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THE ROLE OF DEFAULTS IN PREVENTING
INNOVATION REJECTION
SABINE KUESTER
*
University of Mannheim, Department of Marketing
Castle, D-68131 Mannheim, Germany
kuester@bwl.uni-mannheim.de
SILKE C. HESS
Deutsche Telekom AG, Products & Innovation
T-Online-Allee 1, D-64295 Darmstadt, Germany
silke.hess@telekom.de
ANDREAS HERRMANN
University of St. Gallen (HSG), Center for Customer Insight
Bahnhofstrasse 8, CH-9000 St. Gallen
andreas.herrmann@unisg.ch
Published 26 March 2015
Innovation rejection remains a serious problem for companies introducing new products,
as customers may overvalue products they already own and underestimate the innovation’s
advantage. Choice data from two experiments demonstrate that innovation rejection is
determined by (dis)satisfaction with the status quo and that defaults are powerful instru-
ments to overcome the status quo effect in innovation decision making. Innovation
rejection decreases significantly if the innovation is implemented as a default, an option
customers select unless they actively opt out. Furthermore, it is observed that imple-
menting the innovation as the default significantly increases the perceived value and
decreases the perceived risk of the innovation. Taking into account customer expertise, the
authors detect that defaults are more effective in reducing innovation rejection for novices.
The study derives managerial implications for new product launch management that aims
at preventing innovation rejection.
Keywords: Innovation rejection; status quo bias; defaults; customer expertise.
⁄
Corresponding author.
International Journal of Innovation Management
Vol. 19, No. 2 (April 2015) 1550023 (23 pages)
© Imperial College Press
DOI: 10.1142/S1363919615500231
1550023-1