Contents
There are two kinds of change:
Within these broad categories, there is a spectrum of innovation, some requiring significant adaptation on our part, some not requiring much and some falling between the extremes.
Disruptive change is the price of modernization. Sooner or later it comes to every product; sooner or later all consumers must adapt their behaviour. Companies need to learn how to handle disruptive change. High-tech industries happen to have substantial experience managing disruptive change, and companies from other industries can benefit from this experience.
Technology adoption life cycle
The kinds of consumers that will buy a product exhibit a range of adaptability to novelty, divided into five categories: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority and Laggards.
Most people fall into the Early and Late Majority categories, but understanding each group is crucial for marketing to them. Each of these groups has its own response to disruption. Each group has its own psychographic profile.
The High Tech Marketing Model uses this Technology Adaptation Life Cycle as a framework. Markets are developed according to the model, starting with Innovators and working down to Laggards. This process turns out to be harder, though, in real life than it is in theory. It isn’t a simple thing to sell to one group and then adjust one’s marketing to sell to the next segment down the line. Some groups are different from each other; the same strategies just won’t work.
There are cracks between each of the segments.