Buffer or Backfire? How Innovation Claims Made Prior to Product Failures Affect Consumer Forgiveness Following Those Failures

<p dir="ltr">Product failures are an inherent risk in innovation, often leading to negative consumer responses. However, recent instances involving companies like Tesla and Apple reveal that consumers may exhibit forgiveness toward firms following innovation failures, even in the absence of significant post-crisis interventions. This phenomenon shifts attention to the role of pre-failure marketing communications. Firms increasingly deploy promotional messages to highlight product novelty and technological advancement. While such innovation claims are intended to signal product superiority to drive business success, their impact on consumer responses in the event of product failure remains underexplored. Given the high failure rates of innovative products and growing scholarly calls to examine how pre-failure factors shape post-failure consumer reactions, it is important to understand the role of pre-failure innovation claims in shaping consumer responses. This thesis examines whether pre-failure innovation claims can serve as buffers that influence consumer forgiveness and what psychological mechanisms underlying such effects.</p><p dir="ltr">Three studies were conducted to explore this question. Studies 1 and 2 employed experimental methods to examine consumer responses, while Study 3 adopted a mixed-method approach (choice-based decision task and open-ended responses) triangulate findings from marketing managers’ perspectives. Study 1 tested whether having an innovation claim (even at an incremental level), compared to no claims on innovativeness, could increase consumer forgiveness following a failure event. The results supported this main effect, revealed that it was mediated by enhanced positive motions, and ruled out increased perceived firm effort as the alternative explanation. Study 2 tested which type of innovation claims (incremental vs. radical) made prior to innovation failures would work better in gaining consumer forgiveness following those failures. Competing hypotheses suggested that radical claims might either increase forgiveness by generating stronger positive emotions or decrease forgiveness by undermining information authenticity and brand trust. The results supported the latter: compared to incremental claims, radical claims lowered forgiveness by reducing information authenticity and brand trust. Study 3 examined whether marketing managers’ intuitions align with consumer responses. Results showed that most managers judged incremental claims as more effective in eliciting forgiveness, which was aligned with our findings of consumer responses. Managers’ reasoning echoed the trust-based mechanism found in Study 2, offering external validation and suggesting consistent interpretation across consumer and managerial perspectives.</p><p dir="ltr">The findings demonstrate that innovation claims, especially framed through an incremental approach, can serve as a protective factor in pre-failure communication by mitigating damages on firms. This research extends signaling theory by identifying pre-crisis innovation claims as influential cues that shape consumer judgment via emotional and trust-based mechanisms, and it contributes to advertising ethics by highlighting the risks of overstatement in innovation messaging.</p>