The proliferation of converged products in today’s marketplace has become inevitable as it lends manufacturer an edge over competitors. One of the lingering questions when it comes to developing a new converged product is what new functionality should be added to the base product. This study investigates the goal congruence effects in terms of utilitarian versus hedonic value and the complementary effects of the base product and the added functionality. It is proposed and found that there is asymmetric effect in the value addition of added functionality with a utilitarian versus hedonic base. While converged products with a utilitarian base gain more from adding an incongruent, hedonic functionality than congruent, utilitarian one, converged products with a hedonic base gain less from adding an incongruent, utilitarian addition than a congruent, hedonic one. Furthermore, this study also examines the effects of complementary relationship between base product and added functionality. The complementary addition elicits higher value addition than non-complementary addition irrespective of the utilitarian versus hedonic value of base product and added functionality. Implications of those findings for any new product developers are presented along with suggestions for further research.

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The proliferation of converged products in today’s marketplace has become inevitable as it lends manufacturer an edge over competitors. One of the lingering questions when it comes to developing a new converged product is what new functionality should be added to the base product. This study investigates the goal congruence effects in terms of utilitarian versus hedonic value and the complementary effects of the base product and the added functionality. It is proposed and found that there is asymmetric effect in the value addition of added functionality with a utilitarian versus hedonic base. While converged products with a utilitarian base gain more from adding an incongruent, hedonic functionality than congruent, utilitarian one, converged products with a hedonic base gain less from adding an incongruent, utilitarian addition than a congruent, hedonic one. Furthermore, this study also examines the effects of complementary relationship between base product and added functionality. The complementary addition elicits higher value addition than non-complementary addition irrespective of the utilitarian versus hedonic value of base product and added functionality. Implications of those findings for any new product developers are presented along with suggestions for further research.