In his book, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers, Geoffrey A. Moore highlights a model that tries to dissect and represent the stages of adoption of high-tech products.
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More precisely this model goes through five stages. Each of those stages (innovators, early adopters, early Majority, late majority, and laggard) has a specific psychographic that makes that group ready to adopt a tech product.
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Why is the technology adoption life cycle useful?
There is a peculiar phase in the life cycle of a high-tech product that Moore calls a “chasm.” This is the phase in which a product is getting used by early adopters, but not yet by an early majority.
In that stage, there is a wide gap between those two psychographic profiles. Indeed, many startups fail because they don’t manage to have the early majority pick up where the early adopters left.
Understanding the Technology Adoption of a product helps you assess in which stage is a product and when the chasm is close how to fill the gap and allow the early majority to pick up the void left by the early adopters.
That void is created when the early adopters are ready to leave a product which is about to go mainstream. The market is plenty of examples of companies trying to conquer the early majority but failed in doing so, and in the process also lost the enthusiasts that made that product successful in the first place.
What are the stages of a technology adoption life cycle?
The stages of a Technology adoption life cycle, it comprises five main psychographic profiles:
- Innovators
- Early Adopters
- Early Majority
- Late Majority
- and Laggards
Innovators
Early Adopters
Early majority
The early majority is the psychographic profile made of people that will help you “cross the chasm.” Getting traction means making a product appealing to the early majority. Indeed, the early majority is made of more conscious consumers, that look for useful solutions but also beware of possible fads.
Late Majority
Laggards
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Business Strategy: Definition, Examples, And Case Studies
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