Measuring consumer innovativeness

A self-report measure of consumer innovativeness was developed that is conceptualized as the predisposition to learn about and adopt new products in a specific domain of consumer behavior. Such a method avoids the theoretical and methodological problems associated with both the time-of-adoption measure and the cross-sectional approach and the complements of these techniques. The scale development process focused on selecting items saturated with content that would be unaffected by direction-of-item wording. Factor analysis showed the scale to be unidimensional; reliability analysis showed the scale to be highly reliable across several samples of student and adults. Correlations with other constructs demonstrated criterion-related, convergent, and discriminant validity. The self-report scale is most suitable for product areas in which consumers purchase often and can thus report on their actual or anticipated behavior.