Novel products present unknown opportunities as well as unknown risks. Past research suggested that low psychological control highlights risks and reduces the adoption of novel products. Consistent with a situated cognition perspective, we show that this depends on the specifics of low control. Across five studies, novelty seeking was lower after consumers thought about instances of low (vs. high) personal influence, but higher after consumers thought about instances of low (vs. high) predictability of the world. Thinking about a lack of personal influence increased the perceived importance of personal capability and in turn impaired the exploration of novel options, whereas thinking about an unpredictable world increased the perceived importance of preparedness for an unknown future and in turn the exploration of novel options. Throughout, perceiving low personal influence benefited familiar products, whereas seeing the world as unpredictable benefited novel products. This highlights that understanding consumers' responses to a lack of control requires joint consideration of the specifics of threat and task, consistent with situated cognition principles.

This research identifies recency heuristic utilized by consumers with limited prior knowledge for product innovativeness evaluation. Consumers with limited prior knowledge of a product category perceived a new product as more innovative when its release date was more recent, while consumers with prior knowledge remained uninfluenced by recency information (Study 1). The effect was replicated at the product level (Study 2). It further demonstrates two critical boundary conditions-when recency was either irrelevant information or a rationally legitimate evaluative tool, recency heuristic was inapplicable (Study 3). The present research draws attention to the role of recency in conceptualizing product innovativeness and further elaborates the understanding of how the construct of innovativeness is represented in consumers' minds by focusing on the conceptual relationship of novelty and recency. It also contributes to the heuristic literature by proposing recency as an evaluative heuristic tool for innovativeness assessment. Results provide managers with practical insight into whether to highlight or downplay product release date information depending on their target audience and the level of product innovativeness.

Self‐awareness is increasingly invoked in consumer contexts. The current studies find that self‐awareness heightened during product creation interacts with consumers’ chronic self‐focus tendency and the level of autonomy‐constraint of the task to influence consumer experience. Prior findings suggest that (a) self‐awareness makes individually valued standards salient and (b) consumers who are chronically more (less) self‐conscious value conformity (autonomy). In line with these two prior findings, results of six studies show that when experiential creation involves constraints on autonomy (i.e., explicit guidance), self‐aware consumers who are chronically more self‐conscious evaluate experiential creation more favorably. In contrast, when products impose less constraints on autonomy (i.e., no explicit guidance), the opposite results emerge. The perceived fit between individuals’ esteemed standards and the level of autonomy‐constraint inherent to the product interaction mediates these effects. This research advances the understanding of self‐awareness theory by considering self‐awareness evoked during experiential creation (vs. recalled in retrospect) and shedding new light on the effect of self‐awareness on a task with rich experiential value.

Purpose This study aims to draw on the malleable nature of processing fluency to identify the role of consumer expectation in generating diverging effects of metacognitive experiences on perception of product innovativeness and product evaluation. It also examines critical boundary conditions to offer a more sophisticated understanding of the interactive effect of expectation and processing fluency. Design/methodology/approach Studies 1, 2A and 2B recruited 1,922 online participants, and Studies 3 and 4 recruited 644 college students. The authors manipulated product innovativeness expectation by exposing participants to expert reviews of new products, and processing fluency by presenting product detail in either easy-to-read font/color contrast or difficult-to-read font/color contrast. Subsequently, perceived product innovativeness and product evaluation including actual product adoption were measured. Findings When a product was expected to be innovative (ordinary), feelings of difficulty with processing its detail increased (decreased) perceived innovativeness and, in turn, interest in purchase. The observation occurred only when a credible external source (vs firms) generated the innovativeness expectation or consumers’ elaboration level was not high. Furthermore, when innovativeness became associated with negative implications, perceived innovativeness no longer enhanced but impaired purchase intention. Research limitations/implications Studies used incrementally new products only. Really new products involving a high adoption risk might produce a diverging effect. The findings need to be replicated with higher involvement products. An ideal level of difficulty with comprehending product information was not examined in the present research. Practical implications Results carry significant weight for firms who seek to draw consumer attention to their new products by choosing an optimal format of product presentation. The findings suggest that they can proactively administer a proper level of ease/difficulty with comprehending product detail depending on the extent of product innovativeness and target audience. Originality/value Extant research has not addressed how the malleable nature of processing fluency systematically affects innovativeness perception and product evaluation. The key contribution of this paper to the metacognition literature is the role of consumer expectation that alters the meaning of metacognitive experiences in relation to innovativeness perception. In addition, this is one of the first to empirically investigate perceptual processing fluency in the elaboration likelihood model theory.