Emergent Nature

What it measures

An eight-item scale measuring a consumer's capacity to envision how nascent product or service ideas could be developed and applied in real-world contexts. Items assess the ability to mentally elaborate on incomplete ideas, visualise how new concepts would fit into everyday life, fill in missing details, project how products could serve future needs, experiment with novel ideas, identify patterns in complexity, and imagine product improvements. The construct — termed 'emergent nature' — reflects a combination of creative and analytical processing abilities that distinguish consumers particularly well-suited to generating and evaluating new product concepts in co-creation contexts.

Representative items

• When I hear about a new product or service idea, it is easy to imagine how it might be developed into an actual product.
• I like to find patterns in complexity.
• I like to experiment with new ideas for how to use products and services.

Citation

Hoffman, Donna L., Praveen K. Kopalle, and Thomas P. Novak (2010). The 'right' consumers for better concepts: Identifying consumers high in emergent nature to develop new product concepts. Journal of Marketing Research, 47(5), 854–865.