ASAC 2006 Jean-François Ouellet

Banff, Alberta Service de l’enseignement du marketing

HEC Montréal

THE MIXED EFFECTS OF BRAND INNOVATIVENESS AND CONSUMER

INNOVATIVENESS ON ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE BRAND

The perceived innovativeness of brands is anticipated to exert an

influence on consumer perceptions of said brands. This paper develops
the construct of brand innovativeness and investigates a first effect on
general attitudes towards the brand. Results indicate that opposite effects
are found for highly innovative and less innovative consumers.

Introduction

Introduction of really new products by organizations is largely documented as a significant

determinant of long term performance, a reality exacerbated by market globalization, faster introduction
of second and later entrant products, and shorter product lifecycles. However, the pursuit of innovation
and constant introduction of new products is not a risk-free strategy for companies, some having less
success at it than others (Cooper & Kleinschmidt, 1993). In the long run, one crucial factor of brands
pursuing innovation certainly has to do with consumer reactions to said brands and the products they sign
(Boyd & Mason, 1999).

Consumer behavior towards really new products varies across segments of adopters (Rogers,
1995), influencing adoption and thus sale takeoff of said really new product. Research has attempted to
characterize consumers based on their propensity to adopt new products, a stream of research that can be
partitioned into 3 core interests: (1) the measure of consumer innovativeness (e.g., Midgley and Dowling,
1978; Goldsmith and Hofacker, 1991; Venkatraman and Price, 1990; Roehrich, 2004); (2) the relationship
between consumer innovativeness and their adoption of new products (e.g., Foxall, 1988, 1995; Foxall &
Goldsmith, 1988, Goldsmith, Freiden & Eastman, 1995; Hirschman, 1980; Manning, Bearden & Madden,
1995; Midgley & Dowling, 1993); and (3) the antecedents of consumer innovativeness in terms of
personal and demographic variables (e.g., Midgley & Dowling, 1993; Steenkamp, Hofstede & Wedel
1999; Venkatraman 1991; Im, Bayus & Mason 2003).

Yet adoption of really new products by consumers also varies according to the product itself. A
number of studies have focused on product issues affecting consumer behavior towards innovation,
mainly based on work by Rogers’ (1995) inhibiting and facilitating factors of adoption. Pricing of the
product (e.g., Jain & Rao, 1990; Kalish & Lilien, 1986) and other non-price issues such as technology and
physical characteristics of the product (Myers and Shocker, 1981) also influence adoption, along with
firm- and market-related factors.

This being said, one potentially key product-related factor appears to have been omitted from past
research: that of the brand a really new product is introduced under. In fact, all research on really new
products that we have reviewed is in line with Boyd and Mason (1999), who explicitly only consider the
influence of ‘extrabrand’ attributes on adoption of innovations. This is a contrast with the bulk of
marketing literature which increasingly considers brands as a key factor of product success and most
probably the main intangible asset of corporations (Keller, 1993). Brands do influence consumer
behavior, oftentimes in a very significant if not dominant way. Consumers use brands as cues signaling

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such characteristics as product quality, performance, or reliability as long as the product being evaluated
does not conceptually or physically differ too much from the products that contributed to establishing
brand positioning in the first place (Wernerfelt, 1988; Keller & Aaker, 1992). In the specific context of
innovation marketing, this lack of consideration of the brand also seems at odd with marketing practice as
more and more corporations embrace innovation and make sure this positioning is communicated to
consumers through advertising, web sites, and other media (New Media Age, 2004). The resulting
concept of “brand innovativeness” and its effects on consumer behavior are—at least explicitly—absent
from extant literature.

The objective of this article is to provide a preliminary answer to the following research
questions: (1) Is there such a thing as brand innovativeness?; and (2) If so, how does it affect consumer
perceptions vis-à-vis the brand and eventually the products it signs? In order to address these questions,
we first review the relevant marketing literature and propose a model linking brand innovativeness,
consumer innovativeness, and consumer perceptions and attitudes for really new products. We then
describe an exploration of the brand innovativeness construct through the development of a measurement
scale. A first empirical test of our conceptual model is finally described.

