Diffusion of Innovation and Marketing New Products to Consumers
In The Street article titled “What is Diffusion of Innovation and Why is it Important in 2019”, author Brian O’Connell discusses the diffusion of innovation theory in a marketing context. O’Connell endeavors to advise businesses that are looking to introduce new products to the market by focusing on the “waves of consumer acceptance” which are as follows: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards, with the product obviously starting with the innovators and ending with the laggards. In class, we discussed initial adopters and how their behavior can contribute to a full cascade. In the article, O’Connell embraces the fact that consumers’ behavior tends to vary based on individual characteristics, which may seem like an obvious assertion, but in reality, provides interesting insight into consumer behavior in the aggregate.
O’Connell breaks down each adopter category’s behavioral tendencies: innovators like anything new, so they are easy for companies to target; early adopters like the notion of trying something new, but just do not want to be the first to do it; early majority is mostly made up of followers who need proof that something new works (this could be from established popularity or reviews of others); late majority members typically do not like change and will wait until a clear majority of consumers have tried and approved of the product; laggards need the ultimate level of proof (oftentimes explicit peer pressure) to use the product. The context of diffusion in a marketing context adds an interesting level of complexity to the model that we discussed in class. While the Threshold Rule still applies (especially between the early adopter and early majority categories), we must now analyze individual behavioral tendencies that may cause certain consumers to knowingly avoid adopting a new product. A consumer who has enough connections to other consumers to reasonably warrant an assumption that they will switch and use the product may not do so if they belong in a later adoption category. As O’Connell states in his article, “it’s just a fact of life that there are more risk-averse consumers than risk taking consumers”. As businesses continue to innovate and develop more products, it is important that they focus on marketing data to determine where the early adopters are in the field and devote the necessary resources to target them once the product is released.
O’Connell, Brian. “What Is Diffusion of Innovation and Why Is It Important in 2019″
https://www.thestreet.com/technology/what-is-diffusion-of-innovation-14804157.