The effects of mental simulations, innovativeness on intention to adopt brand application

Highlights

• This study demonstrates the differential effects of process- and outcome-focused thinking.

• The degree of mental simulation is positively influences on adoption of the branded app.

• Innovativeness and need for cognition affect adoption of the branded app.

• The mental simulation play an important role in attitude toward the brand.

• The results of MANOVA indicated that the three-way interaction affect dependent variables.

Abstract

This study explores three important factors—mental simulation, innovativeness, and need for cognition—to determine the effects of these factors on the perception of newly developed branded applications. The study identifies two types of mental simulation (process-focused and outcome-focused), innovativeness (early and later adopters) and need for cognition (low and high) to inform items used to survey respondents about their willingness to adopt new branded apps and their attitudes towards the focal brands.

The study demonstrates the effects of mental simulation, innovativeness, and need for cognition on adoption of the branded app. This experiment improves our understanding of how three-way interaction between the abovementioned factors affects the intention to adopt a new branded app. The results of a MANOVA indicated statistically significant effects of the abovementioned three-way interaction on the dependent variables. It is anticipated that the analysis resulting from this valuable study will provide a point of reference for further empirical and theoretical studies on the development of information technology products and services.

Introduction

Today's dynamic business environment is pushing many firms to develop more efficient and effective ways of developing and marketing new products and services. Although many firms have dedicated considerable effort to understanding the determinants of new product success and failure, the successful development of innovative new products tends to be the exception rather than the rule (Cooper, 1996, Sethi et al., 2001). Companies from a variety of industries have recognized developing innovative new products as the cornerstone of success and as an essential factor for surviving in today's markets (Envik & Wall-Mullen, 2009). Innovative new products that support marketing success allow consumers to do something they have not been able to do before (Zhao, Hoeffler, & Zauberman, 2011). Companies from a wide range of industries, including automobiles, electronics, and information technology have learned to use the captive audience provided by marketing communication channels to commercialize their product innovations. Generally speaking, consumers tend to have less knowledge about and greater performance uncertainty concerning innovative new products (Hoeffler, 2003) as well as negative inferences about such products and new product evaluation (Mukherjee & Hoyer, 2001). Consumers rely more on inferences with high learning costs when evaluating highly innovative attributes in highly complex products (Mukherjee & Hoyer, 2001). To capture the learning process involved in evaluating new product innovations, this study uses mental simulation as a variable. Consumers engage in mental simulation to reduce the effort involved in evaluating newly developed products (Zhao, Hoeffler, & Zauberman, 2007).

As corporations strive to develop new strategies for marketing, advertising, and running promotions in response to these changes in digital lifestyles and consumer trends, the need for smart marketing platforms has increased accordingly. Despite growing demand for brand apps—software programs whose content is used to deliver product and brand information to consumers and encourage aggressive participation and interactions between the consumer and the brand—few studies have focused on the development of user-friendly brand strategies and consumer responses to brand apps. Predicting consumer responses based on personality traits is becoming crucial in designing new brand apps. Relevant personality traits include innovativeness and need for cognition (hereafter “NFC”), which have been shown to influence consumers when adopting new products. Consumer acceptance of new products can be affected by the relationship between consumer innovativeness or new technology adoption and NFC.

In addition to personal consumer traits, other factors that stimulate consumer purchase intention include advertising and promotions that contingently evoke a purchase situation. In promotional activities, consumers are stimulated to visualize a virtual or hypothetical circumstance, and that process is called mental simulation (Taylor & Schneider, 1989). Because a wide range of factors seem to affect simulation results, it is important to identify factors that influence mental simulation in a way that makes it conducive to generating desirable attitudes and behaviors in consumers. In this study, we wanted to verify the effects of consumer innovativeness and need for cognition on mental simulation results. Thus this study attempts to demonstrate the differential effects of process- and outcome-focused thinking generated by innovativeness and NFC. The study also explores three-way interaction between mental simulation, innovativeness, and NFC as a factor affecting intention to adopt a newly developed brand app and consumer attitude towards the associated brand.