Diffusion of AirPods as a Status Symbol
When Apple unveiled its new product, AirPods, in 2016, society was very skeptical of these small, wireless, overpriced earbuds that did not seem like anything special. However, a few short years later, these earbuds have taken over the headphone market and have become a major status symbol. The articles linked below all describe how AirPods made this dramatic leap from being a topic of memes to an item of value through the diffusion of innovation. Diffusion is the process where the innovation is communicated from person to person through a social network over time. People in this social system either decide to adopt or reject the new technology and their behavior then affects the people they have ties with. The article “This Is How Innovation Really Works” explains how Apple has utilized the theory around diffusions of different technologies to ensure their products succeed. The article explains how each individual passes through five steps to make a decision to accept or reject the innovation. The individual must gain knowledge of the innovation, form an attitude about the innovation, chose a decision to reject or adopt, implement the decision, and then confirm the decision.
Another article “Diffusion of Innovation” further explained how Apple designs their products around the five steps an individual makes to accept a new technology. The step where the individuals form their attitudes about the innovation is the most important because this is where they are persuaded to adapt and purchase the technology. Therefore, the article explains how consumers are persuaded to purchase Airpods. First, Airpods have a relative advantage because they have a better design without the annoying wires. Next, Airpods are compatible with all other Apple products and the complexity of the innovation is low which makes the product more attractive. Finally, the product is easily spotted in society and the product is judged off the individual using it. This last point was the most crucial part for convincing individuals to purchase Airpods because it helped transform air pods into a status symbol.
When Page Six Style magazine and other social media sites took over and contributed to the buzz around AirPods. It was reported that celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Travis Scott, and Lil Uzi Vert had purchased Louis Vuitton AirPods for $1,000. I believe these celebrities acted like initial adopters and increased the value and fashion symbol surrounding the headphones. Once celebrities like these made Airpods more than just a headphone, they unknowingly started to use their influence to motive their friends and fans to purchase Airpods too.
The status symbol also increased as tweets like the one included from Business Insider below started to go viral.
As word spread that Airpods were a symbol of wealth and style, more people wanted to follow the trend. Therefore, these early adopters of Airpods played a big part in helping the innovators gain the early majority to get over the first bump in the distribution below.
When thinking about how we analyzed how individuals adopted a new technology in class, I thought about how there was a greater payoff to adopt the new technology and get Airpods than to stay with one’s own headphones. This is because the payoff of the status symbol one could receive is greater than any other benefit another pair of headphones has. Consequently, there would also be a low threshold for people to adopt because the payoff of switching to Airpods is bigger.
It would be hard to know exactly what the threshold number would be for the entire population to adopt AirPods but we can make the threshold ½ in the scenario I experienced in switching to Airpods.
One winter day, I was walking to class listening to music with my original Apple headphones that plugged into my phone. I was looking around at each person I passed and slowly realized that every single person I passed was using Airpods. I did not care about everyone else until I went home to my house of 10 other girls and polled who had Airpods. In this case, 8 of my friends had Airpods. I was immediately convinced to buy Airpods as well because my number of ties who adopted the technology had passed the threshold of ½ and would give me a bigger payoff of gaining status within the group. As mentioned in class, the popularity of the product is very important and individuals like me do not make independent choices and are influenced by their ties.
Overall, Airpods were able to achieve success from two modes of marketing. One where the quality of the product decreased the threshold for people buying Airpods because celebrities increased its social value. Second, people who had a certain ratio of friends with Airpods that was greater than the threshold needed to adopt the technology. Between these two modes of adopting, Airpods has become very successful. Also, according to the diffusion graph above, Airpods has had enough initial success that people everywhere will continue to purchase them.
Sources:
https://medium.com/macoclock/this-is-how-innovation-really-works-675e256de5e3
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2019/feb/10/how-did-apples-airpods-go-from-mockery-to-millennial-status-symbol
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-airpods-most-important-product-after-iphone-q3-earnings-2019-7#:~:text=Apple%20hasn’t%20said%20how,the%20wireless%20headphones%20in%202016.&text=Though%20they%20were%20mocked%20when,fun%20at%20the%20headphones’%20price