Literature Review

Product Innovativeness

A number of studies have focused on product and firm innovativeness. However, most have
eluded the question of the very definition of innovativeness. Following a review of the literature, Lee and
O’Connor (2003) have concluded that the concept has been operationalized at different levels of
analysis—the industry, the firm, and the product level—and measured from a variety of perspectives,
including the firm as a developer, the firm as an adopter, and consumers as adopters. These various
combinations have led to at least the following sets of measures of innovativeness: the extent to which a
product impacts an industry’s competitive structure (Tushman & Anderson, 1986); the extent to which a
product impacts the relative advantage of a firm among its rivals (Abernathy & Clark, 1985); the extent to
which developing an innovation causes the firm to move into arenas of technological and market
uncertainty (Beard & Easingwood, 1996); the extent to which the product offers new to the world benefits
(Booz, Allen & Hamilton, 1982); and the extent to which an innovation impacts established customer
behavior patterns, consumption requirements, and expectations (Mick & Fournier, 1998; Porter, 1980;
Veryzer, 1998).

Product innovativeness reflects the level of newness in product innovations, which can vary,
broadly ranging over a wide spectrum (Balachandra and Friar, 1997). Thus, product innovativeness refers
to a phenomenon manifested by companies with product-related innovative activity. Although it can be
described along several dimensions (Song and Montoya-Weiss, 1998), most of them appear to reflect the
firm’s or the customer’s perspective (Danneels and Kleinschmidt, 2001; De Brentani, 2001).

Most research has focused on product innovativeness from the producer’s point of view. In this
context, it has been referred to as the degree of newness of a product to the firm, in terms of the
technology used (Beard & Easingwood, 1996; Kleinschmidt & Cooper, 1991; Yoon & Lilien, 1985), the
relationship of the new product to products typically offered by the firm (Garcia & Calantone, 2002), and
the degree to which current markets are strayed from as targets for the innovation (Moriarty & Kosnik,
1990). Few indeed have adopted the consumer’s point of view. From the consumers’ side, product
innovativeness refers to the degree of novelty of the product's features/functionality/benefits (Anderson &
Ortinau, 1988), degree of change required in consumption behavior (Atuahene-Gima, 1988; Veryzer,
1998), and effort required to learn to use and to adopt the new product (Mick & Fournier 1998). Some

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also consider the magnitude of the major change in the benefits offered to the consumers and the behavior
change required to use the product (Anderson & Ortinau, 1988). Similarly, Atuahene-Gima (1996) refers
to innovation newness as the degree to which the new product's usage patterns vary from current
customer consumption requirements and experiences.

Using a different approach, Sethi et al. (2001) measure new product innovativeness based on
whether the novelty of the product is appropriate from the perspective of the marketplace. Such an
approach is a departure from firm-related and other consumer-related research, which used mainly
objective criteria for innovativeness. In the consumer perspective, an innovation does not necessarily need
to be technically novel, so long as consumers perceive it as novel (Brown 1992).

From a consumer perspective, Lawton and Parasuraman (1980) assert that there are two basic
dimensions to product innovativeness: (1) the degree of change in consuming patterns of users, which is
required for adopting a new product—this adoption may incorporate a small or no change, a moderate or
major change—; and (2) the degree of difference between new and existing products in the market.

Towards Brand Innovativeness

Brands are most often described in the consumer mind and memory as a node to which other
concept nodes—brand associations—are linked (Keller, 1993). These brand associations—that is,
anything linked in memory to a brand (Aaker, 1991; Low and Lamb, 2000)—may be based on product
experience, product attributes, positioning of the brand in promotional communications, price
information, packaging, perceived typical user imagery, or other sources. Brand associations specifically
include: the level of affect which most customers hold toward the parent brand (e.g. Fiske and Pavelchak,
1986; Boush and Loken, 1991); the prestige of the parent brand (Park et al., 1991); perceptions about the
breadth of the parent brand portfolio (Boush and Loken, 1991); the parent brand strength and expertise
(Reddy et al., 1994); the parent brand quality associations (Keller and Aaker, 1992); the perceived
credibility of the parent brand (Keller and Aaker, 1992); along with any other associations related to the
parent brand (e.g. Chakravarti, MacInnis and Nakamoto, 1990; Park et al., 1991). These associations can
include country of origin, typical physical aspects of products, typical user, typical usage situation, etc.
(Keller, 2003). One specific type of association is brand personality, defined by Aaker (1997) as the set of
human characteristics associated with a brand and consisting of 5 distinct personality dimensions:
Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication, and Ruggedness. Of special interest here are
dimensions of excitement and competence. The first is described by Aaker (1997) as being representative
of daring, spirited, imaginative, and up-to-date brand characteristics. Competence is described as being
representative of reliable, responsible, dependable, and efficient traits.

