Communicating new product development openness – The impact on consumer perceptions and intentions

María Vaquero Martín

European Management Journal, 2021, vol. 39, issue 6, 802-815

Abstract: This article explores how firms can foster positive consumer inferences by communicating their new product development (NPD) openness. In particular, it analyzes inferences about a firm’s customer orientation, ability to develop high-quality products and innovativeness. Previous research has focused on examining inferences derived from cues about consumer contributions to the external design of products. This article extends current knowledge (i) by analyzing inferential processes when customer participation goes beyond external product design and affects functionality and (ii) by considering other forms of openness, namely expert contributions to NPD. The results of two experiments show that, in general, customer participation in NPD effectively triggers customer orientation inferences, while expert participation leads to inferences about a firm’s ability to develop high-quality products only in specific settings. Finally, counter to previous research, communicating external participation does not seem to be an effective cue to infer innovativeness for functional product contributions.

Keywords: Customer integration; Expert integration; New product development; Consumer perceptions; Consumer inference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263237321000049
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eurman:v:39:y:2021:i:6:p:802-815

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/115/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... me/115/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.emj.2021.01.004

Access Statistics for this article

European Management Journal is currently edited by Michael Haenlein

More articles in European Management Journal from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().