A STUDY ON THE IMPACT OF CONSUMER INNOVATIVENESS AND PERCEIVED RISK ON INNOVATIVE INTIMATE APPAREL ADOPTION

Consumer innovativeness has a large influence on the adoption of new products and adoption speed while perceived risk may enhance resistance. The aim of this research is to investigate the impacts of consumer innovativeness and perceived risk on the adoption of innovative intimate apparel. A questionnaire survey is conducted with 200 female consumers between the ages of 16 and 45 at shopping malls in different districts of Hong Kong. The findings suggest that domain-specific innovativeness enhances the actual adoption of new lingerie products, which means domain-specific innovators are relatively early in adopting new products than other members in the community. On the other hand, cognitive innovativeness, domain-specific innovativeness and performance risk enhance the propensity to acquire information about new products whereas physical risk negatively influences it. The reasons are that cognitive innovators are easily exposed to information about innovative lingerie products from advertisements, while domain-specific innovators tend to acquire new products or related information within a specific domain. An extended innovativeness and perceived risk model is developed in this study. By specifically identifying the profile and buying behaviors of domain-specific innovators on intimate apparel products, marketers can have a better understanding on ways to increase the success rate of new product commercialization.