BLACK, WILLIAM CHARLES; PHD
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN, 1980
BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, MARKETING (0338)
The importance of new product development and planning throughout the entire
life cycle of the
product becomes more critical to the success of the firm as it enters more complex
and dynamic market
situations. The selection and introduction of new products involves the development
of unique
marketing strategies to deal with the new alternative offered to the marketplace.
One prerequisite for the
formulation of marketing strategy is the understanding of the consumers' behavior
in terms of new
product purchases. The unique characteristics of new product marketing strategy
have led to a field of
study in marketing termed the diffusion of innovations. The literature on diffusion
research has been
extensively oriented towards problems dealing with the initial adoption decision.
Two issues have
generally been overlooked in most adoption and diffusion research. The first
is that the initial
acceptance/rejection decision is not the final step for the individual. The
innovation-decision paradigm
terms this post adoption period the confirmation stage. Second, the process
of diffusion is dynamic.
Participants are continually entering and leaving the process. The continual
change is due to the
adoption and confirmation decisions that are continuously being made by individuals.
The purpose of
this study is to investigate certain aspects of the post adoption activities
of individual adopters while
correcting for deficiencies in past research. The analysis focuses on two dimensions.
First, the
characteristics of individual adopters are analyzed to gain insight into the
continuance/discontinuance
decision. The classification of individual adopters allows for more detailed
analyses contrasting
continuing and discontinuing adopters. The characteristics examined include
socioeconomic factors,
attitudinal variables, social and communication influences, experience with
the innovation and
perceptions of the innovations. The second dimension entails the analysis of
the aggregate process of
adoption and discontinuance. Each process is defined graphically and mathematically.
The comparisons
are made between measures of the processes to determine their correspondence.
Social
Systems Simulation Group
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