The "Right" Consumers For the Best Concepts: a Methodology For Identifying Emergent Consumers For New Product Development

Though typical consumers have difficulty estimating the usefulness of new products, little research has focused on which consumers to use in the product development process. This paper introduces a methodology to identify “emergent consumers,” individuals that are able to synergistically apply intuition and judgment to develop product concepts that are more likely to be successful in the marketplace compared to concepts developed by mainstream or even innovative consumers. In a series of four studies we show that emergent nature is a reliable and valid construct and that the product concept developed by the emergent group is found most appealing by mainstream consumers.

Citation:

Donna Hoffman, Praveen Kopalle, and Thomas Novak (2009) ,"The "Right" Consumers For the Best Concepts: a Methodology For Identifying Emergent Consumers For New Product Development", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 36, eds. Ann L. McGill and Sharon Shavitt, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 571-572.