Customers Can Be Wary of Innovative Brands

September 14, 2016

Could having a reputation as an innovative brand actually have a downside?

That’s the question Kelly Goldsmith, an assistant professor of marketing at the Kellogg School, was looking to answer with a recent research study.

Goldsmith and her coauthors predicted that a reputation for innovation can actually hurt a company when something about the product triggers a customer’s concern or if the customer is already in a fretful state of mind.

“We weren’t predicting that a reputation for innovation is always going to have negative consequences,” Goldsmith stressed. “It’s only going to have negative consequences when consumers are prompted to worry,” she noted. “Most people, most of the time, expect their products to work.”

The researchers conducted a series of experiments to test their hypothesis, priming participants to worry about a product malfunction and to question quality to see whether it soured them to innovative brands.

Among their findings:

See the full Kellogg Insight article here: “Companies Brag about Being Innovative. Should They?