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Title: Affordable or premium innovation? The influence of individual and contextual factors on innovators' engagement in different innovation types

Authors: Nadine Gurtner; Ariane Segelitz-Karsten; Ronny Reinhardt; Sebastian Gurtner

Addresses: Business School, Institute Innovation and Strategic Entrepreneurship, Bern University of Applied Sciences, Brückenstrasse 73, 3005 Bern, Switzerland ' Chair of General Management and Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Carl-Zeiss-Straße 3, 07743 Jena, Germany ' Chair of General Management and Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Carl-Zeiss-Straße 3, 07743 Jena, Germany ' Business School, Institute Innovation and Strategic Entrepreneurship, Bern University of Applied Sciences Brückenstrasse 73, 3005 Bern, Switzerland

Abstract: Affordable innovations target customers with a low willingness or ability to pay. While researchers and practitioners increasingly recognise the importance of affordable innovation to society, we know little about the conditions under which individual innovators engage in affordable innovation rather than its counterpart: premium innovation. In our qualitative study of 55 innovators, we first uncover the individual and contextual factors that determine innovators' commitment to affordable and premium innovations. We also identify common combinations of factors that lead to different types of affordable and premium innovators. Finally, we highlight the conditions under which innovators move from affordable to premium innovations and from premium to affordable innovations. These results contribute to the innovation literature by showing that a conceptual distinction between affordable and premium innovations is necessary to understand individual innovative commitment and by explaining why innovators often choose premium innovations over socially relevant affordable innovations.

Keywords: affordable innovation; premium innovation; low-end innovation; BoP innovation; frugal innovation; individual factors; contextual factors; qualitative research.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEV.2023.134934

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing, 2023 Vol.15 No.5, pp.468 - 506

Received: 06 May 2022
Accepted: 15 Aug 2023
Published online: 21 Nov 2023 *