Preannouncement of New Products: Overcoming Individual Adoption Barriers

Abstract The launch of innovative products very often encounters adoption barriers of consumers. A suitable communication with consumers is the new product preannouncement (NPP). It helps reduce adoption barriers and accelerates the adoption process. It is an important communication instrument for innovative SMEs. After defining NPP, the paper analyses the content structure of the main components contained in NPP from a consumer point of view. Based on the analysis of existing literature the authors found that there were only a few studies on the properties and quality of information communicated in NPP that influence a successful market launch of product innovations. Above all there is a lack of studies on NPP content in terms of a successful market launch of product innovations. The following analysis of the main NPP components enables to derive recommendations for SMEs on the communication policy for preannouncements and launching product innovations in order to reduce individual adoption barriers.