Investigating the Effect of Perceived Product Portfolio Innovativeness on Consumers´ Brand Perceptions

Portfolio innovativeness has been indicated as a crucial aspect of a firm’s innovation efforts. However, research traditionally applies a firm-centric conceptualization of portfolio innova-tiveness, neglecting its signaling effect to consumers. Taking a different route, this study ap-plies a consumer-centric approach to investigate consumer perceptions of portfolio innovative-ness as an antecedent of their brand perceptions. We incorporate inconsistent insights on port-folio innovativeness by introducing a novel construct: portfolio innovativeness variety. It de-scribes the degree of novelty concerning different new products and services in a firm’s inno-vation portfolio. Drawing on signaling theory, the results of 691 completed questionnaires show that consumers’ perceived portfolio innovativeness increases consumer-based brand eq-uity. However, portfolio innovativeness variety moderates this relationship negatively. This study explores an inverted U-shaped relationship between portfolio innovativeness variety and brand equity. These insights suggest that large portfolio innovativeness variety confuses con-sumers about a brand’s offerings and that portfolio management should incorporate these in-sights in order to offer a balanced and value-maximized innovation portfolio. This research offers novel insights into an unexplored aspect of portfolio innovativeness with complemen-tary research on innovation portfolios from a consumer perspective.

Autor:

Spieth, Patrick & Roeth, Tobias & Clauß, Thomas & Urhahn, Christian & Killen, Catherine