Chapter Overview

In this chapter, we introduce several key concepts for the study of consumer change, including: innovation, diffusion, and adoption. Innovation is a broad term that refers to new things, new ways of behaving and interacting with things, as well as new ideas, behaviors or structures. Finding ways to improve the management of innovations is critical for organizations of all kinds. Innovations can be distinguished in terms of the behavioral consequences of the innovation of the users. Continuous innovations require only minor changes in user behavior while discontinuous innovations require major changes. Several important characteristics of the innovation influence the adoption rate. The perceived relative advantage over existing options is the most important factor to the success of an innovation. Other important characteristics include: compatibility, trialability, observability, and complexity.

Diffusion is the spread of an innovation from its creative source across space and time. Adoption refers to the stages an individual adopter goes through in making a decision to accept or reject an innovation. People in developed consumer societies may have a pro-innovation bias, but consumer conservatism and resistance are widespread. The desire for both the psychological and social equilibrium contributes to innovation and resistance.

Innovation and adoption processes are influenced by environmental, cultural, and social system factors. The development and diffusion of many innovations is based, at least in part, in changing environmental conditions that mandate adaptive responses. Economic conditions and market structures also have broad influence on innovation processes. The business sector of contemporary market economies invests heavily in innovation, and this investment creates a fast rate of introduction of new products.

Cultural attitudes toward newness, innovative behaviors and change provide norms that influence individual innovative behaviors. Cultural attitudes toward integration or fitting in (versus distinction or standing out) also influence rates of adoption within a social system. In general, the diffusion rate and penetration level of an innovation will depend on the innovation's compatibility with social system values. Innovations that threaten core values are subject to resistance. Cultural production systems (consisting of creative, managerial and communications subsystems) are responsible for creating and marketing culturally significant products. Originating in the triad countries, these cultural production systems increasingly influence the global marketplace.

Social groups have a critical impact on the diffusion of innovations. Innovations spread through communications between groups about the meanings of goods and services. Discrepancies about consumption meanings create pressures for innovation. The twin motives of integration and differentiation are key to understanding innovation and conservatism. Consumers look both within and outside their =social groups and make comparisons and judgements. Looking at the diffusion of innovations within and between social systems, we can see many illustrations of the effects of social groups. One important early theory is the trickle down theory of diffusion. The idea that innovations flow from high status to low status groups is still a very important theory for understanding innovation.

Influential consumers often aid the spread of innovations within a social system. We review three important types of influential consumers: opinion leaders, innovators, and market mavens. The diffusion of innovations depends heavily on the flow of information, not just from media sources but between consumers as well.

In general, marketers are interested in identifying consumers who are most likely to change their behavior or try new products and services first. This has led researchers to classify consumers buy their time of adoption. We describe several adopter categories including: lead users, innovators, early adopters, early majority, later majority, and laggards. The classical adoption process typical of a high-involvement decision includes: awareness, interest, trial, and adoption stages. However, a number of situational and other factors affect this general adoption process.