The relationship between new product creativity components and purchase intention and the mediating impact of perceived values: a study of consumers in Ho Chi Minh city

Abstract This study aims to extend creativity literature based on consumers’ perspective by examining empirically the effects of new product creativity dimensions of novelty and meaningfulness on consumers’ purchase intention with the mediating roles of perceived values, consisting of perceived hedonic value and perceived utilitarian value. Data were collected via an online approach due to the lockdown in Ho Chi Minh City. Based on testing hypotheses by using structural equation modeling and a sample that included 221 respondents, the results indicate that novelty and meaningfulness do not affect consumers’ purchase intentions directly. Instead, novelty affects indirectly consumers’ purchase intention through impacting perceived hedonic value, while meaningfulness influences perceived utilitarian value which in turn, affects consumers’ purchase intentions. These results offer crucial guidelines for firms and managers to develop new products and promotional strategies more efficiently. Finally, managerial implications and directions for future study are presented based on the findings.


Introduction
A more competitive market with the increased globalization of product trading business and the establishment of plenty of start-ups requires firms have to develop a clear strategy in order to sustain and increase their market share. Moreover, given relatively short product life circles recently, developing the new product is also considered as the lifeblood of companies competing in markets (Kim et al., 2013). The firm performance will be maintained by the firm's new products, and new products can play a crucial role in contributing to the firm's growing sales and profitability (Chang et al., 2014). Therefore, a firm can achieve a competitive advantage if its product and ABOUT THE AUTHORS Tho Phuoc Vo is a postgraduate of University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Mai Dong Tran is Senior Lecturer in the School of International Business and Marketing, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he teaches international business and international marketing. His current research interests include marketing, education management, and leadership. His research has been published in Education and Training, Asia Pacific Journal of Business Administration, Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, among others. Thi Minh Chau Ly is lecturer in International school business, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City. Her current research interest is on Education Management, Organizational Behavior service offerings meet customer's demands than those of its business rivals (KKim et al., 2013). One of the most emerging strategies adopted by companies is focusing on new product creativity (NPC; Galunic & Eisenhardt, 2001), thereby providing more customer value and improving firm performance. According to Im and Workman (2004), NPC is defined as the degree to which new product is view as representing unique differences from rival's product in ways that are meaningful to target customers. Likewise, Runco and Jaeger (2012) states that originality, which is usually labeled novelty, is crucial for creativity but is not sufficient. Original products must be effective to be creative.
In the extant literature, there are many studies related to NPC (Im & Workman, 2004;Kim et al., 2013;Chang et al., 2014;Nakata et al., 2018), however, these studies examined NPC from firms'/ managers' perspectives. Specifically, NPC was investigated from subjective assessment of managers, judging the impact of NPC on new product performance and customer satisfaction. It is quite unsuitable because new creative products are designed and introduced to eventually draw customer's attention and make them purchase these products. The view of customers cannot be represented by the managers' view. Especially, in the research by Im and Workman (2004), the correlation value between the point of view of customers and managers was 0.49 which means that they are not similar to each other. Managers have a tendency to focus on attributes and features of the new products and the competitive advantage received from them, while customers are attracted by the way in which those features can meet their requirements in lieu of the creative attributes or features per se (Im et al., 2015). Therefore, the customers' assessment of NPC is important and worthy of investigation.
A great number of companies significantly invest their resources into researching and developing their new products but are still struggling to produce successful creative products. According to Dabrowski (2019), a large number of firms' resources, 12% of sales, are invested in new product development. However, in contrast to the expectations of managers, plenty of launched products in the marketplace fail to draw the attention of customers, resulting in the success rate for those products being relatively low. In the study by ; in O' Quin and Besemer (2006)), the percentage of a new failed product vary widely, ranging from 35-45% of launched products, and that of is approximately 39%, according to Product Development and Management Association's survey (Dabrowski, 2019). Thus, why do some new products with creative features are unsuccessful in attracting consumers while others succeed? There are many answers to this question but one of them is in the decisions of customers related to accepting or rejecting new products. Unexpectedly, most of the extant studies investigate NPC and its effect on new product success based on managers' perspectives and tremendously neglect the customers' perspective (Im et al., 2015). Besides, customer perceptions about creativity are based on the relationship between the product, the customer, and the context (Kasof, 1995). Customers from different contexts consider creativity differently (Xu, 2020). It means that people living in different cultures, social norms, and standards of living have a distinct perception about new product creativity.
Extant studies representing customers' views about the effect of NPC on purchase intention are inconsistent in the results. To be more specific, in the study by Xu (2020), the result shows that while meaningfulness has a significant positive direct impact on the purchase intention of consumers, novelty only has a positive effect on purchase intention with mediating role of meaningfulness. However, in the study by Rubera et al. (2011), meaningfulness and novelty have a direct impact on consumers' purchase intention in both countries the US and Italy. Furthermore, in the study by Im et al. (2015), perceived values play mediating roles in the relationship between novelty and meaningfulness and attitude toward product, and in some studies (Gan & Wang, 2017;Lin & Lu, 2015;C. M. Chiu et al., 2012), the results state that perceived value has a positive impact on purchase intention. Thus, this research aims to focus on customers' assessment and perspective to explain the relationship between NPC dimensions (novelty and meaningfulness) and their outcomes, consisting of perceived value (perceived hedonic value and perceived utilitarian value) and purchase intention of consumers living in HCMC.

