Each year, millions of user inventors spend billions of dollars creating innovations for their own use and to satisfy their own needs. Many user entrepreneurs also commercialize their user innovations to the mass market to benefit others and generate financial return. However, because user innovations are inherently self-focused, they often fail to achieve adoption in the mass market, leading to significant social welfare losses. Extant research suggests deploying customer-focused design modifications to improve the diffusion of user innovations. As an alternative to this customer-focused perspective, the authors propose a novel communication strategy that evokes adopters’ creativity to increase adoption. In particular, presenting user innovations’ self-focused goals and related key attributes in a sequence that mismatches adopters’ default innovation learning sequences can evoke adopters’ creative thinking regarding the self-relevance of the user innovations, and in turn enhances adoption. Furthermore, deploying self-focused, user inventor solo (vs. customer-focused, open customer participation) enhancement strategy sustains (vs. attenuates) the proposed effects.
3917 8343
KK 710
- PhD Purdue
- BBA CUHK
Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim is Stelux Professor in Marketing at the HKU Business School and Director of Undergraduate Admissions and International Student Exchange, The University of Hong Kong. He received his BBA in Marketing from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and his Ph.D. in Management (Marketing and Econometric) from the Krannert Graduate School of Management, Purdue University.
Prof. Yim has diverse research interests spanning the areas of services marketing, marketing strategy and China marketing, and consumer brand choice and purchase behaviour modelling. Equally diverse are his research approaches that range from empirical modelling to consumer/executive survey, laboratory/field experiments, and netnogbraphy. He is widely recognised for his work assessing consumer price and promotion expectations, developing breakthrough innovations, strengthening customer loyalty, and managing customer participation in services. His research publications have appeared in premier journals such as the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, and Journal of International Business Studies and he has presented many papers in conferences in Asia, the United States and Europe. His research has received multiple research awards that include:
- 2011 Award for the Best Services Marketing Article Published in 2010, AMA Services Marketing Special Interest Group (with Kimmy Chan and Simon Lam)
- University Research Output Prize 2008-2009, University of Hong Kong (with Kimmy Chan and David Tse)
- 2007 AMA Summer Marketing Educators’ Conference, Best Paper Award, Services Track (with Kimmy Chan and David Tse)
- University Research Output Prize 2005-2006, University of Hong Kong (with David Tse and Kevin Zhou)
- Finalist for the 1995 Journal of Marketing Research William F. O’Dell Award(with Manohar Kalwani, Heikki Rinne, and Yoshi Sugita)
Prof. Yim is also an experienced teacher with over 25 years of teaching in undergraduate, MBA and Executive Development programs at The University of Hong Kong, Thunderbird School of Global Management, Rice University, and Purdue University. He has received multiple teaching awards that include:
- IMBA Teaching Award, The University of Hong Kong and Fudan University 2010-2011
- University Outstanding Teacher Award, The University of Hong Kong 2010
- Undergraduate Teaching Awards, Faculty of Business and Economics (now HKU Business School), 2005 – 2006
- Best MBA Teacher (Honorable Mention), Faculty of Business and Economics (now HKU Business School), 1999 – 2000
- Award for Excellence in Teaching, Jones Graduate School, Rice University 1992-1993
- Strategic Marketing Management
- Services Marketing and Management
- Services marketing and management
- China marketing and marketing strategy
- Consumer brand choice and purchase behavior modeling
- Zou, Lili Wenli and Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim (2025), “Customer Traffic and Customer Experience: Creating a Contrived Similarity to Address the Crowding Dilemma”, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 42(1), 133-152.
- Wang, Si Helen and Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim (2024), “Shifting Perspectives: How Communicating User Innovations’ Self-Focus Enhances Adoption?” Published online: 30 November 2024 in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
- Zou, Lili Wenli, Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim, and Kimmy Wa Chan (2022), “How Firms Can Create Delightful Customer Experience? Contrasting Roles of Future Reward Uncertainty,” Journal of Business Research, 147 (August), 477-490.
- Tse, Caleb H., Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim, Eden Yin, Feng Wan, and Hao Jiao (2021), “R&D Activities and Innovation Performance of MNE Subsidiaries: The Moderating Effects of Government Support and Entry Mode,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 166 (May), 120603.
- Leung, Fine F., Tse, Caleb H. and Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim (2020), “Engaging Customer Cocreation in New Product Development Through Foreign Subsidiaries: Influences of Multinational Corporations’ Global Integration and Local Adaptation Mechanisms,” Journal of International Marketing, 28 (2), 59-80.
- Chan, Kimmy Wa, Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim, and Taeshik Gong (2019), “An Investigation of Nonbeneficiary Reactions to Discretionary Preferential Treatments,” Journal of Service Research, 22 (4), 371-387.
- Wang, Si Helen and Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim (2019), “Effects of Dominance Transitions on Advice Adherence in Professional Service Conversations,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 47 (5), 919-938.
- Wang, Danny T., Flora F. Gu, David K. Tse, and Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim (2013), “When Does FDI Matter? The Roles of Local Institutions and Ethnic Origins of FDI,” International Business Review, 22 (April), 450-465.
- Yim, Chi Kin (Bennett), Kimmy Wa Chan, and Simon S.K. Lam (2012), “Do Customers and Employees Enjoy Service Participation? Synergic Effects of Self- and Other-Efficacy,” Journal of Marketing, 76 (November), 121-140.
- Chan, Kimmy W., Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim, and Simon S.K. Lam (2010), “Is Customer Participation in Value Creation a Double-Edged Sword? Evidence from Professional Financial Services Across Cultures,” Journal of Marketing, 74 (May), 48-64.
- Yim, Chi Kin (Bennett), David K. Tse, and Kimmy Wa Chan (2008), “Strengthening Customer Loyalty through Intimacy and Passion: Roles of Customer-Firm Affection and Customer-Staff Relations in Services,” Journal of Marketing Research, 45 (December), 741-756.
- Hung, Kineta H.K., Flora Fang Gu, and Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim (2007), “A Social Institutional Approach to Identifying Generation Cohorts in China with a Comparison with American Consumers,” Journal of International Business Studies, 38 (5), 836-853.
- Gao, Gerald Yong, Kevin Zheng Zhou, and Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim (2007), “On What Should Firms Focus in Transitional Economies? A Study of the Contingent Value of Strategic Orientations in China,” International Journal of Research in Marketing, 24 (1), 3-16.
- Yim, Chi Kin (Bennett), Kimmy Wa Chan, and Kineta Hung (2007), “Multiple Reference Effects in Service Evaluations: Roles of Alternative Attractiveness and Self-Image Congruity,” Journal of Retailing, 83 (1), 147-157.