Alleviating consumers’ negative emotional responses to really new products: Potential of product metaphors

Although adopting product innovations couldbe beneficial for consumers, consumers often show negative emotional responsesto innovations. An important reason for these negative emotions is that consumersexperience difficulty when learning about really new products (RNPs) becausethe knowledge required goes beyond consumers’ stored knowledge and using RNPsis difficult to imagine. To alleviate consumers’ negative emotional responses,this paper conceptually proposes that using product metaphors during designingRNPs could be a promising way to facilitate consumers’ learning. Specifically,this paper explores the potential of applying product metaphors in the designof RNPs to facilitate consumer learning through functional and experientialanalogies.