Bertele, Kerrie, Feiereisen, Stephanie, Storey, Chris and van Laer, Tom (2019) It’s not what you say, it’s the way you say it! Effective message styles for promoting innovative new services. Journal of Business Research, 107. pp. 38-49. ISSN 0148-2963

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Abstract

While innovations are critical to firms' long-term survival, they have a high failure rate. Identifying the factors that encourage consumer adoption of innovations is therefore essential for the successful management of new products and services. While prior research suggests that two message styles (i.e., metaphors and narratives) can help convey the benefits of new services, extant scholarly work has not examined which style increases adoption intentions to a greater extent. Study 1 demonstrates that metaphors enhance adoption intentions more than narratives for incrementally new services (INSs) but not for really new services (RNSs). Study 2 shows that low-figurativeness metaphors enhance adoption intentions more than high-figurativeness metaphors for INSs but not for RNSs and that consumers' negative cognitive responses underlie this effect. These findings have important implications for theory and practice.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Metaphors, Narratives, Figurativeness, Adoption intentions, New services
Schools and Departments:	School of Business, Management and Economics > Strategy and Marketing
Research Centres and Groups:	Intrapreneurship Hub Marketing Innovation Research Group
Depositing User:	Chris Storey - Professor
Date Deposited:	05 Nov 2019 08:08
Last Modified:	19 Nov 2019 11:38
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/87827

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