Kunz et al.'s (2011) earlier research presented the first customer-centric measurement of firm innovativeness and its links to consumer loyalty and shareholder value. Other research shows the relationship between innovativeness and customer value co-creation (Kim et al., 2018), as well as the fact that it guides customer comparisons of competing firms Kurtmollaiev et al. (2022). If customer innovativeness is as pivotal as the many citations in the Kunz paper show, then customer innovativeness measurement is essential to demonstrate these linkages and validate the contentions in previous research using company-focused measures.
I focus on the additional ways to examine and measure perceived innovativeness based on what I have learned from scale development with my colleagues Len Berry and Parsu Parasuraman. Each of the SERVQUAL lessons learned has a direct bearing on alternative approaches to measuring perceived innovativeness. In the following sections, I will describe SERVQUAL and what we learned from that measurement, then discuss how it could be applied to perceived innovativeness.
I challenge other researchers to conduct studies similar to the SERVQUAL studies to develop an instrument that companies can adapt to their situations.
Kunz et al. infer from their analysis that young customers and the elderly view innovativeness differently. Does that mean that we need different scales for the different subgroups? Or can one overall scale capture both segments? If a company serves only one of the segments, such as in the restaurant industry, separate scales would be preferable because it can then focus completely on its target segment and not give incorrect or too broad messages about its innovativeness. However, I contend that if they want to test empirically their inferences about the differences between young and old, they need an overall scale. One way they can do this is to conduct focus groups with each segment and then create an overall scale that contains both aspects found in the two focus groups.
Understanding innovativeness at a company level can help firms assess how they are perceived by customers.
I challenge researchers to extend the work of Kunz to create a measurement instrument to assess perceived innovativeness.
