L’impact de l’incongruence d’un produit culturel nouveau sur l’acceptabilité d’une innovation artistique : un cadre théorique

In this research, we agree with the definition of artistic innovation as a new product/service (or a new feature of a product/service) that breaks existing artistic conventions. As a result, artistic innovations can be perceived as incongruous by consumers. Congruence/incongruence expresses a correspondence or a non-correspondence between two entities, which can be an object and the schema that it evokes (Meyers-Levy and Tybout, 1989) and/or two or more elements contained in an object (Mandler 1982). On the other hand, a perception of incongruence may elicit a feeling of dissonance in people, relying on the theory of cognitive dissonance. This defines it like the negative affective state caused by a several cognitive elements (beliefs, attitudes, behaviors ...) that are mutually inconsistent (Festinger, 1957). In the first part, the theoretical framework proposes to study the interaction of the two dimensions of incongruence (expectations and relevance) on the two dimensions of artistic innovation (form and content). In a second part, the article suggests that this incongruence causes a feeling of dissonance, defined as the negative affective state on consumers, which, as a mediating variable, can have an effect on the acceptability of an artistic innovation.