Effects of Customer Feedback Level and (in)Consistency on New Product Acceptance in the Click-and-Mortar Context

Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 1281–1288

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Journal of Business Research

Effects of customer feedback level and (in)consistency on new product acceptance in the click-and-mortar context

Emery Yao a,⁎, Ruolian Fang b, Brian R. Dineen a, Xin Yao c

a b c

Gatton College of Business & Economics, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, United States Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States W. Frank Barton School of Business, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS 67260, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t

We propose that feedback level and inconsistency jointly affect potential customers' acceptance of new products. We conducted two studies, one with a two-by-two design in which feedback level and inconsistency were constructed as binary categories, and the other with a continuous design of feedback level and inconsistency. We found that (1) higher feedback level and lower inconsistency increase customer acceptance; (2) feedback inconsistency moderates the relationship between feedback level and customer acceptance; and (3) extremely negative feedback has more significant impact than do moderately negative or extremely positive ones. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 26 October 2007 Accepted 26 December 2008 Keywords: Customer feedback Perceived risk New product acceptance

1. Introduction New products may fail to achieve market acceptance because customers find it difficult to accept a product of unknown quality. Scholars have recognized that reputation is an effective means for overcoming such liability of newness (Zimmerman and Zeitz, 2002). Because consumers do not have many sources of information for judging the quality of new products, previous consumer feedback becomes an important signal about product reputation and credibility (Standifird, 2001). Since consumer feedback reflects the...