Being Perceived as a Family Firm and New Product Acceptance: An Empirical Analysis

Contributing to the discussion about the effects of family firm image/family firm reputation this paper presents some insights on consumers’ perception of family firm status, how and why this perception influences consumer decisions and its consequences. Following a marketing conceptualization we analyzed how the perception of a company as family firm has an influence on new product acceptance (NPA) which is crucial for the company’s long-term survival. We adopt a multi-method three-study-design using a total of 293 respondents. Our first study using an experimental research design empirically supports a positive influence from the consumers’ perception of a company as being family firm on the NPA and shows that this effect is due to the increased trustworthiness of family firm perception. By using three qualitative focus groups, the second study further explores the underlying mechanisms and identifies the importance of the constructs personification, trustworthiness, and the moderating role of consumers’ attitudes. In the third study, these underlying mechanisms are tested quantitatively applying an online experiment. Overall our key findings are that (1) the more a company is perceived as family firm, the higher is the NPA due to an increase in the perceived trustworthiness of the firm which is induced by stronger personification of the firm and (2) the introduction of the FFI as a perceptual measure and its validity and applicability potentially enriches family firm and marketing research alike.