Consumer perceptions of product creativity, coolness, value and attitude

•Research on new product creativity with its two dimensions of meaningfulness and novelty extends to consumers.•Perceived product novelty influences coolness, which affects hedonic value which in turn, impacts consumers' attitude.•Perceived product meaningfulness affects perceived utilitarian value which influences product attitude•For customers to appreciate a new product, it must either be meaningful or if novel, it must also be cool.

Of the two dimensions of creativity, novelty and meaningfulness, the importance of novelty is mixed in empirical managerial research. This study extends creativity research to consumers. The model first proposed that perceived value mediates the relationship between creativity and product attitude. When early research revealed that product novelty does not influence perceived value and attitude directly and that consumers value novelty only if it leads to perceptions of coolness, the proposed model added coolness as a mediator. Results show that novelty influences coolness, which affects hedonic value which in turn, impacts consumers' attitude whereas meaningfulness influences attitude by affecting utilitarian value. Thus, for customers to appreciate a new product, it must either be meaningful or if novel, it must also be cool.