New product creativity
According to Rubera et al. (2010), creativity was investigated firstly by psychology scholars through investigating creativity in poems, music, and drawings. There was a consistency that creativity consists of two main factors: novelty and appropriateness. Then, this psychological perspective of creativity was significantly borrowed by marketing researchers, positing that novelty and appropriateness are key components impacting product creativity (Im & Workman, 2004). Creativity has been defined by a great number of authors' perspectives. For instance, it has been considered as divergent thinking (Dollinger et al., 2004), a capacity to find out unknown problems (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988), a combination of novelty and usefulness (Amabile, 1983), and an appearance of uncommon ideas through experimentation (Jones et al., 2016). Furthermore, in the creativity study stream, it is consistent that the generation of novel and useful ideas and products represents creativity (Mumford, 2003). In addition, creativity is occasionally defined as a sociopsychological phenomenon generated by the interaction of personal characteristics of creators with their culture and environment. In this sense, at a personal level, creativity is related to one's imagination which is formed by daily interaction between creator and social context: immediacy, history, culture, and ideology (Walia, 2019).
Creativity is also defined differently in a variety of circumstances and domains. For instance, in the tourism context, creativity is defined as something novel, interesting, original, and demanding exceptional skill. The author also found that after tasting creative dishes, customers are highly inspired (Tan et al., 2014). In other words, in the restaurant industry context, specifically, physical dining environment design, creativity consists of different factors, such as novelty, centrality, importance, affect, resolution and interactivity. Among them, novelty is regarded as the most crucial factor and draws the largest attention of restaurant designers, managers, and owners.
In the study by Horn and Salvendy (2006), product creativity is defined as the subjective evaluation of a product presenting appropriateness and novelty which generate arousal and pleasure and is consistent with the evaluator's preferences. To be more specific, a creative product is considered as a product showing some degree of novelty and appropriateness. Moreover, the product is evaluated as creative when an evaluator interacts with the product and receives some arousal and pleasure experiences. Lastly, the creative product must match the preferences of evaluators. On the other hand, NPC is defined as the extends to which a product is novel, and its establishment impacts and changes the conventional market point of view and practice. It refers to the degree to which a new product provides creative ideas for other products, stimulates new thinking, as well as challenges current ideas for product type in the market (Akgün et al., 2008).
NPC takes advantage of creative ideas during the process of developing a new product. It refers to the degree to which the product is distinct from other competing products in the marketplace and receives an appreciation from customers. NPC focuses on the production of novel products that is likely to deliver more new experience and value to customers. The reason is that NPC can address the situation of capability rigidity paradox, particularly for the product's internal improvement in terms of function. Moreover, given the upgrade in internal product quality capability, customers' perspective related to the product's function and performance is likely to change positively. Thus, NPC enhances both internal product quality through the improvement in its function and external product quality (Tu, 2010).
NPC is an equivalent new product advantage. Specifically, a new product advantage is a manifestation of a new product's ability in terms of meeting customers' demands, improving technical performance, distinctive or unusual attributes, and superior quality (Huang, 2020). Furthermore, the degree of creativity is able to deliver additional value for consumers and increase the percentage of purchasing . Congruent with Amabile (1983) and Im and Workman (2004) about a definition of NPC construct, which is widely adopted because of the most up-to-date and the extensive evaluation regarded to the construct (Bicen et al., 2014), this research adopts the "output viewpoint" of creativity, which emphasizes two distinct components of NPC: the unique difference (i.e., the novelty component) and the meaningfulness to potential customers (i.e., the meaningfulness component). In this sense, Amabile (1983) also affirms that the novelty component must pertain to the meaningfulness component to generate creativity since if ideas are solely unique or novel and convey no meaning, prospective customers may evaluate them as strange or odd. Hence, in the current study, two different components constituting NPC are new product novelty and new product meaningfulness. New product novelty is defined as the extent to which new products are evaluated as showing unique differences from other existing products. Furthermore, new product meaningfulness is defined as the degree to which new products are evaluated as useful and appropriate to prospective customers (Im & Workman, 2004)

Perceived value
Several scholars believe that perceived value, regarding performance (quality) and price, is conceptualized as a trade-off between benefits and sacrifices (Sánchez-Fernández & Iniesta-Sánchez-Fernández & Iniesta-Bonillo, 2007). Moreover, some authors proposed that perceived value should be considered as the uni-dimensional construct which is conceived with a utilitarian viewpoint (Zeithaml, 1988;Woodruff, 1997). In the research by Zeithaml (1988), the author gathered definitions and proposed the comprehensive definition: perceived value is the general evaluation of the customer of the product's utility depended on the awareness of what is gained and what is given.
Despite the advantage of the simplicity of the perceived value's definition as the uni-dimensional construct, it does not present the complication of customers' perceptions related to value. To be more precise, the uni-dimension construct is unsuccessful in taking into consideration of various intangible, intrinsic, and emotional aspects which also impact the perception of a customer. Perceived value should be evaluated as a multidimensional construct. In particular, perceived value is necessarily conceptualized as incorporation between a cognitive dimension and an affective dimension. This is because consumer also generates subjective or emotional reactions in and after consumption like the hedonic value in the experiences of purchasing and consuming in entertainment, religious, aesthetic and creative events (Sánchez et al., 2006). Thus, in the present study, perceived value is represented by the utilitarian value and the hedonic value. When customers look at a new product and investigate its creativity, consisting of meaningfulness aspect and novelty aspect, the evaluation is expected to impact how they value it in terms of functional value and affective value (Im et al., 2015).

