Yesterday I read an article by Hester van Herk on the adoption of innovations. Her article focuses on the key success factors for adoption by consumers, based on scientific research in the last decades. She focuses on both product and consumer characteristics.

Innovative products

To be easily adopted a product should have clear advantages over others, meet the consumers needs/behavior and not be too complex. An interesting statement was that it may be useful to package radical innovations with an existing known product. With a trustworthy companion the new product probably seems less scary.
Hester also points out that when consumers are forced to accept an innovation (e.g. ATM’s in the banking industry), consumers tend to be more negative and reluctant to adopt it. In these cases it is important to help consumers as much as possible, e.g. by personnel actively assisting consumers.

Personal and cultural differences

Recent research shows that not age, education and wealth determines if you are likely to adopt innovations early. Other factors like personal innovativeness and being a thought leader are far more important. Innovative people value curiosity, freedom and creativity more than traditions and modesty.
These values not only apply to individuals, but also to countries and cultures. Because of these cultural differences, some countries will easier adopt innovations than others. This is mainly due to differences in individualism (positive effect) and uncertainty aversion (negative effect). Innovations therefore tend to be more successful in e.g. Scandinavia, UK or The Netherlands and less in Southern Europe, Central and South America and Asia (including Japan, excluding China and Hong Kong).
Africa seems to be an interesting subject for further research though. Opposite to what you would expect, uncertainty averse cultures there seem to adopt innovations earlier than others!
Read More