Brand Spillover Effects of Unconventional Innovations

Technological and social advancement have made the global market landscape competitive for brands. As a result, innovation has become increasingly important for brands. Brands now innovate more than ever before as evidenced by the increase in launches of new products and services. To help brands with their innovation endeavors, past innovation research in marketing literature emphasizes innovations in which the newness is in the functional or design features of products or services, but this dissertation shifts our attention to what this dissertation named “unconventional innovations”. Unconventional innovations are innovations in which the newness in the product or service is not in the functional or design features. Furthermore, past innovation research in marketing literature examined consumers’ response to innovations by focusing on outcome variables related to the innovations themselves, but this dissertation examined the spillover effects of innovations (i.e., outcome variables beyond the innovations themselves). In brief, this dissertation examined the spillover effects of unconventional innovations.
The three essays in this dissertation examined different unconventional innovations and spillover effects. The first essay examined innovations that target non-customers of a product category as unconventional innovation, and the impact on perception of the brand among existing mainstream customers of the product category as the spillover effect. The second essay examined brand extensions that have both aspects that are well-fitting and aspects that are not well-fitting for the brand – ‘Janus fit’ brand extensions – as the unconventional innovation, and the impact on perceived brand innovativeness (or pioneering image) as the spillover effect. Finally, the third essay examined subscription-based pricing as an unconventional innovation, and the impact on consumers’ attitude towards the brand as the spillover effect. Methodologically, the three essays used online scenario-based experiments.
The dissertation contributes to several literature streams. The first essay contributes to literature on innovation adoption, Blue Ocean strategy, direct antecedents of consumers’ evaluation of innovations, and brand extension. The second essay contributes to literature on brand extension and brand pioneering image. Finally, the third essay contributes to literature on subscription service, service pricing, the impact of consumers’ power on their perceptions of brand offerings, and consumers’ resistance to innovations. Collectively, the three essays in this dissertation provide researchers and practitioners with the understanding of unconventional innovations and consumers’ response to innovations beyond the innovations themselves.