Utilitarian value
A great number of researchers divide customer perceived value into two distinct components: utilitarian value and hedonic value (H. C. Chiu et al., 2005). To be more particular, utilitarian value refers to the overall assessment of the customer on the functional benefits and costs in obtaining his/her particular target (Lin & Lu, 2015). Moreover, utilitarian value arises from planned pursuing the intentional consequence. It is basically instrumental, useful, and cognitive, and the utilitarian value delivers customer value by being a means to an end. For example, it can be shown through monetary savings, convenience and product quality (Chandon et al., 2000). The utilitarian value is believed as an incentive for market choices and customer preferences (H. C. Chiu et al., 2005).

Hedonic value
By contrast, hedonic value refers to the overall assessment of the customer on the experiential benefits and costs. It relates to affective, such as delight, enjoyment and aspiration perceived by a customer during his/her product and service usage (Lin & Lu, 2015). In addition, hedonic value is defined as a result linked to unconscious responses that are more individual and subjective. Particularly, entertainment, exploration and self-expression are considered as the hedonic value which is caused more by delight and pleasure than by task completion and have a disposition to be non-instrumental, experiential, aesthetic and affective (H. C. Chiu et al., 2005). For instance, in the mobile phone context, the battery life and sound volume of a cell phone are regarded as utilitarian value while aesthetic attraction derived from shape and color is regarded as a hedonic value. Likewise, in the circumstance of a car, utilitarian value is presented by fuel-saving and safety while hedonic value is showed by the sunroof and the deluxe interior (Chitturi et al., 2008).

Purchase intention
Purchase intention is conceptualized as an individual and deliberate effort to purchase a brand and an expression of the customer's purchase plan. The purchase intention is significantly related to the consumers' purchase behavior. Particularly, it is considered as a possible variable that has a positive impact and predicts customers' purchase behavior (Chae et al., 2020). Likewise, the extant study has posited that the higher in purchase intention, the higher willingness in purchasing a product or service. If someone has a positive purchase intention, after that, a positive brand engagement will motivate consumption behavior (Martins et al., 2019).
In other words, purchase intention is evaluated from two different perspectives: as an inclination to repurchase a specific product and as a possibility that the customer selects a specific product. The first situation is relevant to the post-purchase behavior of the existing purchaser while the latter situation is relevant to a general customer favorite in terms of whether the customer realizes that the product or brand fulfills his/her demands, preferences and expectations (Bianchi et al., 2019). The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is evaluated as one of the most crucial social psychological theories to predict individual intention and behavior (Sreen et al., 2018). Ajzen (1991) posits that TPB is better than other psychological models in predicting personal behavior related to an individual's control. TPB is the theory extended from the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) because of the significant restriction of the previous theory in coping with behaviors that individuals do not have complete volitional control. TRA asserted that the behavioral intention of a person is created by the combination of his or her favorable attitude towards a product and subjective norms. Conversely, TPB gives a more precise explanation of a behavioral model, whereby if an individual controls a certain behavior, he or she is expected to carry out the behavior. In particular, an individual is predicted to perform a specific behavior after an individual has a positive attitude and subjective norm, along with perceived behavioral control and intention. Moreover, this theory takes into consideration both personal and social aspects. While attitude related to behavior and perceived behavioral control (PBC) are regarded as the personal aspects, the subjective norm is represented as a social aspect. In comparison with TRA, TPB has included a PBC concept that combines with attitude and subjective norms to predict a behavioral intention. TPB affirms that if a person has a favorable attitude related to a certain behavior, social approval for that behavior and more actual control to carry out that behavior, the probability of conducting that behavior increases (Ajzen, 1991).

Subjective norm
Subjective norms refer to the personal perception of social effects/pressures positioned on his or her to perform the given behavior. Subjective norm is evaluated to be a social aspect in nature. Moreover, Subjective norm is a result of normative belief and motivation to comply. To be more particular, normative belief is considered as a personal perception in terms of how other people would like one to behave in a specific circumstance while motivation to comply is considered as the personal yearn to conform to the opinion of notable others (Ajzen, 1991).

Perceived behavioral control
PBC is defined as the "perceived ease or difficulty of performing a behavior" by Ajzen (1991). Moreover, PBC is a result of control belief and perceived power. Precisely, control belief is regarded as a belief of the person in respect of the existence of certain factors (opportunity, money and time) while perceived power is considered as an individual assessment of the influence of these factors in encouraging or preventing the specific behavior. On the other hand, according to Sreen et al. (2018), PBC consists of internal and external PBC. Those people, who have high internal PBC, show that they possess more control towards the internal human resources, such as necessary skills, confidence, planning and ability needed to carry out a specific behavior. External PBC presents a personal perception in terms of his or her ability to address external limitations, such as money, time and opportunity requiring to carry out a specific behavior.

Attitude
Attitude is considered as a personal positive or negative assessment of the performance of the specific behavior. Attitude derives from behavioral beliefs and outcome evaluation. In particular, behavioral belief is regarded as the personal belief in terms of the results of engaging in a specific behavior while outcome evaluation is defined as the favorable or unfavorable assessment related to the consequences of the given behavior (Ajzen, 1991). Furthermore, attitude is also identified as the psychological path which generates favor or disfavor of a person with regard to a particular object (Sreen et al., 2018). In other words, Lang and Joyner Armstrong (2018) affirms that a personal attitude related to carrying out a particular behavior is regarded as the belief that carrying the behavior will bring on specific results. TPB indicates that the more favorable attitude related to a specific behavior, the more willing a person is to carry out the behavior (Ajzen, 1991).

