Establishing a culturally transferrable consumer innovativeness scale for radical and really new innovations in new markets

Abstract

Marketing scales are valuable in measuring multi-dimensional constructs used for analytical marketing studies. One such type of scales is consumer innovativeness. Previous research on conceptualising and measuring consumer innovativeness has focused on new products about which respondents have attitudinal or behavioural repertoire to draw upon and report, and seem to have paid insufficient attention to the characteristics of innovators and their cognitive styles in scenarios that involve radical and really new innovations. The present research aims to fill the gap by addressing the radical and really new innovations in their respective new markets, in which most consumers have no attitudinal or behavioural repertoire to reflect upon. Following the suggested procedure for marketing scales, qualitative research was used to generate initial items. In the second stage, large-scale questionnaire surveys were conducted in three Middle Eastern countries. The structural equation modelling technique was applied to the survey data in order to valid the final items for the new consumer innovativeness scale. The final scale items were then statistically cross-validated across countries in order to find out the cultural transferability of the new scale.