Consumer in the innovation economy: sociocultural aspects of formation and functioning

• Main Author: Nataliya Nikolaevna Malakhova
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Russian Academy of Sciences, Vologda Research Center 2015-01-01
• Series: Economic and Social Changes: Facts, Trends, Forecast
• Subjects: innovation economy; innovative personality; innovative consumption; consumer innovativeness; consumption standards
• Online Access: http://esc.vscc.ac.ru/article/614/full?_lang=en

The functioning of the innovation economy presents the society with a number of social and cultural issues. One of them concerns the formation of an innovative personality, which is regarded by the majority of researchers as a personality open to experiments, innovation and change, a personality that has creative skills and is able not only to create but also to commercialize new scientific and technological developments, that is, a personality capable of producing innovation in the first place. Meanwhile, of equal importance for the functioning of the innovation economy is a personality that is ready to use innovative goods and services; that is why many countries carry out the research into the innovativeness of producers and consumers . The research findings help identify a group of innovator consumers, which is a key group for producers. Analyzing the innovator consumers’ behavior in the market provides an opportunity to define their inherent personal qualities and to formulate their standard of consumption, the main characteristics of which are the absolutization of the value of the new, positive attitude to risk, dominance of the emotional component in consumption to the detriment of the rational component. Modern manufacturers follow the path of modeling and further targeted promotion of consumption standards to ensure stable and predictable demand for their products; therefore, it is logical to assume that the innovators’ consumption standard that meets the interests of innovative products’ manufacturers will be actively promoted in society through the purposeful change of individual and collective psychology. The article forecasts the directions of such change and analyses its possible negative consequences both for society in general and for innovation economy in particular