New product creativity and purchase intention
According to the Howard-Sheth model, there are plenty of factors affecting customers' purchase intention. Among them, consumer perceptions are considered as the most dominant factors which have direct and significant effects on purchase intention, besides indirect influences through several mediating constructs like motivations, customers' attitude and brand comprehension (Farley & Ring, 1970). This study will focus on NPC dimensions, consisting of novelty and meaningfulness, and how perceptions of these dimensions are able to impact customers' purchase intention. In respect to TPB (Ajzen, 1985), an individual's attitude (positive or negative assessment), subjective norms (social pressure) and perceived behavioral control (i.e. the behavior seems to be easy or difficult to perform) determine his/her intentions and behaviors.
Moreover, Rubera et al. (2011) posits that customers' evaluation of NPC is dependent on the relationship between the context, the product and the customer. Practically, the effect of consumer's perceptions of meaningfulness and novelty on purchase intention is impacted by cultural values. To be more specific, people appreciate different aspects of a creative product in two countries the US and Italy where have distinct cultures. The result of the study indicates that customers living in Italy having high conservatism or a low self-enhancement culture focus on and appreciate meaningful attributes than those settle in the US having a low conservative or high self-enhancement culture. By contrast, those people living in the US give their priority to novel attributes of a creative product that do not draw Italian customer's attention considerably. It means that perceptions of meaningfulness and novelty components have direct influences on the purchase intention of customers, yet having significant differences in degree in different contexts.
On the other hand, Xu (2020) discovered that the meaningfulness component of NPC impacts considerably and directly on purchase intention of customers, who are the student of the university in the southwestern USA, but the novelty component of NPC does not have a direct influence on purchase intention. To explain this phenomenon, Xu (2020) argued that customers become more wise and utilitarian to choose and purchase new creative products. If the product is not useful and does not address their specific issues, they will not interest in the product regardless of product uniqueness. The product's novel tangible and intangible features will only be examined after customers perceive the usefulness of the product. This point of view is different from the result of the previous study (Rubera et al., 2011), especially, in the US context. However, besides the study by Rubera et al. (2011), several previous studies also reported evidence that novelty has a direct effect on customers' purchase intention. For instance, Olsen et al. (2021) indicated that perceived uniqueness considerably impacts future intention to purchase and taste traditional food products. This is because the unique features in traditional food products can distinguish them from non-traditional or ordinary food, leading to gaining high-class value and meeting the demand of seeking unique and extraordinary foods. Therefore, unique attributes can enhance the intention to consume traditional food products. Furthermore, Dehghani and Kim (2019) discovered that user behavior and the potential purchase intention of customers are affected by the uniqueness of smartwatches. To be more specific, those customers who have never possessed smartwatches before indicate that they consider the uniqueness of smartwatches as a reliable signal to deliver hedonic value and shape their intention to own new smartwatches.
It implies that the result of the influence of customers' perceptions of novelty and meaningfulness on customers' purchase intention is inconsistent, requiring more empirical evidence to achieve insights into these relationships. Therefore, the current study will propose and analyze the hypotheses:

New product creativity and perceived values
According to Rubera et al. (2010), meaningfulness is relevant to the capability of the product in addressing an issue, meeting the requirement of a specific circumstance and obtaining the predictable goal. The assessment of meaningfulness normally demands more considerable cognitive endeavor to investigate whether the product can resolve the specific issues. Moreover, utilitarian value is represented by the functional and practical benefits of the product. Therefore, the assessment of meaningfulness is more likely to relate to the customers' investigation of utilitarian value (Im et al., 2015).
In other words, novelty refers to the uniqueness and difference of the product from other conventional products in terms of appearances and qualities. A favorable response can be created when customers are exposed to novel stimuli. Furthermore, hedonic value emphasizes aesthetic and experiential benefits related to the product (Rubera et al., 2010). Besides, Cheng and Lu (2013) demonstrated that if island visitors perceive the novelty of the destination image, they will increase the hedonic level. Thus, the evaluation of the product's novelty can result in the customers' investigation of hedonic value (Im et al., 2015).
For these reasons, this study will propose and analyze the hypotheses:

Perceived values and purchase intetion
In reference to TPB (Ajzen, 1985), an individual's attitude is one of the determinant predictors of his/her intentions and behaviors. In other words, in the study by Im et al. (2015), the result indicates that perceived value of NPC, consisting of hedonic value and utilitarian value, has a positive impact on consumers' attitude. To be more specific, both perceived hedonic value and perceived utilitarian value have a positive impact on the attitude of consumers. Therefore, it is likely that perceived hedonic value and perceived utilitarian value have a positive effect on purchase intention.
According to Rubera et al. (2011), the process of the creative product's meaningfulness assessment requires considerable cognitive endeavor in order to examine whether a creative product is able to address a specific customer's problem. It means that consumers have to spend more time perceiving utilitarian value before making a decision to purchase a creative product. Furthermore, the perception of customers of the product's value has a significant effect on their attitude and decision toward purchasing a product (Zeithaml, 1988).
Many extant studies also affirm that perceived value has a positive impact on customer intentions and behaviors, especially, purchase intention. For example, in the results' study of Lin and Lu (2015), people are enticed to use mobile social networking sites by the plenty of peers, utilitarian value and hedonic value. Among them, hedonic value plays the most important role in affecting people using mobile social networking sites. It is mainly because thanks to mobile social networking sites, the hedonic value can be evoked by catching up with and sharing information promptly with others.
Furthermore, in the social commerce context, Gan and Wang (2017) discovered that customers' satisfaction and purchase intention are influenced positively and directly by social value, hedonic value and utilitarian value, of which hedonic value has the most significant effect on customers' satisfaction whereas utilitarian value is determined as the key factor impacting on purchase intention of customers. The reason for this is that during the shopping period if consumers experience delight and pleasure from the sites, they will be more gratified, which in turn stimulates the usage of the sites for shopping. Moreover, once consumers perceive simplicity, the worthiness of prices and reliability in purchasing products or services through sites, they will use these sites for consumption.
In addition, C. M. Chiu et al. (2012) investigated the experienced online customers' repeat purchase intention by hypotheses of the impact of hedonic value and utilitarian value on repeat purchase intention. The results state that the influences of hedonic value and utilitarian value on the repeat purchase intention of experienced online customers are positive and considerable, and the higher level of perceived risk is, the higher impact of hedonic value and the lower influence of utilitarian value on repeat purchase intention of online customers. To be more specific, the comparison of the path coefficients indicates that the utilitarian value has a stronger effect than the hedonic value on the repeat purchase intention of consumers. This is because experienced buyers tend to remember online shops where they can find and purchase their desired products rapidly and comfortably. The experienced buyers believe that online shopping can bring them convenience by purchasing products ubiquitously and widely, besides providing them a wide range of product selections as well as rich product information for products comparison. Moreover, online stores also drive consumer repurchase by perceiving hedonic value. The customers are likely to repurchase when online stores deliver them sensory stimulation, stress relief, role-playing, bargain-seeking, keeping up with new trends and social interaction during shopping. Therefore, utilitarian value and hedonic value are crucial predictors of experienced online customer's repurchase intention.
Thus, it is more likely that perceived value of NPC, including perceived hedonic value and perceived utilitarian value, has an impact on consumers' purchase intention. The hypotheses are developed:

