The Evaluation of New Products and New Product Concepts by Consumers
Finn, Adam
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/70447
Description
Title
The Evaluation of New Products and New Product Concepts by Consumers
Author(s)
Finn, Adam
Issue Date
1983
Department of Study
Business Administration
Discipline
Business Administration
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Business Administration, Marketing
Abstract
A new product development system has become the accepted framework for normative proposals for new product development, and virtually all such systems include some form of market acceptability testing of new product concepts before a significant investment is made to develop the products. However, it has recently been argued that such consumer concept evaluation is inappropriate for innovative new concepts, because it is biased against, and thereby discourages major innovations.
The purpose of this dissertation is to examine this issue by developing a model of the consumer evaluation process for new products and new product concepts, and use the model as a framework for an experimental study of consumer evaluations of an innovative new product, presented as a concept and as a developed product. A newly available innovation, the pocket computer, was used as the stimulus in a laboratory study of student evaluations of the product as a concept, as a commercially supplied product, and after a learning experience writing and running simple programs on the product.
The focus of the experiment was a comparative developmental study in which the pretest measures were evaluations of various forms of representation of the concept, (1) learning experience writing and running programs on the computer, (2) physically handling the computer, (3) exposure to additional information about other products available within the same general product domain, and (4) a control group treatment.
The learning experience produced significantly more favorable evaluations, so that while evaluations of the concept provided unbiased estimates of evaluations of the product, they underestimated evaluations after learning experience. To help assess the practical importance of the results, evaluations were also obtained for a number of other new product concepts drawn from within the same general product domain. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the implications for the use of concept evaluations in directing new product development, and for marketing strategies when introducing innovative new products.
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