ORIGINAL EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

Behavioral research shows that reasons for and reasons against adopting innovations differ qualitatively, and they influence consumers’ decisions in dissimilar ways. This has important implications for theorists and managers, as overcoming barriers that cause resistance to innovation calls for marketing approaches other than promoting reasons for adoption of new products and services. Consumer behavior frameworks in diffusion of innovation (DOI) studies have largely failed to distinctly account for reasons against adoption. Indeed, no study to date has tested the relative influence of adoption and resistance factors in a single framework. This research aims to address this shortcoming by applying a novel consumer behavior model (i.e., behavioral reasoning theory) to test the relative influence of both reasons for and, importantly, reasons against adoption in consumers’ innovation adoption decisions. Based on two empirical studies, one with a product and a second with a service innovation, findings demonstrate that behavioral reasoning theory provides a suitable framework to model the mental processing of innovation adoption. Implications for managers and researchers are discussed. Introduction Understanding whether and why consumers will adopt innovations is critical for firms developing and marketing new products and services. In practice, managers frequently draw on market research of consumers’ perceptions of product characteristics or attitudes to predict consumer adoption of innovation. Studies in this field build on diffusion of innovation theory (DOI; Rogers 1962), and widely applied behavioral models include the technology acceptance model (TAM; Davis 1989) or the theory of reasoned action (TRA; Fishbein and Ajzen 1975). However, traditional DOI studies have been widely criticized for neglecting factors that lead to consumer resistance to innovations (e.g., Garcia et al. 2007; Ram and Sheth 1989; Sheth 1981). Given the high failure rate of new products and services, innovation resistance studies have argued that instead of comprehending reasons for adoption, researchers and managers should focus on factors that prevent consumers from adopting innovation (Antioco and Kleijnen 2010). But despite a growing number of studies that have highlighted this, researchers have yet to identify and/or develop behavioral models that account for perceived barriers that lead to rejection of innovations (Kleijnen et al. 2009). This study contributes to the innovation adoption and innovation resistance literatures by applying behavioral reasoning theory (BRT), which allows innovation researchers and managers to test the relative influence of both reasons for and reasons against adoption (Westaby 2005). Extensive research shows that people’s motives to adopt and reasons to resist innovation differ qualitatively, and they influence people’s decisions in different ways (e.g., Antioco and Kleijnen 2010; Garcia et al. 2007; Kleijnen et al. 2009). In other words, reasons for resisting innovations are not necessarily the opposite of reasons for adoption. For example, consumers may see the relative advantage of an innovation like electric vehicles and report positive attitudes toward it. Yet they may still resist M. C. Claudy (*) School of Business, University College Dublin, Carysford Ave., Blackrock Co., Dublin, Ireland e-mail: marius.claudy@ucd.ie R. Garcia Poole College of Management, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7229, USA A. O’Driscoll College of Business, Dublin Institute of Technology, Aungier Street, Dublin 2, Ireland J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2015) 43:528–544 DOI 10.1007/s11747-014-0399-0 Consumer resistance to innovation—a behavioral reasoning perspective