ABSTRACT
People in their role of consumers are a potent force for innovation, being attracted by novelty, yet paradoxically innately conservative and resistant to change.2 They also incidentally dislike being shown to be ignorant. In his study of innovation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Styles demonstrates how complex and delicate the relationship can be between these two aspects of human behaviour. He cites as example two products introduced in the second half of the seventeenth century. The first concerns the new or newly-adapted objects needed for the consumption of tea. Artefacts like tea pots and tea cups, sugar bowls and slop basins, tea tables and tea kettles, were all successfully marketed and readily accepted by a consuming public who had substantially to alter their eating habits and even the structure of their day and their social life, in order to accommodate the new beverage. By contrast another new commodity met a high level of resistance from consumers; imported cotton shirts had many advantages such as cheapness, comfort and ease of maintenance, but people against all reason continued to prefer linen. An ambitious marketing venture ended in costly failure.3