Preliminary study
The preliminary study aims to adjust an initial questionnaire that consists of the original quantitative measurement scales of constructs gathered from literature reviewing. In addition, the preliminary study helps to create some new creative features of a product based on the opinions of interviewees who are living in HCMC with various ages, occupations and incomes. The pilot study is divided into two separate steps. The model presented (see Figure 1) examines the impacts of NPC novelty and NPC meaningfulness on purchase intention with the meadiating roles of perceived hedonic value and perceived utilitarian value.

Figure 2. Research model analysis results (Source: prepared by author).
In the first step, the original constructs' scales are collected and translated from English into Vietnamese by the author. Because the present study relates to product creativity, it is necessary to convince interviewees that they are joining the market research survey of the product which would be introduced in the near future. This approach is also adopted by Xu (2020) and Rubera et al. (2011). Finally, to ensure and enhance the preciseness and appropriateness of the draft questionnaire for the research goals and the HCMC context, the draft questionnaire is reviewed again by experts to fix some translation errors as well as the congruence of a product's new creative features. The fixing draft questionnaire, then, will be employed in the next step.
In the second step, the personal discussions between the author and ten interviewees take place to adjust additionally a draft questionnaire and supplement some creative features of the proposed product from the interviewees' perspectives. Precisely, the interviewees are invited to take part in the online interviews. Then, they are introduced research goals, research gaps and all the constructs related to the research. Subsequently, the interviewees are required to read the product's description before finishing the draft questionnaire. Furthermore, after completing the survey, the interviewees are encouraged to give their feedback about the extent to which they understand questions and if they have any new idea, they can propose it. After collecting feedbacks, the most crucial amendment is in the product's description section since it creates a misapprehension or the interviewees do not completely understand the description. The questionnaire is refined based on data collected and those creative features commonly recommended by the interviewees will be added in the description section of a product. Finally, the completed questionnaire is finished and it will be employed in the quantitative research.

Main study
The complete questionnaire is employed to collect data from respondents who are living in HCMC. Although the face-to-face interview is more reliable than the interview via the internet, the author primarily adopts an online survey by sending a link to the questionnaire via social media platforms and forums because of the lockdown in HCMC. At the beginning of the questionnaire, creative ideas for a new product are presented. Respondents are required to read these ideas before completing questions. The ideas of a new product are as follows:

The company has developed new six-layer packaging for product A related to fresh that is made completely from environmentally friendly materials, such as paperboard and a renewable coating made from sugarcane, which can help to protect milk from the effect of light radiation and oxygen more efficiently. Thus, this new feature can extend product life and aid environmental protection. Particularly, the packaging also includes a volume-sensitive coating that changes the color of packaging from white (when the container is full) to blue (when the container is half-full), yellow (when the container is quarter-full), and pink (when milk is expired) in order to support consumers in measuring and warning the quality and quantity of milk remaining in the container. Furthermore, there is a QR code printed on the packaging that can help consumers quickly order without visiting shops.
Data, then, were sent back and processed. To evaluate the relationships between latent variables in the structural model proposed, the Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) is adopted via using SmartPLS 3.0 software. The reason for this is that PLS-SEM is mainly employed in developing theories in an exploratory study, this technique concentrates on explaining the variance in the criterion variables when evaluating the model, particularly in the current study, the structural model is viewed to be complicated and has not been investigated in the literature.

New product creativity scale
The present study employs the NPC scales that is developed by Im and Workman (2004) Yi et al., 2021). Particularly, these scales are suitable for investigating creativity in the new product development context (Im et al., 2015).
A six-item scale adapted from Im and Workman (2004) was utilized to determine the degree of the NPC novelty. Responses are collected on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 anchored as strongly disagree to 7 anchored as strongly agree. NPC meaningfulness was measured by employing a four-item scale from Im and Workman (2004). All four observed items were a seven-point Likert type with the anchors varying from 1 as strongly disagree to 7 as strongly agree.

