According to a new scientific study, conducted by several prestigious universities in the US, the failure of some of the most innovative products on the market, such as, for example, the Segway scooters, is due to the fact that people are actually reluctant to purchase things that are very new, and which require a change in their familiar lifestyle habits. The find is particularly visible, the researchers say, when the time comes for the prospective customers to part ways with their money. Despite aggressive advertising campaigns, the success of highly touted and innovative products entirely depends on how most people see them.

“People naturally think abstractly about really new products, and when you think abstractly about a positive intention to buy something, chances are you won't follow through. It just slips your mind over time. Marketing a product may be like conducting a campaign for public office. At first, when you're an outlier and want coverage, it may make sense to position yourself as really new and different, but as you close in and you want people to intend to make a purchase you will want to seem more concrete and less psychologically new,” Duke University expert John Lynch explained.

He was involved in the study with University of St. Thomas investigator David Alexander, as well as with expert Qing Wang, from the Warwick University. The work, which was published in the paper As Time Goes By: Warm Intentions and Cold Feet for Really New versus Incrementally New Products, was funded by the Marketing Science Institute (MSI), and it received the Robert D. Buzzell MSI Best Paper Award for the help it provided to marketing executives.

The three investigators analyzed a CBS Television City online panel for their research. The panel contained some 2,692 experiment participants, and each of them was asked about their intentions to purchase one of the products depicted on TV. There were several categories of products, which the people themselves generated – really new, as in streaming TV, blogging services, personal digital assistants, and incrementally new, including DVD players, flat-screen TVs, and the likes.

The researchers noted that individuals were twice more likely to buy similar products from the first group rather than the second, regardless of the cost difference. This seems to suggest the fact that people may be more inclined to purchase things they know of, or know how to use, rather than risk changing something in their lives. This may include learning how to operate a new type of home entertainment system or other such tasks, to which most persons are, surprisingly, reluctant.