How to Overcome Customers' Adoption Barriers?

This study investigates how marketing of new products can effectively prevent innovation resistance by reducing customers’ perceived adoption barriers. Experimental data show that providing a categorization cue for new products reduces complexity associated with innovations. We also observed a significant interaction effect of categorization cue and product radicalness. As expected, this interaction effect was best described by an U-shaped curve. Moreover, the effect of the categorization cue is larger for experts when evaluating radical innovations. However, when evaluating incremental innovations, this effect is smaller, since experts are more competent to categorize congruent information within their field of expertise.

Citation:

Sabine Kuester and Silke Hess (2009) ,"How to Overcome Customers' Adoption Barriers?", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 36, eds. Ann L. McGill and Sharon Shavitt, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 783-784.