Resistance to Upgrade Innovation

Although many companies seek to create the next big thing to wow the market, the reality is that incremental innovation makes up 90% of new product introductions and 94% of corporate profits (e.g., Boroush, 2010; Sorescu and Spanjol, 2008). This research focuses on a new phenomenon of incremental innovation targets at improving products that customers currently own, and names it as upgrade innovation. Upgrade innovation helps advance user experience, product security, and the overall performance of the current product. Upgrade innovation is not always appreciated by product owners. Such customers may avoid upgrade innovation by either rejecting it or ignoring its availability. In the extreme conditions, they actively seek strategies so as not to be notified the availability of upgrade innovation. To improve the understanding of why upgrade innovation sometimes is unwanted, this study explores the influence of consumers’ perception of upgrade innovation on their intention to adopt the upgrade intention, drawing on extant innovation (e.g., Davis 1985) and psychology ownership literature (e.g., Brasel and Gips, 2014; Shu and Peck, 2011). It also studies the motivations of firms to pursue upgrade innovation along with the exploration of the dimensions of the upgrade innovation construct. This dissertation includes a two-pronged empirical approach: (1) a set of experiments to test the proposed hypotheses relating to intentions of upgrade innovation adoption, and (2) a secondary and longitudinal data to examine the upgrade innovation construct.