Residential mobility boosts new product adoption

Abstract A major challenge in new product development is how to increase consumers' adoption of new offerings. Using the socio‐ecological perspective, we reveal a largely ignored but important social factor that alters consumers' new product adoption. Specifically, we propose that residential mobility—the frequency with which individuals change their residence—acts as an antecedent of new product adoption. Six studies—using different operationalizations of residential mobility—provide convergent evidence that residential mobility (vs. stability) augments new product adoption in both laboratory settings and real business settings. This effect is driven by openness to new experiences and moderated by the voluntariness of moving. Our findings add to the literature on new product adoption and residential mobility. Moreover, marketers should take residential mobility into full consideration when designing marketing strategies for new products and presenting contextual cues to activate consumers' residential mobility mindset to enhance their acceptance of new products.