Comment comprendre les phénomènes sous-jacents

While innovation focuses on firm activity outcome, referring to an actual new product or service, production process, structure or administrative system, innovativeness refers to the capability of a firm to be open to new ideas and work

on new solutions, which is an enduring characteristic and not success at one point in time (Kunz, Schmitt and Meyer, 2011). Firm innovativeness relates to a firm’s capability to engage in innovation, that is, the firm’s capacity to introduce some new process, product, or idea in the organisation (Damanpour, 1991; Hult, Hurley and Knight, 2004). It is present when firms pursue not only the generation of new ideas, products or processes but also their active implementation (Hurley and Hult, 1998). One key aspect is an organisation’s willingness or openness to change, which is linked to whether the members of an organisation are willing to consider the adoption of an innovation or whether they are resistant to it (Zaltman, Duncan and Holbek, 1973; Hult et al., 2004). Innovativeness can also be seen as the capability of a firm to develop new product solutions at a fast rate within a specific time period (Roehrich, 2004).

Specifically, “perceived firm innovativeness” and “perceived organisational innovativeness” are distinct in terms of the group of people of which this perception reflects. Whilst “perceived organisational innovativeness” reflects mainly the perception of internal stakeholders (e.g. employees and managers), perceived firm innovativeness reflects the perception of external consumers of firm innovativeness, which is the focus of our study. Perceived firm innovativeness is a subjective consumer perception and attribution based on consumer information, knowledge, and experience (Kunz et al., 2011), and Brown and Dacin (1997) suggest that firm characteristics and behaviours must be stable over time in order to build up a consistent image of firm innovativeness.

In this study, we adopt the definition conceptualised by Kunz et al. (2011), suggesting that perceived firm innovativeness is the consumer’s perception of an enduring firm capability that results in novel, creative, and impactful ideas and solutions for the market. Novelty, or newness, has been recognised as a key feature of innovativeness (Crawford and Di Benedetto, 2003), while creativity includes company efforts and activities viewed as unique from the competition and as meaningful to the consumer (Amabile, 1988; Im and Workman, 2004).

Market impact is another key characteristic – an innovative firm that succeeds in altering established consumption patterns may be viewed as an industry pioneer by consumers (Kamins, Alpert and Elliott, 2000). Kunz et al. (2011) highlight that

all aspects of perceived firm innovativeness are strongly interrelated and none alone suffices for an overall perception of firm innovativeness – if a firm’s creative ideas frequently fails in the marketplace, it cannot be perceived as innovative, whilst successful ideas will not create a perception of firm innovativeness if the ideas are not viewed as creative and novel. In our study, perceived firm innovativeness can be said to reflect the consumer’s overall assessment of the company's capacity to develop one or more of the four areas of innovation, as described in section 2.1.

Firm innovativeness is important for several reasons. Innovativeness enhances a firm's sensitivity to changing market conditions, its ability to identify and exploit attractive opportunities and its responsiveness to market developments (Hult et al., 2004), allowing them to achieve a competitive advantage and sound performance results (Salomo, Talke and Strecker, 2008). Innovativeness can also help firms gain a first-mover advantage position and form barriers preventing market entry from potential rivals, potentially increasing returns from investments in new ventures while positioning competitors towards investing in business initiatives with less available expertise (Szymanski, Troy and Bharadwaj, 1995).

From a consumer-centric viewpoint, innovativeness can generate customer excitement, increase customer satisfaction and retention and create positive word of mouth (Szymanski et al., 2007). This customer excitement, as a result of an innovation where the firm has shown responsiveness to market developments and where the customer has perceived gained benefits, can lead to higher product trial due to novelty effects relative to other offerings by the firm or the competition.

Innovativeness triggers consumers’ variety-seeking tendencies and translates into repeat purchases for new goods that better satisfy consumer needs (Szymanski et al., 2007). Atuahene-Gima (1996) further suggests that when new products meet customer expectations and satisfy particular customer requirements effectively, the perception of new product performance increases. As such, customer satisfaction, which results from meeting or exceeding customers’ expectations, is likely an antecedent to the evaluation and perception of firm innovativeness. As per in Kunz et al.’s (2011) definition of perceived firm innovativeness, perceived firm innovativeness is the consumer’s perception of an enduring firm capability

that results in novel, creative, and impactful ideas and solutions for the market, and all aspects of perceived firm innovativeness are deemed necessary. We thus propose that only by providing a solution that meets customer expectations and creates customer satisfaction, may a firm enjoy a positive evaluation and be perceived as innovative in developing products or services. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

H2: Customer satisfaction has a positive effect on perceived firm innovativeness.