Overcoming the negative role of nostalgia in consumer reactions to automated products

Kremer, Patrick; Feurer, Sven; Kim, Ju-Young; Hoeffler, Steve (2022). Overcoming the negative role of nostalgia in consumer reactions to automated products Journal of Product Innovation Management, pp. 1-48. Wiley https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12641

Preview

Text J of Product Innov Manag - 2022 - Kremer - Overcoming the negative role of nostalgia in consumer reactions to automated.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Publisher holds Copyright. Download (648kB) | Preview

Automated products that take over tasks that consumers used to carry out themselves are becoming increasingly sophisticated, but consumers continue to resist such innovations. Drawing on the status quo bias as a theoretical framework, this article investigates the role of nostalgia in consumer reactions to product automation in a series of six experiments with almost 1,500 participants. The first four experiments converge on a consistent finding: a high (vs. low) degree of automation reduces consumers’ nostalgic feelings about past consumption episodes, which in turn decreases nostalgia-prone consumers’ product evaluations. Against this backdrop, we conduct two additional experiments to determine how firms’ communication tactics can overcome the negative role of nostalgia proneness in consumer reactions to automated products. We conclude that managers involved in the marketing of automated products should assess the level of nostalgia in their target groups, and align both their intended positioning for the automated product and the decision to automate critical tasks within the product design that may evoke nostalgic feelings in consumers. Furthermore, when consumers are nostalgia-prone, managers should craft their launch communication tactics such that the focus is diverted from the automated task itself.

Item Type:	Journal Article (Original Article)
Division/Institute:	Business School > Institute for Marketing & Global Management > Marketing Business School
Name:	Kremer, Patrick; Feurer, Sven0000-0002-5604-26 78; Kim, Ju-Young; Hoeffler, Steve and Gemser, Gerda
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
ISSN:	0737-6782
Publisher:	Wiley
Language:	English
Submitter:	Sven Feurer
Date Deposited:	27 Jun 2022 13:22
Last Modified:	01 Jul 2024 02:30
Publisher DOI:	https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12641
Additional Information:	Associate Editor: Gerda Gemser This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1111/jpim.12641.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Product automation Consumer Nostalgia Innovation resistance
ARBOR DOI:	10.24451/arbor.17135
URI:	https://arbor.bfh.ch/id/eprint/17135