Leveraging the Old to Create the New: The Role of Brand Associations in New Product Novelty

The perceived novelty of a new products is an important factor in its success. Although a number of factors that influence a new product’s perceived novelty have been explore, the role of brands has been ignored. In this paper, we explore how brands can influence novelty judgments. We argue that differences in brands perceptions affect consumers’ level of construal. We argue that a low-level construal leads consumers to focus on dissimilarities between the new product and existing alternatives when making judgments, resulting in increased novelty perceptions. In contrast, a high-level construal encourages a focus on similarities which produces decreased novelty perceptions. A series of ?ve empirical studies offer converging evidence in support of the proposed theory.