ABSTRACT

Innovative users can not only generate ideas for new products, but also self-select whether to share their ideas with peers or producers. Different innovative users have different degree of lead userness, and their ideas are usually rooted in tacit need-related knowledge. Because it has been well established that the characteristics of innovators and their innovations can influence the diffusion of an innovation, there is a conjecture that lead userness and tacit need knowledge can associate with innovative users’ diffusion channel selection. In this paper, we report the first empirical exploration. Based on survey data from 414 innovative users in Japan, we found that lead userness increases their likelihood of commercial diffusion versus peer diffusion and that this relationship is stronger when their needs-related knowledge is relatively explicit. We discuss the implications and limitations of these findings.

摘要

创新用户不仅可以产生新产品的想法，还可以自主选择是否与同行或生产者分享他们的想法。不同的创新用户具有不同程度的领先用户，他们的想法通常植根于隐性需求相关知识。由于已经确定创新者的特征及其创新会影响创新的扩散，因此有人推测领先用户和隐性需求知识可以与创新用户的扩散渠道选择相关联。在本文中，我们报告了第一次实证探索。基于日本 414 位创新用户的调查数据，我们发现，与同行扩散相比，领先用户增加了他们进行商业传播的可能性，并且当他们的需求相关知识相对明确时，这种关系会更强。我们讨论了这些发现的含义和局限性。