Friday Research: Early Adopters Might Lead Your Customers To Smoke And Mirrors

When Will You Use This?  

Planning and developing product and services launches, innovation projects.

What’s The Red-Letter Bite Today? 

Early adopters, who live, eat, and breathe everything fresh and new, can be invaluable for your brand. They can start a great sales rollercoaster with spreading the word and encouraging others to try the product.

However, early adopters with a high need for uniqueness may experience a communication dilemma: should I or should I not tell other about this cool new product? As once others adopt the same product, the level of differentness will radically decrease.

Current research* examines early adopters’ communication dilemma and how it leads to the “share and scare” strategy. The research reveals that sometimes early adopters use “share and scare” strategy and share information about their adoption with others, yet scare them out of adopting it, e.g. by focusing on features that diminish the innovation’s appeal for later adopters, such as its complexity, high price, or radicalness.

Limited Edition beats the Fear of Imitation?

Addition To Your Bag of Tricks    

This research shares a few tips to help you accomplish successful innovation launches. As authors suggest, "first, by launching a limited edition of an innovation, or premium versus common editions of the product, managers may diminish early adopters’ fear of imitation, because imitating them will be impossible. Second, managers can adjust the content of marketing campaigns to fit the needs of different adopters over time. For example, at launch, managers may appeal to early adopters with a high need for uniqueness by highlighting the product’s uniqueness and scarcity, and in subsequent stages, appeal to later adopters by emphasizing the product’s commonness and popularity. Third, managers can completely prevent the communication dilemma and the consequent “share and scare” strategy by appealing to early adopters with a low (rather than high) need for uniqueness. By focusing on benefits of the innovation separate from its uniqueness—such as functionality, hedonic value, or cognitive challenge—managers will appeal to early adopters who have a strong need to recommend the innovation but not to scare others."

*Moldovan, Sarit, Yael Steinhart, and Shlomit Ofen. "Share and Scare": Solving the Communication Dilemma of Early Adopters with a High Need for Uniqueness, Journal of Consumer Psychology: July, 2014. {Thanks for the material}

P.S. When you’re done reading, I’d love for you to share your experience with early adopters? Leave a comment or Tweet me, let's chat!

P.P.S. Need some help on crafting your marketing message? Let's do this together.