Perceived value scale
This study adopts the perceived value scales, including perceived hedonic value scale and perceived utilitarian value, from Voss et al. (2003). These perceived value scales were proven to be appropriate for successfully evaluating attitude with regard to product categories and brands related to those product categories.
To measure perceived hedonic value, the present study utilized Voss et al. (2003) measures, in which all five items are a seven-point Likert type scale ranging from 1 represented strongly disagree to 7 represented strongly agree. Similarly, perceived utilitarian value was measured by three observed variables from Voss et al. (2003). Both three items employ a seven-point Likert type scale, anchored from 1-strongly disagree to 7-strongly agree.

Purchase intention scale
Following Rubera et al. (2011), the present study employs a scale from Batra and Ray (1986) to evaluate the customer's purchase intention. The scale consists of 3 items and all 3 items are a seven-point Likert type scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7).

Data collection
This study adopted the convenience sampling method to find and choose target respondents. Because of the research scope and popularity of a dairy product, the selected respondents are those who are living and working in HCMC with a diversity of ages, occupations, education and qualifications, and incomes. The pilot study was held with 10 people joining to modify the questions and gain more comments regarding a product's description and content of the question. Subsequently, the official survey was conducted, due to the restriction during the period when HCMC must lockdown caused by a pandemic, a link to the online questionnaire was posted on plenty of social media channels, such as Facebook, Zalo and online forums to invite people participating in the survey.

Sample size
Overall, after eliminating inappropriate responses that are incomplete or have the same answers for all questions, there are 221 valid qualified responses and they are considered to be suitable to analyze (Hair et al., 2010(Hair et al., , 2016Tabachnick & Fidell, 2012). To be more specific, Tabachnick and Fidell (2012) proposes the simple formulation: n ≥ 50 + 8 m (where n is the sample size and m is the number of predictors) for evaluating the multiple correlations and n ≥ 104 + m for evaluating individual independent variable. In this situation, m = 2, hence the sample size should be larger than 66 and 106, respectively. Furthermore, with reference to PLS-SEM, a structural model's complexity has an insignificant impact on the sample size requirements because all the relationships in the structural model are not be computed at the same time by the algorithm. Instead, the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions are employed to estimate the model's partial regression relationships. Based on the largest number of arrows directing to a construct, the minimum R 2 and the significance level, the sample size can be determined (Hair et al., 2016). For example, in this study, the largest number of arrows pointing at a construct is 4, the minimum R 2 is 0.1 and the significance level is 0.05, so the minimum simple size is 113. Moreover, Koopman et al. (2015) indicates that sample size should be larger than 100 cases for using bootstrapping to investigate mediation effects. Table 1 shows that Among 221 respondents, there are 120 males, accounting for 54.3% while the number of females is 101, accounting for 45.7%. The overwhelming majority of respondents, which is approximately 59.7%, have ages ranging from 26 to 35. Those respondents who have income varying from 10 to under 15 million VND per month occupy the greatest percentage, 30.8%. Most of the respondents are those people who have higher education, roughly 96.4%. Moreover, a great percentage of respondents are employees who account for 74.2%. It is followed by the percentage of those who are students, self-employed and finally, homemakers, which occupy 13.6%, 11.3% and 0.9%, respectively.

Data analysis and results
This study evaluates the measurement model by assessing construct reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity. Next, the structural model is investigated. All these processes are implemented by using the SmartPLS 3.0 software.

Measurement model
Extant studies related to NPC creativity affirm that treating novelty dimension and meaningfulness dimension as two separated independent dimensions is more suitable (Im & Workman, 2004;Rubera et al., 2010). Thus, in the current study, novelty and meaningfulness will be evaluated separately instead of combining them into a single new product creativity construct.

Construct reliability
The Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability (CR) values are used to evaluate the reliability of constructs. In Table 2, Both these values are recommended to be equivalent or higher than 0.7 to be viewed as satisfactory (Hair et al., 2017). In this study, all the observed variables have outer loadings > 0.708, indicating that indicator reliability is confirmed. Moreover, all constructs also have Cronbach's alpha and CR > 0.7, confirming that construct reliability is achieved.

Convergent validity
The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) is calculated to examine convergent validity. The AVE should surpass the threshold value of 0.5 to explain more than 50% of its indicators' variance on average, achieving convergent validity (Hair et al., 2017). In Table 3, All AVE indicators of constructs range from 0.736 to 0.901, meaning that convergent validity is satisfactory. Henseler et al. (2015) recommend the criterion evaluating the heterotrait-monotrait ratio (HTMT) to examine discriminant validity. Specifically, if two constructs are fully measured (two constructs are completely reliable), the HTMT criterion is the estimation of the true correlation of them. If the HTMT value is close to 1, particularly exceeding the threshold of 0.9, it is viewed as a disattenuated correlation that demonstrates an absence of discriminant validity. In Table 4, all values are below 0.9, qualifying the constructs' discriminant validity.

Multicollinearity evaluation
Multicollinearity can occur in the structural model when redundant items are employed to measure at least two constructs. High multicollinearity can impact the results of analyses (Hair et al., 2016). In Table 5, all the VIF values of predictor constructs are below the threshold 5 (Hair et al., 2016), indicating that there is no multicollinearity phenomenon between predictor constructs.

Coefficient of determination (R 2 )
The results in the Table 6 show that all the adjusted R 2 values of dependent variables (HV, UV and PI) vary between 0.25 and 0.75. This means that the variance of all the dependent variables (HV, UV and PI) are moderately explained by their independent variables, and the amount of variance explained of HV, UV and PI are 47.8%, 68.3%, and 69.2%, respectively.

Effect size (f 2 )
The structural model includes two independent variables and three dependent variables. According to Table 7, NO has a substantive effect on HV. Similarly, ME has a substantive impact on UV. Moreover, HV has a small effect on the endogenous construct PI while UV has a substantive influence on the endogenous construct PI. By contrast, NO and ME do not affect the endogenous latent variable PI.

