Conveying Effective Message Content When Launching New Industrial Products

Abstract

This paper seeks to uncover the specific message content that facilitates the diffusion of industrial innovations. Diffusion theory specifies that innovation adoption is only likely to occur when a potential customer has positive perceptions of the new product's attributes. Hence, it seems intuitive that firms should use these attributes as message content when launching a new industrial product. But the question of which message content is actually used by firms, and how this impacts new product performance has not been addressed in the literature. Referring to this gap, the authors propose a model of three message content types: usability information, technical information, and financial information. Each of these information types is designed to mitigate a set of perceived risks that consumers may experience in the decision to adopt a new industrial product. Level of product innovativeness is considered as well, given its likely differential impact on the effectiveness of the specific message content used. The model is tested with 112 new industrial products using a multiple informant approach. Generally, the findings support the suggestion that using innovation attributes as message content can be effective when launching a new industrial product, but they behave differently from one another and differently in the moderated context. While usability information and financial information were found to be effective in impacting performance, technical information was found to be counter‐effective. Concerning the moderating influence of product innovativeness, results indicate that usability information is of specific importance when launching a highly innovative product. Financial details, however, become less important.