The Perceiving Side of Novelty: Its Role in Product Evaluation

Abstract

The literature on perceived novelty and product evaluation has diverged into two disparate streams of research. The first stream builds on the theories of curiosity and argues that perceived novelty of a new product increases its product evaluation because it induces curiosity and provides evaluators (e.g., customers) with positive experiences in learning new features of the product and resolving their curiosity. In contrast, the second stream adopts the theories of expectation violations and argues that perceived novelty decreases product evaluation because it violates evaluators’ anticipation of products and necessitates burdensome efforts to make sense of the new product. The main goal of our research is to resolve the theoretical inconsistency by offering an integrative model of new product evaluation that proposes an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between perceived novelty and product evaluation. Based on this model, we further examine whether a producer’s reputation plays a moderating role in this curvilinear relationship. Utilizing content analysis and big data approaches with a large sample of 49,860 reviews of 146 movies in the movie industry, we found that a movie’s perceived novelty benefited its product evaluation but only when that novelty was moderate; at higher levels of perceived novelty, the product evaluation decreased. In addition, we compared the curves of high vs. low reputation producers and found that perceived novelty penalized product evaluation of new movies created by high reputation producers.