When exposed to advertisements, consumers are often suspicious of brand claims. To that end, prior research has explored how individuals evaluate claims to form a judgement under a state of suspicion. Yet, consumer research has not examined how suspicion affects consumers' suspension of their judgement towards the brand. We experimentally investigate the effects of three (low vs. moderate vs. high) levels of consumer suspicion on judgement suspension. Study 1 shows that compared with low or high levels, moderate levels of suspicion lead to significantly higher judgement suspension. Studies 2 and 3 replicate this inverted U-shaped effect for additional brand and product category contexts and unveil that uncertainty towards the brand mediates the effect of suspicion on judgement suspension. In turn, the impact of uncertainty towards the brand on judgement suspension is mediated by product imagery. This research corroborates the effects of suspicion on consumer judgement suspension.@en

In certain sectors (e.g., consumer electronics), products are developed as part of successive product transitions where the new generation of the product replaces its predecessor. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first that takes a marketing perspective to examine the drivers and performance outcomes of a firm’s decision to determine generational product innovativeness (GPI). Empirical results from 201 generational product transitions in the UK show that a) market and technology sensing capabilities positively influence GPI, and b) GPI has an inverted U-shaped impact on generational product performance. The results contribute to the product innovation literature, which sparsely studied generational product transitions. The paper also provides managerial implications on how firms can enjoy superior generational product performance by leveraging outside-in capabilities and optimally managing GPI.@en