Gordon R. Foxall

Cognitive Style and Consumer Innovativeness: An Empirical Test of Kirton's Adaption‐Innovation Theory in the Context of Food Purchasing

The identification of consumer innovators offers marketing managers the opportunity to tailor new products to the buyers who initiate the diffusion of innovations. Progress has been made in identifying such consumers in economic and social terms, but there are advantages of cost and convenience in isolating the personality profiles of innovators, during pre‐launch product testing. However, innovative consumer’s personality traits proved elusive. Reports an investigation of innovative brand choice in the context of new food purchasing employing the Kirton Adaption‐Innovation Inventory (KAI). This test of cognitive style correlates with several personality traits associated with innovativeness; it also has high validity in the prediction of behaviour. The research investigated the predictive validity of the KAI over a range of product continuity/discontinuity. The results suggest an operational measure of product continuity/discontinuity and supports the use of the KAI as a marketing tool.

Evidence for attitudinal-behavioural consistency: Implications for consumer research paradigms

Abstract Evidence is presented in this paper to show that the view of marketing communication effects promulgated by numerous marketing, advertising and consumer behaviour texts and journals should be questioned. This is the portraval of advertising, in particular, as strongly persuasive, a prepurchase influence which acts upon purchase behaviour by first operating upon and modifying mental attitudes. The latent process conception of attitude upon which this perspective is founded lacks convincing empirical support. Situational rather than inner-state variables appear to mediate behaviour and may require prior importance in explicative and predictive accounts of consumer choice. Recognition of this would require a probability conception of the attitude construct which would have profound implications for consumer research and marketing management. Above all, it suggests that an alternative psychological paradigm might he accorded a more central place in investigations of consumer behaviour.

A conceptual extension of the customer-active paradigm

Abstract This paper offers a critique of Von Hippels “customer-active paradigm” of industrial innovation and argues for the conceptual extension of the new paradigm. To the extent of their being entrepreneurally aware of new product opportunities, users may initiate the process of product innovation, not only by producing ideas and designs but by the collection of marketing intelligence to reduce the uncertainties of the commercial exploitation of innovations. Their doing so disconfirms the essentially passive role in product innovation which is ascribed to users by the customer-active paradigm. The customer-active paradigm should be extended to include the involvement of users in product, as well as process innovation and the paper develops a more comprehensive frame of reference for empirical research.

Managers in transition: An empirical test of Kirton's adaption—innovation theory and its implications for the mid—career MBA

Abstract Adaption—innovation theory makes fundamental predictions about the differences in cognitive style of adaptors and innovators. It draws particular attention to the potential for conflict when adaptors and innovators are involved in decision-making and problem-solving in organizations. This paper reports a test of hypotheses derived from the theory in the context of a full-time MBA course for mid-career managers. It draws conclusions relating to the validity of the theory and its implications for the training of these and similar managers in transition.

Theoretical progress in consumer psychology: the contribution of a behavioural analysis of choice

Abstract The dominant paradigm for consumer research in the context of marketing is cognitive information processing. Its fundamental assumption is that observable behaviour is preceded by intrapersonal mental events which also serve to explain that behaviour. Radical behaviourism has been misinterpreted and misrepresented by consumer researchers who have adopted a cognitively-based mode of explanation to the exclusion of all others. This article asks how scientific progress is possible in consumer psychology, given the preeminence of this explanatory mode. It argues that prevailing explanations should be subjected to a rigorous critique based upon contrasting assumptions about the causes of behaviour found in alternative perspectives. Attention is drawn to the contribution which radical behaviourism can make and its role is illustrated by reference to the explanation of consumer innovativeness.

Market development in practice: A case study of user‐initiated product innovation

User‐initiated innovation refers to the inauguration of new industrial processes and products by their users rather than by manufacturers. The marketing literature has recently been enhanced by the reconceptualisation of industrial innovation to include the possibility of this customer‐active approach. But the accounts of customer‐active innovation which have so far appeared confine the role of the user to the development of internally‐applied process innovations, leaving their wider commercial exploitation entirely to manufacturers. This article presents a case study of the development of flexible manufacturing systems in a major British company and demonstrates the importance of recognising the active role of users in product innovation.

Consumer Choice in Behavioural Perspective

Consumer theory and research are generally founded on the assumption that observed behaviour is mediated by intrapersonal events. This pervasive view now threatens to impede theoretical development by precluding the establishment of models based on alternative assumptions. Following Feyerabends advocacy of the active interplay of tenaciously held, incommensurable theories as an essential component of scientific progress, this article examines the relevance to consumer theory of radical behaviourism, which accords explanatory power exclusively to the environmental consequences of behaviour, denying causative significance to intrapersonal processes and events.

Directions and Developments in Consumer Research

The conclusions reached in Chapter 3 relate strictly to a single, albeit central, construct. Because attitude has so long dominated consumer research any suggestion that it should be radically reconceptualised naturally carries paradigmatic implications but is not of itself sufficient to provoke a paradigm shift. Rather, the implication is that the cognitive information processing paradigm be subjected to greater critical appraisal than is currently the case. The conclusions of the last chapter deviate from those of many, perhaps most, social psychologists and consumer researchers. This difference is not about principles, for even the most ardent exponents of the latent process view now accept many qualifications forced upon them by the operational research generated by the ‘other variables’ approach. Rather, the difference lies in the general failure of behavioural scientists, especially those involved in consumer research, to make explicit the inadvisability of further search for attitudinal-behavioural consistency and to accept that the evidence on attitudinal-behavioural inconsistency is sufficiently far reaching to make necessary a more general reexamination of the prevailing paradigm within which they work.

From Consumer Research to Marketing Management: Conclusions and Implications

Previous chapters have been concerned with consumer choice in ways which are directly relevant to commercial marketing research and management as well as to the establishment and progress of a body of scientific knowledge. ‘Consumer behaviour’ is no longer a series of actions executed by buyers: it is an emergent discipline with implications for marketing research, business management, consumer education and protection, home economics and a host of other professions and fields of study. It is too early to draw fast conclusions for each and every implicated field but it is certainly appropriate to indicate broadly the import of the argument which has been pursued as a basis from which consequences for marketing thought and practice may be drawn and assessed.

Paradigms of Choice

Marketing, like engineering, medicine and law, did not begin as an academic subject or a body of knowledge taught and learned for its own sake. Rather, its origins are linked to the practical concerns of business management and, in particular, with the establishment of regular, formalised patterns of economic exchange in order to make possible higher material standards of living. In spite of great increases in the complexity of social and economic life, the aims of marketing management remain broadly similar. Indeed, while all of these disciplines are now institutionalised within the established frameworks of education and research, they can still be legitimately regarded as technologies, as well as areas of scholarship. They are technologies firmly based upon bodies of systematic or scientific knowledge and enquiry or are in the process of becoming so.