The role of the social-identity function of attitudes in consumer innovativeness and opinion leadership

Attitudes serving the social-identity function relate nonsocial objects (e. g., products) to social objects (e.g., people). As new products tend to be more exciting than old, familiar products, the authors suggest that these a ttitudes influence innovativeness and opinion leadership. Based on recent r esearch on attitude functions and adoption of consumer innovations, this re search examines the relationship between the social-identity function, inno vativeness, and opinion leadership, in addition to expertise and involvemen t; the two traditional antecedents of innovativeness and opinion leadership . The results across two product categories show that social-identity funct ion exerts a strong impact on innovativeness and opinion leadership. (C) 20 00 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PsycINFO classification: 3120 ; 3920; 3940 JEL classification: D11; D12.