The authors investigate the effects of explicit comparisons in differentiating innovations that offer new functionalities to the consumer. Although marketing communications commonly employ explicit comparisons in launching new product functionalities, the authors suggest that such comparisons are not always helpful. The authors show that an explicit comparison of a new functionality with an existing functionality is effective only when the new functionality is offered in a device or physical product that is atypical of the existing functionality. However, when the new functionality is offered in a product that is typical of the existing functionality, explicit comparisons tend to backfire because they merely facilitate the assimilation of the new functionality to the prior functionality. The results of three studies provide significant support for the predictions, and a fourth study demonstrates how the backfire effect might be avoided. The authors discuss implications for communication tactics, new product marketing, and consumer behavior theory.

In recent years, high rates of failure of technology-based products have spurred interest in understanding the psychological and sociological barriers to consumer learning of technological innovations. The main focus of this research was to examine the learning process and consumers' coping mechanisms when they encounter technological innovations. A study was designed to understand the learning process in real time as consumers engaged in a set of activities associated with the novel interface. The goal was to investigate how consumers cope with high levels of complexity during their initial interactions with a technology-based product and how their coping strategies may hinder the learning process.Verbal protocol measures were used in order to understand the consumer's learning process as he or she interacts with a technology-based product in real time. They were told that they would have to think aloud while performing certain tasks and that their thoughts would be recorded for further analysis. The personal digital assistant (PDA) with handwriting recognition as its interface was chosen for this study. The main task for the participants was to learn how to use Graffiti writing-i.e., the product's handwriting recognition software. We proceeded to a thematic analysis in which interpretations were generated by the researchers going back and forth between the transcribed texts, the developing interpretation, the new interface itself, and also the relevant literature.The results suggest that the new product's interface serves to structure the consumer's learning process even as he or she responds in relatively unstructured ways. The findings identify three basic factors that interfere with the learning process during consumers' initial interactions with a technological innovation: interface and functionality practices, social influence, and causal attributions. Specifically, the results suggest that in designing technology-based products there is a gap between the levels of know-how between the manufacturer and the user. The challenge for manufacturers is to understand the consumer's learning experience and coping strategies and provide mechanisms that would make the transition easy and intuitive. This could be achieved by incorporating into the new interface some degree of flexibility that will allow consumers to modify tasks based on their preferences, or by including indicators that will provide feedback to the user. Furthermore, in the context of communication strategies, in order to minimize the negative impact that prior knowledge and social influence may have on learning, marketers could communicate specific steps describing how to use the new interface.

Rapid technological developments in the computer and the telecommunications industries have spurred the introduction of technology-based products. An important feature of these products is that they can be characterized based on improvements in the functionality and the interface. When consumers evaluate a technology-based product, they face a trade-off: How should they choose between a product that offers a superior functionality and another product that offers a superior interface? The present research focuses on how temporal distance (i.e., time) from the purchase or use occasion of a technology-based innovation influences consumers' evaluations of the new product. Specifically, the present study examines how temporal distance affects the trade-offs consumers make between improvements in the interface and improvements in the functionality of a new product. This research demonstrates that the weight consumers place on the functionality and the interface of a new product is a function of the temporal distance. Specifically, the functionality of the product is valued more in distant future events. In contrast, the interface of the product is more important in the near future. This research has direct implications for various aspects of the new product development process such as customerproduct research methods used, communication strategies, and product preannouncements.

Although the prevalence of gender stereotypes in advertising is well established, relatively little research has examined gender stereotypes in the context of Super Bowl that is arguably the most important event in US television advertising. This study systematically examines gender representations across various product categories in Super Bowl commercials over a 20-year period (1990À2009). Our findings detect and discuss shifts in the cultural notions of gender constructed in advertising messages targeting the largest and the most demographically diverse audience in US television. The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings.

Successful commercialization of new technologies is the riskiest and most rewarding form of new product development activity. New technologies are often commercialized using innovative interfaces that determine how consumers interact with a new product to obtain its functionality. Consumers' perception of uncertainty about the performance of a novel interface is a key issue in the acceptance of new products involving new interfaces. Specifically, when firms commercialize a new interface, they face two major challenges: First to identify the optimal functionality for the new interface, and second, to effectively communicate with consumers in order to reduce uncertainty about the performance of the new interface and increase adoption intentions. Despite the theoretical and managerial importance of research on consumers' response to a novel interface, very little empirical research has been conducted in this area. Building on prior research on new product development, human‐computer interaction, and consumer decision‐making, this article examines the factors that influence consumers' judgments of uncertainty about the performance of a new interface and consumers' adoption intentions. Specifically, we conducted an experiment to investigate the effect of the newness of the functionality of a new product and the effect of imagery on consumers' uncertainty about the performance of a novel interface and consumers' adoption intentions. Our results show that consumers perceive lower uncertainty about the performance of a new interface and higher intentions to adopt a new product when the new interface is introduced with a new (vs. pre‐existing) functionality. Furthermore, our results suggest that when a new interface is introduced with a new functionality, imagining the product in use increases consumers' uncertainty about the performance of the new interface and decreases their intention to adopt the new product. In contrast, when a new interface is introduced with a pre‐existing functionality, imagining the product in use decreases consumers' uncertainty about the performance of the new interface and increases their intention to adopt the new product. Our findings provide valuable guidelines for marketers in formulating new product development and communication strategies for new products involving a new interface. © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.