“Patent marking” as a signaling strategy: Impacts on perceived product innovativeness and innovation adoption
(A2024-118436)

AUTHORS

stéphane salgado, Toulouse School of Management - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole; David Henard, Department of Business Management Nelson Hall 2338; Jamal Azzam, Toulouse School of Management

ABSTRACT

Patent marking allows companies to communicate information to consumers about the inventions implemented in their products. However, no research has explored how customers react to such signaling strategies. This article explores under which conditions patent marking acts as a signaling or communication strategy to promote the adoption of innovative products. An experimental study based on products of different categories was conducted with a representative sample of the French population (N=547). We show that patent marking enhances the perception of the constitutive dimensions of perceived product innovation (i.e., newness and meaningfulness) by activating an inference in consumers' minds about the firm's ability to develop inventive, nonimitative, and technically superior products. As a result, consumers respond favorably, in terms of purchase intentions and propensity to pay a premium price, to products subject to patent marking. Our results also show that these effects vary according to consumer profile. Our results suggest that managers and entrepreneurs can use the patents protecting the inventions embedded in their innovative products to make observable the technological benefits and attributes of the latter and thus facilitate their adoption by consumers. The originality of this article is twofold. On the one hand, it suggests patent marking as a novel strategy for signaling innovative products and explains to what extent this contributes to the construction of their innovativeness as perceived by consumers.