Impacting Innovativeness: The Role of Interpersonal Influences and Cultural Dimensions on Consumer Innovativeness

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to study the innovativeness of professionals within a cultural context vis-à-vis the effects of susceptibility to interpersonal influences. Organizations and businesses seek to have a highly innovative workforce and an innovative culture because research has shown that employee innovativeness is a crucial ingredient for staying competitive and sustain market position. On the other hand, susceptibility to interpersonal influences is a characteristic which can impact an individual’s beliefs of the accepted behaviors, thinking, products and operations and thus could impact their readiness to accept innovative initiatives. Interpersonal influences have been studied in the context of consumer behavior and refer to the tendency for individuals to accept information from others as credible evidence. This research studies the link between susceptibility to interpersonal influences and innovativeness. The study also hypothesized a moderating impact of cultural dimensions on this relationship. The current research builds on a previous study conducted in Turkey and replicates it in the Jordanian context. We found a positive effect of susceptibility to interpersonal influences on consumer innovativeness and found positive effects of the masculinity cultural dimension on this relationship. These findings are important for businesses and indicate that they should encourage and support group influences and affiliations in the workforce in order to increase the innovativeness of their culture. Interpersonal dynamics, affiliations, and cliques may have advantages for some organizational tasks and may also promote innovativeness optimally. The study was conducted with data from 116 professional respondents in Jordan whose innovativeness was assessed in the context of their attitudes towards new products.