Predictive relevance, (Q 2 )
As can be seen from Table 8, all the Q 2 values of the three dependent constructs are significantly greater than 0. Particularly, PI has the greatest Q 2 value (0.611), followed by UV (0.541) and HV (0.343). These results indicate the predictive relevance of the model related to endogenous constructs.

Structural model path coefficients
The final structural model is presented in Figure 2. As can be seen from Table 9, NO has a negative effect on PI, β = −0.065, and the relationship is also not statistically significant with a p-value exceeding the threshold of 5%. Similarly, although ME positively and slightly impacts PI, β = 0.053, the relationship between ME and PI is not statistically significant, p = 0.464 (> 0.05). Therefore, hypotheses H1 and H2 are not supported.
On the other hand, the hypothesis NPC novelty (β = 0.691, p < 0.05) impacting on perceived hedonic value is positively and statistically significant. Likewise, the hypothesis NPC meaningfulness (β = 0.827, p < 0.05) affecting on perceived utilitarian value is positively and statistically significant. Thus, hypotheses H3 and H4 are supported.

Mediation analysis
As shown in Table 10, all indirect effects (NO → PI and ME → PI) are significant as both of the 95% confidence intervals do not consist value of 0 (Hair et al., 2016). To be more specific, the direct relationship between NO and PI is statistically nonsignificant (β = −0.065, t = 1.009, p > 0.05), while the indirect relationship from NO and PI is statistically significant (β = 0.159, t = 3.273, p < 0.05).   Thus, HV plays the role of a full mediator of the NO to PI relationship. Similarly, the direct relationship between ME and PI is weak and not statistically significant (β = 0.053, t = 0.732, p > 0.05), whilst the indirect relationship from ME and PI is statistically significant (β = 0.541, t = 8.583, p < 0.05). Therefore, it is evident that UV fully mediates the relationship between ME and PI.

Discussion
Only a few studies are concentrating on the impact of NPC on the purchase intention through customer perspective, and which components of NPC motivate customers to buy a creative product. This study mainly aims to extend the literature concerning NPC based on the perspective of end customers by examining direct effects of NPC components, novelty and meaningfulness, on customer's purchase intention, as well as indirect impacts of these components on customer purchase intention via mediating variables regarding perceived hedonic value and perceived utilitarian value. As an outcome, while the hypotheses H1 and H2 are not supported, other hypotheses H3, H4, H5 and H6 are supported.
Hypothesis H1 is rejected, indicating that the direct relationship between NPC novelty and purchase intention is not statistically significant. This result generates an inconsistency with previous findings (Olsen et al., 2021;Rubera et al., 2011). According to Olsen et al. (2021), a positive effect of perceived uniqueness on customers' purchase intention is confirmed. Particularly, uniqueness in quality and value features of traditional food products can be a determinant that differentiates traditional food products from normal or non-traditional food and increase the purchase intention of consumers. The reason for this situation can be that novel features in a product may not be appreciated by consumers because of inertia deriving from their satisfaction with current products and reluctance to change. Similarly, hypothesis H2 is not supported, showing that NPC meaningfulness does not have a direct influence on customers' purchase intention. This result is inconsistent with the conclusion of Xu (2020) and Rubera et al. (2011). In the research by Rubera et al. (2011), the impact of NPC meaningfulness on intention to buy of customers is statistically significant although the degree of effect on customers is different between two different cultural contexts. This may be because even though customers are informed about functional benefits regarding creative features, they are ambiguous and they may concern more about new product risk when they are introduced a new creative product. Therefore, they need time to experience and perceive the advantages of a new product and then make a decision.
The testing results support hypothesis H3 which indicates that NPC novelty has a positive impact on perceived hedonic value. This relationship is not similar to the relationship concluded by Im et al. (2015), in which NPC novelty does not have a direct impact on perceived hedonic value. This may be because new creative products used for surveying in Im et al. (2015) are related to fashion and hightech that may be influenced by social or technological trends, therefore respondents may consider products that are merely novel to be weird or ridiculous, whereas novel products that are also cool can lead to positive surprise, delight and a wow reaction. In other words, in this study, the new product used for surveying is related to dairy products that are quite normal and popular, thus respondents are not too severe in evaluating a new product. However, extant studies show evidence that supports this relationship. Particularly, Cheng and Lu (2013) confirm that novelty has a direct and positive impact on perceived hedonic value. According to Cheng and Lu (2013), the novelty containing some surprised elements of the local area is likely to stimulate an experience of visitors that differentiates from their daily lives, thus improve visitors' sense of hedonic travel.
The testing results approve the hypothesis H4, suggesting that NPC meaningfulness has a positive influence on perceived utilitarian value. This finding supports the extant literature, particularly the finding of Im et al. (2015), in which the author proposes that meaningful features of a creative product present the product's functionality, usefulness and ability to meet demands. Thereby, the process of evaluating NPC meaningfulness frequently relates to cognitive evaluation which tends to results in the assessment of perceived utilitarian value. The finding in this study shows that the production of new functions of a product that is practical and helpful to address some specific issues of customers can increase the perception of customers with regard to the useful benefits of a new product.
This study also advances the literature regarding NPC by testing the influence of perceived hedonic value and perceived utilitarian value on the purchase intention of customers. Both relationships are statistically significant and positive, and these results are consistent with the results of extant studies (Lin & Lu, 2015;Gan & Wang, 2017;C. M. Chiu et al., 2012). Furthermore, perceived utilitarian value (β = 0.655, p = 0) is evaluated as a greater influential predictors of purchase intention, compared to perceived hedonic value (β = 0.230, p = 0). Besides, the VIF value of UV and PI are also close to the threshold of 5 showing that consumers significantly focus on perceiving the utilitarian value when they see and evaluate a new creative product. Their assessment of the utilitarian value will highly affect their intention and behavior to buy this product. This is also likely that customers are willing to buy a product if they perceive more utilitarian value from a creative product. Likewise, NPC meaningfulness (β = 0.541, p = 0) has a higher significant and indirect effect on purchase intention than NPC novelty (β = 0.159, p = 0). These results demonstrate that even though NPC novelty dimension can bring customers delight and excitement, they appreciate NPC meaningfulness dimension that is functional, useful and practical to meet their requirements and admiration or help them resolve some specific problems. In addition, these results also show that customers' perception of value can impact a decision of buying a new creative product. If they do not perceive any value (utilitarian value or hedonic value) from using a new creative product, they may not concern about purchasing them.

