Satisfied and unwilling: Exploring cognitive and situational resistance to innovations

Every company is buzzing “innovation” these days, while continuously launching new products. Yet previous studies point to high failure rates and suggest that most innovations get rejected due to consumers' innovation resistance. Within this respect, prior research acknowledges the role of passive innovation resistance as significant inhibitor for the adoption of new products. However, empirical evidence on whether and how different types of passive innovation resistance (i.e., cognitive and situational passive resistance) affect new product adoption still lacks. Using a scenario-based experiment (n = 307), this study delivers first empirical evidence that both resistance types are strong inhibitors for new product adoption. Results show that consumers with high cognitive or situational passive resistance show negative effects that are similar in their magnitude, whereas consumers with high levels of both dimensions exhibit the strongest predisposition to resist innovations. Hence, these consumers represent the most critical segment when launching new products.