Consumer innovativeness, product innovation and smart toys

Smart toys, a new type of toy, becomes prevalent in the global market because of its fantastic user experience from interacting with various smart toys. Although past literature has concerned the smart toy field, not enough research focus on consumer behavior in the Chinese smart toy market that is a vast and promising market for smart toy producers. Besides, although past literature has verified the effect of product innovativeness, consumer innovativeness, and perceived value on consumers’ purchase and adoption intention, the relationships among them still need more study. This research explores the mechanism of how consumer innovativeness leads to consumers’ willingness to pay via perceived product innovation and perceived value. Data analysis based on surveys of 399 Chinese people reveals that perceived product innovation and consumer innovativeness contribute to the willingness to pay. Subsequently, perceived social value, one of the dimensions of perceived value, mediates the path between perceived product innovation, and willingness to pay. Next, as the level of consumer innovativeness increases, the effect of perceived product innovation on social value becomes strong. Furthermore, perceived product innovativeness and perceived social value mediate the path between consumer innovativeness and consumers’ willingness to pay. This study provides suggestions for researchers and practitioners.