The effects of product consistency and consumer resistance to innovation on green product diffusion in China

Abstract

As consumers are becoming concernedabout environmental sustainability, firms are motivated to develop green products that adopt sustainable innovation or materials. This study contributes to the existing literature by specifically examining how consumers react to a firm's green product introduction (i.e., the diffusion process of the green product) based on two factors: the extent to which the new green product shares common characteristics with the existing product offerings and the extent to which customers are resistant to innovation. The findings suggest that when firms introduce green products to the market, they need to consider the product consistency between existing product offerings and the new green product as well as the consumer resistance to new innovation.