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You may be asking yourself, “This research around adoption curves is all fine and interesting but how does it apply to digital marketing?” Great question. Let’s walk through it with a real-world example from Apple. Apple’s Brand EcosystemRogers outlined five characteristics that influence a person’s decision to adopt or reject an innovation. Here’s how Apple plays off this brilliantly (From Diffusion of Innovations).
Twitter’s Adoption vs. Awareness paradoxSo, we see how Apple has brilliantly dealt with these 5 barriers to adoption. Another historic case to consider is the history of the adoption of Twitter versus the awareness of the platform. In 2011, most Americans had heard of Twitter but according to Pew Internet Research Foundation only 11% have adopted the platform in that year. [Source]
It’s also worth noting that adoption can mean many things in digital – subscribing to an email newsletter, liking a brand on Facebook, following on Twitter/Instagram, or grabbing an RSS feed. It’s more commonly referred to as “engagement” and we’ll cover the nuances of this later in the Strategy and Measurement sections. If we look at the research, we see that Twitter had some serious challenges for adoption.A staggering 92% of Americans were aware of the platform, so it obviously no longer had to worry about getting the word out about the brand.Interestingly, an almost complete saturation of the US market for brand awareness puts it in the enviable ranks of household names like Nike or Coca Cola in 2011. Consider the auto-complete on Google at this time (auto-complete is based on the most common queries for particular search terms). When users typed in the phrase “Why use” – the first suggested result is “Why Use Twitter” . This quick experiment indicated that many people were still trying to figure out why to use Twitter. The advantages to the uninitiated are not immediately present, unlike an iPod where a potential user could quickly see a benefit (“A thousand songs in your pocket”). Add to this things like Rogers’ factors of Complexity and Trialability and you start to see why Twitter struggles with adding new users. New people to the platform are confused and intimidated by the cryptic “@ reply” or how to send a direct message. However, once they interact and start to see value by following people and brands whose interest align with theirs, they become rabid consumers of the content posted even if they never put out a Tweet themselves. What are the factors affecting new product adoption rate?These factors include the initial and ongoing costs, risk and uncertainty, and social approval. Although a lot these factors depend very much on the nature of the product and may not be easy to influence, it is important to be aware of them for developing the new product and its marketing programme.
What is innovation adoption?1. A model that classifies adopters of innovations based on their level of readiness to accept new ideas. Innovative adoption characteristics are assigned to groups to show that all innovations go through a predictable process before becoming widely adopted.
What are Rogers's five key innovation attributes that explain the rate of adoption of an innovation by target consumers be sure to include a description?In a series of diffusion studies across multiple areas, Rogers found that innovations that have these 5 characteristics -high relative advantage, trialability, observability, and compatibility, and low complexity- are likely to succeed over innovations that do not.
What are the three key factors that affect consumer adoption of the Internet?These include risk, trust, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, technology readiness, preference for personal contact and demographic variables.
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