By Rahul Guhathakurta. Consumer innovators are identified on the basis of time elapsed after the launch or as a specific percentage of people out of total purchasers who buy early. They have low-risk perception and have a positive attitude towards change. Eventually, they are very sociable and in the role of opinion leaders and market mavens, they can be quite influential. Extensive research has gone into understanding the consumer profile of the five adopter categories of consumer innovativeness , especially, the innovators, who are perceived to be the key to success for an innovation.
There is no universally accepted definition of consumer innovators. They are generally described as the "individuals" who are the first ones to adopt an innovation in a social system. Again, there is no clear-cut distinction between consumer innovators and early adopters yet. Therefore, some researchers define "innovators" as the first 2.
Yet, another set of researchers defines them as individuals who purchase the "innovation" during the introductory phase first 3 months after launch. There is also a school of thought which defines consumer innovators as the individuals who have more creativity than succeeding following adopter categories because they constantly working on new-to-the-market products and innovate in their leisure time with the application of their own out-of-pocket expenditures.
Consumer innovators are more interested in the product categories they are first to purchase, than any other adopter class. It means that the consumer innovator in one product category, may or may not be the innovator in another product category. They seek information from the mass media, social media, open source intelligence and a variety of informal channels of information regarding the product of their interest. Each social system has a structure which determines the direction of diffusion in innovation while the individual behavior determines the speed of adoption.
Companies can also develop their own user communities. Companies need to engage customers in a different way to leverage the potential of the growing trend in user-innovation. The role of companies continues to be one of providing consistently reliable and safe products to their customers, and companies have the resources for volume testing, quality control, production and other functions that are beyond the scope of individuals.
However, companies need customers and should seek to engage them right at the beginning of the production cycle.
Rather than identifying a need and then focusing on inventing a product to fill it, companies can engage with consumers to see what innovations are already emerging, and help bring these new products into the world. Web: www. This article was published in RSM Insight More information about and back copies of RSM Insight can be found here.
Download Original Article. Receive the latest business research directly in your inbox every two months! Home Discovery: Research impact Articles. The age of the consumer innovator Sunday, 10 March Fast-moving trend We have known about this trend in consumer behaviour from scientific research for several decades.
Engaging innovation The bottom line is that companies need to learn to ask their customers smart questions. Email: jjong rsm. Share this article:. About the researchers. Jeroen de Jong Former Researcher. Related articles. Lucas Meijs. Henk Volberda. Lucas Meijs: What profit-making businesses can learn from volunteering.
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