4. General discussion
Previous research has established that innovativeness is important for the success of companies (Rubera & Kirca, 2012). However, results of previous studies vary significantly on the issue of whether or not such investments lead to economic success (Evanschitzky et al., 2012). Reasons for the discrepancy between the perception of a brand as innovative and the development of innovations is that consumers are not aware of all of a brand's innovations, and they do not keep track of all of a brand's innovations. The present work contrasts a bookkeeping approach with an approach that proposes that innovativeness judgments are constructed on the basis of flagship products as representative exemplars of brands (Ahluwalia & Gürhan-Canli, 2000) and shows in three studies that the perceived flagship products innovativeness is a key driver of perceived brand innovativeness. Study 2 finds that the perceived flagship products innovativeness of real brands in different industries is correlated with perceived brand innovativeness (H2b). Studies 1 and 3 reveal that the presentation of an innovative flagship product has a causal effect on perceived brand innovativeness. The present work suggests that a bookkeeping model of the integration of information into the brand schema is not sufficient to explain how consumers judge a brand's innovativeness. A bookkeeping model of consumer information processing would suggest that consumers continually update perceived brand innovativeness when they perceive new information that is relevant for this assessment (Balachander & Ghose, 2003; Loken & John, 1993). However, in Studies 1 and 3, all participants receive the same information about the brand but differ in perceived brand innovativeness when the presentation of the flagship product differs. Participants indicate a higher perceived brand innovativeness when an innovative product included in the brand portfolio is presented as a flagship product than when it is not presented as a flagship product. A bookkeeping model would have predicted that participants would base their judgment of perceived brand innovativeness on the information they received that is relevant for this judgment irrespective of whether this information is associated with a flagship or standard product. However, the perceived innovativeness of a standard product obviously does not affect perceived brand innovativeness as much as the perceived flagship product innovativeness does. While the results of the present studies are not congruent with a bookkeeping model, they are in line with the assumption that consumers rely on flagship products as prominent exemplars of the brand when they form a judgment of perceived brand innovativeness (Ahluwalia & Gürhan-Canli, 2000; Chen & Chaiken, 1999; Hastie & Park, 1986).
