Diffusion of Innovation Theory: The "S" Curve

the goal for many innovations is that they become widely adopted within a community as quickly as possible the diffusion of innovations theory tells us that in any community there are five different types of people or adopter groups these groups can be categorized by the time it takes them to adopt a given innovation or new behavior to identify which groups have already adopted the innovation and which groups new marketing messages should be directed toward marketing researchers measure the percentage of people in a community that have adopted an innovation at different points in time this allows researchers to measure the rate of adoption or the time it takes for the innovation to go from zero to 100% of the community now what researchers have found is that for any given innovation a graph the rate of adoption looks like a stretched out s-curve with a flat beginning steep middle and flat end let's take a look to see how this happens we know that a handful of people the innovators will learn about a new innovation such as a fog board soon after it is introduced as risk takers the innovators will try the innovation almost immediately after learning about it the next group to adopt the innovation the early adopters also represent a small percentage of the community their trendsetters who are to adopt innovations endorsed by their innovator friends the next groups are the early majority and late majority once these two majority groups see the innovation being used by people they know and trust they will begin to adopt the innovation themselves it is at this point when the rate of adoption speeds up steepening the slope of the curve now in order to reach the entire community the innovation must hit a critical mass this is the place on the s-curve where the innovation has become so widespread that it continues to diffuse to the remainder of the community on its home at this point the innovation is considered a new and accepted social norm finally once most people have adopted the innovation the S curve flattens out as it reaches the laggards who are the most resistant to change and in some cases may never adopt the length of time it takes for all this to happen can vary depending upon the characteristics of the innovation and the community itself however the pattern of change from slow to fast to slow is always the same so if you're marketing an innovation or new behavior to a particular community remember to continually measure the percentage of your population that have already adopted your innovation this will help you determine which group you should market to next

Channel: Rare

Views: 100,260

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Keywords: Society, Marketing, Market Research, Innovation, Rate of Adoption, Behavior Change, Behavior Adoption, Innovators, Innovations, Early Adopters, Community, Trend Setters, Community Trust, S Curve, Social Norms, Diffusion of Innovation, Pattern of Change, Social Marketing

Id: NiNoNYLBabA

Length: 3min 35sec (215 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 02 2015