Temporal Instability in Consumers’ Acquisition Intentions For Really New Products

In the current research, we examine how characteristic differences between really-new products (RNPs) and just-new products (JNPs) alter people’s formation of long-term product-adoption intentions and affect the likelihood that people will then acquire new products. In two field studies, we find that people form fewer long-term adoption intentions and follow through on those intentions less often for RNPs than for JNPs. We also find that as time passes after intention formation, people become more likely to acquire JNPs and less likely to acquire RNPs. In a further two longitudinal field studies, we find support for our expectation that this difference in the likelihood of acquiring RNPs and JNPs as time passes results from differences in the state of the information networks for RNPs and JNPs and the differences in new product attitude accessibility that result. As time passes after intention formation, we find people encounter less new information for RNPs than JNPs and that the accessibility of their attitudes for RNPs decays at a faster rate than that for JNPs.

Citation:

David L Alexander, John G. Lynch, Jr., and Qing Wang (2006) ,"Temporal Instability in Consumers’ Acquisition Intentions For Really New Products", in AP - Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 7, eds. Margaret Craig Lees, Teresa Davis, and Gary Gregory, Sydney, Australia : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 292-293.