Diffusion of Innovations

and Opinion Leadership

Consumer Behavior,
Ninth Edition

Schiffman & Kanuk

 The process by which
one person (the
opinion leader)
informally influences
Opinion
the consumption
Leadership
actions or attitudes of
others who may be
opinion seekers or
opinion recipients.

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 What Is Opinion Leadership?

Opinion Opinion
Leader Receiver

Opinion
Seeker

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 Word of Mouth in Action

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 Dynamics of the Opinion
Leadership Process
• Credibility
• Positive and Negative Product
Information
• Information and Advice
• Opinion Leadership Is Category-
Specific
• Opinion Leadership Is a Two-way Street

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 The process by which
the acceptance of an
innovation is spread by
Diffusion
communication to
Process
members of social
system over a period of
time.

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 The stages through
which an individual
consumer passes in
Adoption arriving at a decision to
Process try (or not to try), to
continue using (or
discontinue using) a new
product.

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 Defining Innovations
• Firm-oriented definitions
– Product is “new” to the company
• Product-oriented definitions
– Continuous
– Dynamically continuous
– Discontinuous
• Market-oriented definitions
– Based on consumer exposure
• Consumer-oriented definitions
– Consumer judges it as “new”

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 What type
of product
innovation
is this
product?

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 A sequence of
categories that
describes how early (or
Adopter
late) a consumer
Categories
adopts a new product
in relation to other
adopters.

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 Adopter Categories

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 Categories of Adopters

1) Innovators :-The people who come under this

category are mostly risk-takers and newly launched
products enthusiasts. They are the ones who always
keep an eye on the products that are being launched in
the market. These are the ones who do not even for a
second hesitate to try out a new product.

They love to explore new possibilities that come with

products that are being newly launched in the market.
They are quickly adaptive to new technologies.

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2) Early Adopters :- This category of
adopters comprises less of risk-takers.
They like to analyze the different aspect
of things before they can be fully assured
that they are going to buy that product.
They won’t go out in the market and buy
any product that is new as soon as they
first see it.
They will take some time to think, analyze
and understand.

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3) Early majority :- The people
belonging to this adopter category are
generally those tend to adopt a newly
launched product or any new idea that is
flowing in the market soon. But they are
not as impulsive as the innovators or the
early adopters. They take quite some
time to analyze the product in depth.
They also execute other factors like
price, features, and warranty period.

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4) Late majority :-Mostly when the
product has grown enough in the market
and is in the phase of the late growth or the
maturity phase that is when the people of
the late majority group consider buying that
product and then trying it out.
They share some of their traits with the
early majority ones, but then they are
always more cautious before they commit to
buying any products.

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5) Laggards:- This group is
considered to be the slowest one when it
comes to adopting new ideas or new
technologies. They merely avoid taking a
risk and prefer playing it safe.
The people of this group are mostly
considered to be conservative. They are
very much pricing conscious. These are
the most traditional of them all with old
kind of thinking.

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 n ks
T h a

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