Retailers’ Resistance Towards Radical Innovations in the Baby Nutrition Market—An Empirical Study: An Abstract

Commercial companies have to be innovative to remain competitive and to grow economically (Aaker 2007). However most of them still have to deal with high rates of innovation failures (Moore 2002). An important aspect when introducing an innovative product is the intermediary—the retailing industry. Before trying to persuade consumers into buying new products, the communication focus has to be on retail as partner and convincing the management of integrating the products into their portfolio. The threat of rejection by the customers and the considerable risk of financial losses can lead to a negative attitude which is called resistance in scientific discourse (e.g. Garcia et al. 2007; Bagozzi and Lee 1999; Ram 1987). In retailing, innovations can be distinguished by the following four characteristics, which are fulfilled by frozen baby food in the German market: Changes in the relationship between providers and consumers, changes in economic surroundings in the market, development of new product categories, and replacement of established products (Leifer et al. 2000). Our main goal is to identify barriers towards innovative products in the industry and to develop strategies to overcome those barriers. As our study object (frozen baby food) is new to the German market and questions all of the dominant paradigms of the regular baby food buyer, reactions of resistance grant a deeper insight into the mechanisms of innovation adoption in the market chain.

We conducted an empirical qualitative study to broaden the understanding of resistance in retailing with 14 semi-standardized in-depth expert interviews (Kvale 2007). We spoke with two purchasing agents of drugstore companies, one purchasing agent and one branch manager in the organic food retailing industry, seven purchasing agents, and one branch manager in regular food retailing as well as one purchasing agent and one branch manager of German discounters. The participants are qualified as experts as they possess inside knowledge from their working experience in retailing and can serve as a proxy for a multitude of deciders in the retailing industry (Bogner et al. 2005). The interviews were mainly centered on the topics retailing and marketing, innovations and frozen baby food. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. The data was evaluated using qualitative content analysis and inductive coding to structure the high complexity and specificity of individual statements and generalize the findings (Miles and Hubermann 1994).

Our results reveal that sources for resistance and thus barriers to innovations can occur: (1) individual-related and (2) company-related. Individual-related barriers arise from a psychological level as well as from a functional level whereas company-related barriers seem to have a major impact on the evolution from an idea to an innovation. Our findings help managers foresee potential sources of resistance and deploy preventive measures.