16 Jun 10

Arise Laggards, Arise

By Peter Sanchez, Trainee Planner/Buyer

For many years now, we marketers have preached the virtues of early adoption; one must own all that is new, to receive all that is good. But according to new research by Professor Jacob Goldenberg – as reported on Wired.com – marketers are missing huge opportunities by focusing on early adopters, and not appealing to innovation laggards.

The terms Laggards and Early Adopters refer to the 1962 work by Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations. According to Rogers, innovations are adopted by different consumer groups at different periods of the product lifecycle: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards. In the midst of the rapidly expanding American electronic industry of the 1960s, it was to become gospel for the new age of technology.

What, therefore, is Goldenberg’s new insight on laggards? Goldenberg found the answer in a 2003 survey he conducted on music player ownership. The survey indicated that, far from Laggards indefinitely eschewing new technology, they may “leapfrog” over some product innovations, but at some stage, can become raving early adopters. The potential of appealing to these technological leapfroggers is great. Goldenberg estimates that if 10 percent of laggards leapfrog to a new innovation, revenues could increase by up to 89 percent.

Perhaps this research is relevant to more than technological innovations, though. Consider media clients. Some of them have used the same media routes for years. Sins of procrastination upon your alter of new ideas. Social media, nope. Ad-funded programming, nope. Mobile, yes? Suddenly your client is all about the apps, the geo-targeting, the augmented reality. Years of the client being in the campaign backwater have been upturned. Your client is now a bona fide media Early Adopter. Our industry reality might be less simple, but the message is clear: Laggards are not dead, they just need an innovation resurrection.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/st_thompson_technophobes

N.B. Professor Jacob Goldenberg’s research article is part of Kitchen, P.J. (2008) Marketing Metaphors and Metamorphosis. http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9780230227538