The larger market for Tesla is mom and pop who are commuting to work. It’s the millennial working in a job where she is underappreciated and underpaid. It’s the retiree living on a fixed income. And guess what? For all those consumers, the Tesla is an overpriced luxury more than it is a consumer need. The original Tesla consumer is in fact a small sub-set of the automobile consuming demographic and those early adopters never represented the “fat part of the curve” of automobile demand.
In the world of cannabis, early adopters are those people who have been using cannabis for the last decade regardless of whether it was legal or not. Early adopters would buy on a street corner or in a friend’s basement; and whenever a new brownie or cookie or candy became available they would try it as long as the THC content was high enough that it packed a punch, even though there was likely zero consistency between one batch and another.
Early adopters represent a vital and important segment of a broader market and their needs and expectations must be met. In fact they are often the most enthusiastic representation of that demand segment with behaviour more akin to fans than consumers. But, by no means do their behaviours match those of the wider demographic of society whose collective spending power far exceeds that of the early adopters.
You know this intuitively: this is why the road is full of Corollas and Civics. It’s why commercial street corners are full of fast food joints and pharmacies. It’s why Cognac sales in the US are about $2 billion per year but beer sales are about $34 billion. No one would argue that Cognac and beer are the same, and many people would argue that Cognac is somehow “better” than beer… irrespective of that, beer sales are about 1,700% higher. Narrower markets are defined by narrower tastes and more highly restrictive demands. Wider markets are defined by characteristics that are more easily accepted – perhaps more “bland” – but certainly less restricted by characteristics thought by the masses to be “too much”.
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