A brand association that many companies seem to foster is that of innovativeness. For instance,
Sony Ericsson went through a major redesign of its web site to better convey and emphasize product
innovation (New Media Age 2004). Brands like Philips, Sony, Motorola, Nokia, Canon, and JVC are all
positioned to reflect innovativeness in product development (e.g., Sony Web Site). We formally define
brand innovativeness here as consumers’ perceptions about a brand’s tendency to engage in and support
new ideas, novelty, experimentation, and creative processes. Brand innovativeness involving perception
by consumers, it should translate into the introduction of innovative new products or services and/or other
actions such as innovative advertising, business models, distribution channels, and the like that are
perceptible by consumers.

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Consumer Innovativeness

Research in consumer behavior and new product marketing has shown that consumers differ in
their attitude toward novelty and innovation (Steenkamp et al., 1999). On the one hand, consumer
innovativeness is defined as actualized or domain-specific by the virtue of identifiable characteristics (e.g.
opinion leadership, etc.) and actual acquisitions of new information, ideas, and products (Hirschman,
1980; Midgley and Dowling, 1978). On the other hand, consumer innovators are identified based on their
unobservable “innovative predisposition” across product classes (Midgley and Dowling, 1993), often
referred to as innate or general innovativeness (Hirschman, 1980).

The actualized innovativeness concept has received in-depth empirical attention within the
diffusion of innovation framework (Rogers, 1995), and has been of particular interest in innovation
diffusion research generally, and information technology (Agarwal and Prasad, 1998) and marketing
research (Midgley and Dowling, 1978; Flynn and Goldsmith, 1993) specifically. According to this
framework, a “personal innovativeness” construct is conceptualized as the degree and speed of adoption
of innovation by an individual. In a marketing context, the construct has been measured via purchase
intentions and opinions for certain new products, the number of new products owned, and the relative
time of adoption for particular new products, and is usually applied to domain-specific products and
services.

Consumer innovativeness has been described as a significant antecedent to consumer responses to

new products and innovations. Indeed, research has time and again shown that innovativeness enhances
new-product adoption behavior (e.g., Foxall 1995; Manning et al. 1995; Midgley and Dowling 1993; Im,
Bayus, & Mason 2003). At the same time, actualized innovators have been described as more involved in
product categories they are innovators in. Involvement signifies long-term interest in a domain and plays
a central role in defining self-concept (Bloch, 1981). Consumer involvement with products depends on
the personal relevance of that product (Celsi and Olson, 1988; Park and Hastak, 1994). Innovativeness in
the concerned domain thus implies some involvement. In addition, innovators have been described as fans
of product categories: for example, a great amateur of French movies will typically go and see new
releases early, making him an innovative consumer (Rogers, 1995).

This leads to 2 hypotheses. First, while innovative consumers have been described as novelty
seekers and risk takers (Manning, Bearden and Madden, 1995; Robertson, Zielinkski and Ward, 1984;
Gatignon and Robertson, 1985; Rogers, 1995), non-innovative consumers have been described as rather
suspicious of novelty (Parasuraman, 2000), even nostalgic (Steenkamp, Hofstede and Wedel 1999) and
therefore more likely to be willing to consider purchase of less novel products. Should a transfer of the
innovativeness association actually occur from the brand to the product, we should expect that innovative
consumers will like really new products better when signed by an innovative brand. Inversely, less
innovative consumers should like really new products better (or dislike less) when signed by a less
innovative brand.

H1: Added perceived product innovativeness will lead to an increase(decrease) in attitude

towards the brand for high(low)-innovativeness consumers.

Second, more involved consumers dig deeper for information and thus tend to rely less on brands
to build opinions about products and make purchase decisions (McColl-Kennedy & Fetter, 2001). This
means innovativeness should moderate the effects described in H1 in the sense that perceptions of novelty
of highly innovative consumers will be less affected by the brand of a really new product than perceptions
of less innovative consumers:

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 H2: Consumer actualized innovativeness in the product category will moderate the amplitude of
the influence of brand innovativeness on brand attitude.

