The Stages of Adoption of Technology
In class we talked about certain thresholds for how technology spreads and becomes dominant. We did so using a q value which represents the minimum fraction of a node’s neighbors using the new technology before the node itself starts using the technology too. This article by On Digital Marketing takes this topic one step further by looking into the waves of people who adopt certain technology at different times. What they found out is that each of these five waves contains its own demographic.
The first stage is named the innovators, who make up only 2.5% of the final users. These people are the youngest and have the highest social class. Being young and successful allows these users to be flexible and take financial risks in case the technology does not happen to take off. The next group is the early adopters who make up 13.5% of users. They are a bit older than the innovators but belong in the same social class. The adopters only start using the technology once they see some potential of it being beneficial to them. The next two groups each take up 34% of the users. They are the early majority and late majority. The early majority waits significantly longer than the innovators and the adopters, and they are usually persuaded to switch over by the adopters. Although they are initially reluctant to join in, they still belong to an above average social class. The late majority is the group that waits until 50% of the users have already switched over to the new technology. They tend to have lower social class and are skeptical to such changes, but not as skeptical as the laggards who make up the last 16% of users. These people wait as long as possible to switch over to new technology. Most of the laggards are older than the rest and value their original traditions rather than adopting something new.
Although it would be difficult to incorporate all of this analysis into a problem set, it is interesting to dig deeper and look at the varying motives for why people switch over to new technologies. Only then can we begin to make judgements on why they did so and what about them could have predicted how long it took them to modify their habits.
Link: http://www.ondigitalmarketing.com/learn/odm/foundations/5-customer-segments-technology-adoption/