smart products

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

Why do we differ in number sense? Evidence from a genetically sensitive investigation

Basic intellectual abilities of quantity and numerosity estimation have been detected across animal species. Such abilities are referred to as ‘number sense’. For human species, individual differences in number sense are detectable early in life, persist in later development, and relate to general intelligence. The origins of these individual differences are unknown. To address this question, we conducted the first large-scale genetically sensitive investigation of number sense, assessing numerosity discrimination abilities in 837 pairs of monozygotic and 1422 pairs of dizygotic 16-year-old twin pairs. Univariate genetic analysis of the twin data revealed that number sense is modestly heritable (32%), with individual differences being largely explained by non-shared environmental influences (68%) and no contribution from shared environmental factors. Sex-Limitation model fitting revealed no differences between males and females in the etiology of individual differences in number sense abilities. We also carried out Genome-wide Complex Trait Analysis (GCTA) that estimates the population variance explained by additive effects of DNA differences among unrelated individuals. For 1118 unrelated individuals in our sample with genotyping information on 1.7 million DNA markers, GCTA estimated zero heritability for number sense, unlike other cognitive abilities in the same twin study where the GCTA heritability estimates were about 25%. The low heritability of number sense, observed in this study, is consistent with the directional selection explanation whereby additive genetic variance for evolutionary important traits is reduced

Smart products: Consumer evaluations of a new product class

Abstract not availableIndustrial Design Engineerin

Organizational Controls and Performance Outcomes: A Meta-Analytic Assessment and Extension

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, behaviour, 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, behaviour, 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

Understanding a two-sided coin : antecedents and consequences of a decomposed product advantage

This paper 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 present paper argues 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. Data were collected 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 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 on the breadth of firms' market knowledge processes to create a new product with sufficient advantage to become successful. The paper concludes 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