Time of Consumer Adoption of Innovations (Smart Monday/Process)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing™.  Today is Smart Monday and we're going to take a look at Everett Roger’s diffusion of innovation model and how it will assist you to understand your customer’s adoption patterns for new product innovations.

An innovation is any new product, service or idea perceived by your customers as new.  According to Roger’s diffusion of innovation model, the length of time it takes consumers to adopt a new product is represented by a bell shaped curve.  This tells us that people differ in their desires to try new things and the length of time it takes them to buy a new product varies widely.

The model breaks consumers into five groups.  Innovators, who comprise 2.5% of consumers, are adventuresome; they like and seek out risk and are the first to buy new products.  Early adoptors, 13.5% of consumers, are opinion leaders and once they make a decision to buy typically others will follow suit.

The largest group is the early majority who make up 34% of consumers.  This group is very deliberate but they chose to follow the early adoptors when making purchases.  Next, the late majority also at 34%, tend to be skeptical.  When they see other consumer getting on board, they will also seek out a new product.

Finally we have the laggards who comprise about 16% of consumers at the tail end of the curve.  This segment is very traditional and they need to know that a product is well proven before they will buy.

Understanding adoption patters for your customers is important to accurately target your advertising.  Once you categorize your customers into the various groups of adoptors you will be able to leverage demographics and psychographics to determine media characteristics and create a compelling advertising message for each group that will resonate specifically with them.

For instance, when marketing to innovators you may use a line such as “be the first”.  This will generate excitement with that group when there is a new product available.

In contrast, addressing the laggard group you might say “a proven product withstanding the test of time”.  Increasing their comfort level with your product.

That concludes Smart Monday.  Join us tomorrow for Strategic Tuesday.  To discuss an online or onsite service engagement and enhance the marketing and branding for your organization, contact James Glover: (505) 501-1330 or onceadaymarketing@gmail.com.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing™ and we’ll see you next time.

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