The Innovator's License: A Latitude to Deviate from Category Norms

Abstract

Firms often look for ways to improve the return on investment they earn from costly innovation strategies. The authors investigate a previously unexplored benefit of innovation that occurs when a brand's reputation as a provider of valued new offerings allows it to earn innovation credit, a form of customer-based brand equity. Innovation credit provides brands with the license or latitude to use strategies that violate category norms without the penalty (in the form of impaired attitudes) that consumers are shown to levy on less innovative brands. Consistent with the proposed theoretical framework, three studies demonstrate that innovative brands are granted the license to employ nonnormative strategies without sanction. In addition to providing evidence regarding the inferential mechanism underlying this licensing effect, Study 3 shows that, under certain conditions, innovative brands not only escape the penalty associated with using atypical strategies but are actually rewarded for utilizing such approaches. The authors provide theoretical and managerial implications of these findings and suggestions for further research in this emerging area of innovation research.

Strategic benefits of low fit brand extensions: When and why?

“…Findings from our studies are both significant and novel to the literature, yet they reinforce recent research. Barone and Jewell (2013) find that reputable innovative brands can employ nonnormative strategies without paying the penalty associated with using atypical strategies and indeed are rewarded for utilizing such approaches. Our findings also coincide with anecdotal evidence from the marketplace.…”

Deviance Credit: Tolerance of Deviant Ingroup Leaders is Mediated by Their Accrual of Prototypicality and Conferral of Their Right to Be Supported

“…This is especially true when the deviants are ingroup members, giving rise to the “black sheep effect” (Marques & Páez, ), in which ingroup deviants are judged more harshly than comparable outgroup deviants. However, groups frequently face challenges that require them to innovate or adapt to novel circumstances (Abrams, Randsley de Moura, Marques, & Hutchison, ; Barone & Jewell, ; Levine & Marques, ), and leaders are required to direct or defend such innovative strategies.…”

Does Environmental Innovation Produce License: A Customer-Based Brand Equity Perspective?

“…The standards that consumers rely on to infer atypical marketing strategies are attributes of environmental innovation and the benefits products bring. Consumers may positively construe atypical strategies deviating from marketing convention as brands' efforts to continue to innovate in the market [13]. By offering products with the attribute of high level environmental innovation, a brand can be endowed with the license to employ atypical strategy without penalty.…”

“…Marketing typicality involves the frequency with which specific marketing strategies are employed collectively by brands in a category [12]. Atypical marketing strategies deviate from market convention which is perceived by consumers to be typically or commonly used by brands in a product or service category [13]. Atypical marketing strategy should generally be viewed by consumers as inappropriate for a brand to use [12], prompting speculation and suspicion about the firm's motivation for employing the strategy.…”