This provides us with the following integrative model:

Figure 1.

Integrative Model of the Research.

Consumer
Innovativeness

(+) Attitude
Brand
Towards the
innovativeness (+) Brand

Scale Development and Empirical Validation

In order to test our model, a number of instruments were necessary. While literature provides
scales to measure consumer innovativeness, perceived product innovativeness, and attitude towards the
product, the concept of brand innovativeness being itself an innovation required the development of a
relevant instrument. We therefore undertook scale development, as detailed hereafter.

Study 1: Item Generation and Refinement

Two main sources of information were used to generate an initial pool of items for the Brand
Innovativeness (hereafter referred to as “BI”) scale: (1) a review of relevant literature; and (2) fourteen
consumer interviews. Thematic analysis was performed among the responses by 2 judges and results were
pooled with concepts emerging in the literature, providing an initial set of 53 items.

A group of 6 marketing faculty and graduate students was gathered in order to judge the content
validity of the items, resulting in a first refinement of the initial set. Judges were presented with a written
definition of BI. Judges were then asked to rate each concept as being clearly representative, somewhat
representative, or not representative of BI. Following Bearden et al. (1989) and Zaichkowsky (1985),
items evaluated as clearly representative by four judges and no worse than somewhat representative by 2
more judges were retained. This process resulted in a set of 17 items for further analysis.

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Study 2: Item Reduction and Reliability Testing

This stage involved scale purification and reliability testing for the 17 items. Data were collected
online with a sample of consumers located in the Montreal area. Usable answers were gathered from 390
individuals. Overall, slightly over half of the respondents were female (53%), with average annual income
of $35,000 to $50,000. Typical respondents had taken some college courses, with 26% having a college or
postgraduate degree, following closely provincial norms in the matter.

All items were scored using 5-point Likert format with higher scores representing greater levels
of BI. Prior to data analysis, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test of sampling adequacy and the Bartlett
test of sphericity were used to determine the appropriateness of factor analysis. The KMO level was equal
to .929 for the sample and the significance of the Bartlett test indicated that factor analysis was
appropriate for the data. Exploratory principal components factor analysis was performed on the set of 17
items, revealing a first unrotated factor that had an eigenvalue of 6.10 and a second unrotated factor that
had an eigenvalue of 2.02 with no other factor with eigenvalue greater than 1.0. To increase homogeneity
and with an interest in developing a more parsimonious scale, items that did not have corrected item-total
above .50 were deleted, resulting in the deletion of 10 items. Follow-up factor analyses on the remaining
items as well as Cattell’s scree plot criterion indicated that two factors should be retained, suggesting a 7-
item, bidimensional scale consisting of the following dimensions: (BI1) the perceived degree of
difference between the brand’s marketing mix (products, pricing, distribution, advertising, etc.) and that
of other brands (4 items); and (BI2) the perceived frequency of introduction of novel elements in the
brand’s marketing mix (3 items).

Study 3: Confirmatory Factor Analysis

A second survey was conducted to generate data for confirmatory factor analysis, once again
online. The number of usable questionnaires was 138 and the demographics of this second sample were
similar to those achieved in the first study.

A series of confirmatory models were examined and estimated using LISREL-8. Examination of
item reliabilities, Lagrangian multiplier tests, and tests of discriminant validity from CFA models for a 2-
factor model did not suggest deletion of additional items and provided a good fit for the data
(Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .97; and Normed Fit Index (NFI) = .93). The chi-square statistic of the 2-
factor model was not significant and represented a significant improvement over any of the competing
null, 1-, 3-, 4-, and 5-factor models that we examined. The coefficient alpha estimate of internal
consistency reliability was also acceptable, at .80 and .78 for both dimensions. The 7 items and their
corresponding factor loadings are presented in Table 1.

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 Table 1.

