Innovating traditional products: "Self-sacrifice vs. product authenticity"

Purpose: Products are continuously innovated to improve organization efficiency and meet consumer expectations. Although satisfying consumer expectations in a society where buyers expect continuous product improvement is imperative to survival in today’s competitive environment, consumers reject 50-80% of these innovated products. While this could be due to the perceived lack of authenticity of an innovated product leading to diminished perceived value, our knowledge about the relationship between authenticity and value creation is limited. Moreover, there is no conceptual explanation specific to how consumers react when a traditional product, like wine, is intrinsically modified and how consumers’ characteristics, as well as culture moderate any trade-off between loss of authenticity and gained functional benefits. This study addresses the above-mentioned gaps through the development of a conceptual framework, examining whether the intrinsic innovation of a product will elicit a stronger influence on perceived authenticity when the product is traditional rather than not traditional.

Design/methodology/approach: The preliminary exploratory approach, involving seven focus groups and wine tastings, was conducted in Jakarta, where wine is not a traditional product, and Adelaide, where wine consumption is part of the culture. The innovation was related to a substantial lowering of the alcohol level.

Findings: Overall results support the conceptual model, showing that Indonesian participants are more open to consuming low/no alcohol wine and still consider the product to be wine in contrast to Australian participants, who reacted more negatively to the product innovation and did not consider the product to be wine.