ABSTRACT

History has shown instances of products and services, which have, and in some cases still are, moving from illicit to legal by their associated regulatory systems. While not ‘new’ in the sense that these are entirely new to consumers, these products are ‘new’ to the markets they become a part of. These products and services operate in peculiar ways as they transition to established and/or licit markets and have unique adoption hurdles to overcome because of the negative stigma that typically surrounds them. Using the U.S. marijuana market as an empirical setting, this research examines a novel type of products, which we term de-stigmatising products. We introduce the concept of de-stigmatising products to new product and innovation literature and examine the de-stigmatisation of a product in regulatory flux. While results show that traditional new product constructs (e.g., product quality and consumer opinion leadership) influence the adoption of de-stigmatising products, we find that the perception of the social acceptability of de-stigmatising products – a new construct developed for this study – provides additional explanatory power on adoption of de-stigmatising products and in turn, the adoption of really new products. We also find that social acceptability of de-stigmatising products moderates traditional product adoption constructs. Important theoretical and managerial implications of our findings are also discussed.

摘要

历史表明，产品和服务的实例已经（在某些情况下仍在通过其相关的监管系统从非法变为合法）。尽管这些产品对消费者来说是全新的，并不是“新的”，但对于它们所参与的市场来说，这些产品却是“新的”。这些产品和服务在过渡到已建立的和/或合法的市场时会以独特的方式运行，并且由于通常围绕着它们的负面污名而克服了独特的采用障碍。这项研究以美国大麻市场为经验，研究了一种新型产品，我们称其为去污名产品。我们在新产品和创新文献中介绍了对产品进行去污名化的概念，并通过监管流程研究了对产品进行去污名化。消除污名化产品的社会可接受性（本研究开发的新结构）为采用消除污名化产品以及采用真正的新产品提供了更多的解释力。我们还发现去污产品的社会接受度降低了传统产品的采用结构。我们的发现的重要理论和管理意义也进行了讨论。