Factor Analysis Results for BI items

Item Factor 1 Factor 2

loadings loadings
The products, ads, and general marketing of this brand are not very .76 .09
different from those of its competitors (reversed).
This brand is characterized by unique products, ads, distribution .74 .07
mode, and/or other elements of its marketing.
This brand doesn’t go unnoticed. .71 .16
This brand is very creative. .70 .15
This brand rarely introduces new products and/or changes in its ads .12 .88
& marketing (reversed).
This brand frequently comes up with new stuff. .08 .89
This brand is a fast paced one. .04 .81

Study 4: Discriminant Validity and Relationships with Other Measures

In order to assess discriminant validity of the BI scale, a survey containing the latter alongside
measures of 2 conceptually related constructs was administered to 42 students recruited on a university
campus in Boston, MA. In order to clearly distinguish BI from Aaker’s (1997) brand personality
dimensions of excitement and competence, it was deemed appropriate to compare BI with both measures
for purposes of confirming discriminant validity.

As indicated in Table 2, each of the measures investigated in combination with BI demonstrated

acceptable levels of reliability, with internal consistency scores of .77 for brand excitement and .73 for
brand competence. Table 2 also shows that the “frequency of new product introduction” dimension of BI
is moderately correlated with brand excitement (.19) while the “level of difference” dimension of BI is
slightly correlated with brand competence (.11), both significant at the .05 level. Common methods
covariation (since all constructs were measured at the same time with similar 7-point Likert scales) should
explain—at least partly—such correlation scores. To ensure that discrimination existed among the tested
scales, we followed the recommendations of Fornell and Larcker (1981) and Anderson and Gerbing
(1988). First, Fornell and Larcker (1981) explain that discriminant validity is evidenced when the average
variance extracted by each of two constructs is greater than their shared variance. Next, Anderson and
Gerbing (1988) suggest that, in order to confirm discriminant validity for every pair of factors, a 2-factor
model should fit significantly better than a 1-factor model. In all cases, both tests proved significant in
confirming discriminant validity of the BI scale against those of brand excitement and brand competence.

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 Table 2.

Correlations and Reliability Estimates for Key Variables

Brand Brand
BI(1) BI(2) excitement competence
Brand innovativeness …
(level of difference)
Brand innovativeness n.s. …
(frequency)
Brand excitement n.s. .19* …
Brand competence .11* n.s. n.s. …
* < .05

Study 6: First Experimental Validation of the BI Scale

For further validation of the scale, a study was designed to test if BI influences consumer
responses to innovative products. We expected products signed by high-BI brands to be perceived as
more innovative than same products signed by low-BI brands. In addition, in less innovative consumers,
we expected that products bearing higher BI brands should suffer less favorable attitudes than same
products bearing lower BI brands. We expected the opposite influence, although less markedly, in
consumers scoring high on innovativeness.

To test for these effects, a 4 (high/low for both dimensions of BI, within-subject) × 2 (high/low
consumer innovativeness, between-subject) design was developed. Four highly innovative products in the
consumer electronics category, as selected from the recipients of the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show
innovation awards, were included in the study. Fifteen consumer brands of electronic devices were pre-
tested with 28 business school students at a Boston, MA university to ensure they were perceived as
significantly different. We retained 2 brands per combination of BI dimensions—i.e., 8 in total:

Table 3.

Brands Retained for Main Study

Low BI(1) High BI(1)

Audiovox Fujitsu
Low BI(2)
RCA Pioneer
Philips Sony
High BI(2)
Panasonic Hitachi

The final questionnaire involved measurement of domain-specific consumer innovativeness

(DSCI) as well as perceived brand innovativeness (as a manipulation check). This decision to consider
domain-specific and not innate consumer innovativeness is consistent with the contention that

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innovativeness must be identified and characterized on a product category or domain basis (Gatignon and
Robertson, 1985). DSCI was measured following Goldsmith and Hofacker’s (1991) six-item scale
(Cronbach alpha = .81). The dependent variable was attitude towards the brand, measured along a 3-item
(dislike/like; unfavorable/favorable; unsatisfactory/satisfactory) 7-point semantic differential scale
(Cronbach alpha = .82).

A total of 310 respondents were recruited through random mall or street intercept procedures in
the city of Boston, MA. A total of 272 usable questionnaires were available. A self-administered, laptop
computer-based questionnaire was used to gather data for this project. Respondents first had to read a
short text explaining this study was being conducted for an association of consumer electronics
manufacturers and providing the usual details about how to fill up the survey. Each respondent was then
shown the 8 brands, one brand at a time. For each, respondents had to declare attitude towards the brand.
Afterwards, respondents filled the consumer innovativeness scale and the BI scale for each brand used in
the study. Finally, socio-demographic data was gathered.