Managerial implications
Numerous crucial practical implications can be shown from the results of this study, especially, from the end consumers' perspective. First and foremost, creating some novel features for a new product can help increase consumers' perception of hedonic value and discriminate a new product from other conventional products in a market. Managers and practitioners can conduct a survey or research, such as blog investigations and focus-group interviews, to learn more about the opinion and thinking of customers regarding the creativity in target markets. Then, basing on the perspective of consumers, managers and practitioners can create novel features of a new product that can bring consumer psychological benefits, such as joyfulness and excitement and perception of hedonic value. Thanks to these novel features, consumers may decrease their inertia and have a positive perception of a new product that can make them feel more surprised, interesting and delightful. The results also suggest that for those new products that relate to normal and popular product categories, such as dairy products or household appliances, details and appearances of current products are quite similar, thus some novel features can be added to a new product by changing aesthetic aspects like creating some unique colors, the new shape of packaging or some limited editions of a product to increase the perception of customers regarding psychological benefits.
Furthermore, the result of this study indicates that the increase in the meaningfulness dimension of NPC leads to an increase in the perception of the utilitarian value of consumers. Managers and practitioners can enhance consumers' perception of utilitarian value by adding more features for a new product that can improve the functionality, usefulness and ability to meet the requirement and the expectation of consumers. Practically, managers and practitioners, particularly those who are involving in developing a new product need to carry out customer and market research before developing a new product to find out problems that customers have to face when they use current products, as well as shed the light on the insights of consumers regarding their concerns and admiration for a new product in the future. Thereby, managers engaging in creative product development can focus more resources of a company on creating some new features regarding material, productivity and function of a new product to bring convenience, high quality and financial benefits to end customers, resulting in a distinction of a new product from conventional products on a marketplace. Therefore, such useful features can draw consumers' attention and increase their perception of utilitarian value.
In addition, managers and practitioners involving in new creative product development have not only focus on increasing novelty and meaningfulness features but concern about how to enhance consumers' consumption behavior by increasing their perception of hedonic value and utilitarian value. As the result of the current study basing on the perspective of consumers in HCMC, both perceived hedonic value and perceived utilitarian value affect significantly and positively on consumers' purchase intention, implying that if a creative product is helpful and relevant to the customer, as well as make his or her feel more interested and excited, the consumer will be more likely to buy a product. Managers and practitioners can increase the perception of hedonic and utilitarian value by implementing marketing strategies that give the consumer more chance to see, touch and use a new creative product. For instance, firms can create some short videos that emphasize a design and function to introduce a new product, then disseminate these videos via popular platforms, such as television programs, social media and mobile applications, thus the consumer will be informed more explicitly about a new creative product. Simultaneously, firms should also encourage the consumer to use a new product by offering them a trial product. Therefore, consumers can have more realistic experiences with a product, and enable them to explore novel and useful features of a new product on their own, creating positive affective and perception of value related to the new product.
Besides, managers and practitioners should allocate more firm's resources and attention to researching and developing features of a new product that are useful and relevant to consumer needs and expectations. The result of this study shows that perception of utilitarian value has a greater considerable influence on the purchase intention of the consumer than the perception of hedonic value. Likewise, the NPC meaningfulness dimension also has a higher significant and indirect effect on consumers' purchase intention than the NPC novelty dimension. Particularly, managers and firms can concentrate more on determining NPC meaningfulness by conducting studies of consumer needs, emerging trends, local culture and tradition, and the lifestyle of people in the HCMC market. Thereby, managers and teams engaging in new product development can refer to the results of these studies to cast the light on the insights of consumers in HCM, and create more features that are practical and suitable for consumers to fulfill their admiration and help them address some particular issues. Moreover, marketers need to consider that the promotional strategy should emphasize meaningful aspects when they introduce a new product to consumers in HCMC to increase their perception of utilitarian value and mitigate concern about cost and risk perceptions. When consumers are introduced to a new product, they are usually curious and ambiguous, and they may also worry about the learning costs of a new product that trumps a perception of added value, leading to underestimation of a new product. Nevertheless, marketers can ease a consumer's mind and evoke their intention to purchase by increasingly promoting functional and practical features of a new product and the way these features are created by analyzing existing issues consumers have to confront as well as common expectations of them about new features.

Conclusion
This study aims to theoretically and empirically contribute to new product creativity research by investigating the impacts of two dimensions of new product creativity: novelty and meaningfulness, as well as perceived values, including perceived hedonic value and perceived utilitarian value, on consumers' purchase intention. The findings of this study yield a deeper understanding of the relationship between new product creativity dimensions and consumer behavior and help managers create more effective ideas and strategies to develop and promote their new creative products.