Although innovation is a critical growth factor in the high technology sector, the rate of introductions leading to commercial failure is much higher in this sector than in other industries. This prompted researchers to pay closer attention to the characteristics differentiating technological innovations from innovations in other fields. As part of this recent and fruitful research current, Hoeffler (2003) finds that technological innovations are distinguished by the fact that they raise two specific forms of uncertainty. The first relates to the difficulty of understanding the new benefits; the second, to the fact that these innovations require consumer learning. According to Castano et alii (2008), these two forms of uncertainty are more or less prominent in the minds of consumers according to the time frame during which the individual is considering purchasing a technology product – this time frame is referred to as “temporal distance” in the literature. The robustness of these results was confirmed in a preliminary study. Moreover, we employed two anticipatory mental simulation techniques to reduce the consumer's double uncertainty when considering the purchase of semi-continuous and discontinuous innovations. Our results show that when the purchase is planned within the near future, the “process-oriented” simulation reduces learning cost uncertainty and anxiety, and increases intent to use and intent to purchase. Over the long term, “result-oriented simulation” decreases uncertainty about benefits and raises optimism, intent to use and intent to purchase. This research identifies the mechanisms through which the interaction between temporal distance and mental simulation act on consumer's behavior. Moreover, we have shown that the beneficial effects stemming from this interaction are only true for the expert consumers and not for those who are not. Therefore, this research raises a limit to the use of this interaction to promote the adoption of technological innovations. Five studies were conducted, including two that were made in collaboration with IDEAs Laboratory, a company from Grenoble operating in the sector of high technology.
Influence of temporal distance and anticipatory mental simulation on the adoption of technological innovations : the role of novelty degree and expertise in the product category