Illicit to legal: marijuana as a de-stigmatising product and the role of social acceptability in new product adoption

Abstract

ABSTRACT History has shown instances of products and services, which have, and in some cases still are, moving from illicit to legal by their associated regulatory systems. While not ‘new’ in the sense that these are entirely new to consumers, these products are ‘new’ to the markets they become a part of. These products and services operate in peculiar ways as they transition to established and/or licit markets and have unique adoption hurdles to overcome because of the negative stigma that typically surrounds them. Using the U.S. marijuana market as an empirical setting, this research examines a novel type of products, which we term de-stigmatising products. We introduce the concept of de-stigmatising products to new product and innovation literature and examine the de-stigmatisation of a product in regulatory flux. While results show that traditional new product constructs (e.g., product quality and consumer opinion leadership) influence the adoption of de-stigmatising products, we find that the perception of the social acceptability of de-stigmatising products – a new construct developed for this study – provides additional explanatory power on adoption of de-stigmatising products and in turn, the adoption of really new products. We also find that social acceptability of de-stigmatising products moderates traditional product adoption constructs. Important theoretical and managerial implications of our findings are also discussed.