An overall consumer innovativeness score was computed for each respondent. Descriptive
statistics for DSCI and for the other measures can be found in Table 4, where higher ratings (based on 7-
point Likert scales) reflect more positive product judgments, greater willingness to buy, and higher levels
of DSCI.

In order to test the effects of brand innovativeness on attitude towards the brand, regression
analysis was conducted where product innovativeness was set as the dependent variable, and BI(1), BI(2),
BI(1)×DSCI and BI(2)×DSCI as independent variables, with DSCI centered to range from -3 to +3. In
line with our proposition, both BI(1)×DSCI and BI(2)×DSCI were found to significantly influence
attitude towards the brand at the .01 level. However, neither dimension of brand innovativeness alone was
found to be significant. This confirms the joint influence of brand innovativeness and consumer
innovativeness on attitude towards the brand and provides support for our first hypothesis.

To test our second hypothesis, we first partitioned respondents into high/low DSCI sub-groups
following a median split. New regression analyses were performed with both dimensions of BI as
independent variables and attitude towards the brand (Ab) as the dependent variable. While previous
analyses have shown the moderating role of DSCI on the direction of the influence of BI on Ab, for DSCI
to moderate the amplitude of the effect required the absolute value of regression coefficients to be
significantly different in both models—that is, | High-DSCI(BIX)| ≠ | Low-DSCI(BIX)| in Ab = (BIX) + K. To
test for this difference, we followed Cohen and Cohen (1983). Results confirmed this difference to be
significant at the .01 level for both dimensions of BI and thus that consumer innovativeness does limit the
effects of brand innovativeness on consumer attitudes towards the brand. In other words, our research
confirms that lower DSCI consumers are more sensitive to brand innovativeness in developing (in their
case, negative) attitudes towards the brand.

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 Table 4.

Impact of variables on Attitudes towards the Brand

Standardized
Independent
Regression
Variable
Coefficients
BI(1) -.009 ns
BI(2) -.013 ns

BI(1)×DSCI .611**

BI(2)×DSCI .368**
DSCI .010 ns
** = Significant at the .01 level.
ns
= Not significant.
R² = .397.
Mean BI(1): 4.11 (scale of 1 to 7 with 7 meaning high BI).
Mean BI(2): 3.96 (scale of 1 to 7 with 7 meaning high BI).
Mean DSCI: 3.40 (scale of 1 to 7 with 7 meaning high DSCI).

Discussion

Brands that invest significantly in research and development face a second demanding challenge
in the commercialization their innovations. For new products to truly take-off, they must quickly make
their way through the first innovator and early adopter consumer segments and reach as fast as possible
the less innovative segments of first and second majorities. This is indeed a challenge as less innovative
consumers typically resent truly novel products, at least until they have proven their usefulness. One
factor potentially affecting adoption is the brands that new products are introduced under.

Brands communicate a number of things. They communicate a certain personality, typical user
and usage situation, culture, and much, much more. One association that had not yet been investigated
was that of innovativeness. This article has proposed a definition of the construct and reported research
that aimed at developing a measurement instrument for it, thus providing theoretical and methodological
contributions to the field of brand management and marketing in general. Of course, a number of
limitations do prevent large scale generalization at this point that further research should aim at
addressing. Certainly the main limitation comes from the fact that only a few consumer electronics brands
were tested. Attitude towards these brands could result from a number of other factors besides BI.

Brand innovativeness, defined in this article, could potentially have many effects on consumer
behavior, opening the way for a number of research opportunities. While this article has validated the
influence of the construct of brand innovativeness on attitude towards the brand as moderated by
consumer innovativeness, BI could also influence such concerns as the speed of adoption of innovations
by consumers. Literature indeed shows that the rapidity of takeoff is a significant concern for managers,
who aim at diffusing innovations as quickly as possible to recuperate their investments. One way to
increase the speed of adoption could reside in the brand that signs the novel products being introduced.
Since less innovative consumers appear to favor less innovative brands, highly innovative brands like

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Sony could consider developing less innovative brands to more easily gain market share in the bigger
segments of less innovative consumers. Further research could also aim at demonstrating if a transfer of
meaning occurs between more or less innovative brands and the products they sign. For instance, it could
be that a highly innovative product introduced under a low BI brand is perceived as less innovative than
the same product introduced under a higher BI brand.

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