CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
New Products Attributes That Enhance Consumer Adoption
By Dr . Catherine Ngahu
Over the many years that I have been involved in market research for new products and services , the question of new product adoption has always fascinated me . I have seen products and businesses that appear to solve an important need fail to win customer attention while others that appear less significant take off to great success . The development of new products and services , or even practices , keeps the world moving forward .
Research shows that new products or practices , do not all have the same potential for acceptance by those they are expected to benefit . In the marketing context , ‘ new products ' are defined broadly to include new to the world innovations that are brought to the market for the first time , or existing products that have been modified in some way or other .
While some new products seem to catch on almost overnight , many others struggle to get any attention from the market . Still some others take a long time to gain acceptance . The mobile phone was accepted quickly upon introduction compared to the microwave . But in everyday business there are new products launched all the time with some succeeding quickly , others taking some time to get support and others failing to get traction at all . Think of the hair salon in your neighborhood where all the locals go , and compare it with the other one , opened around the same time in , the same neighborhood but could not get enough customers to keep it going .
Consider this , hand washing which we now take for granted was not always easily accepted as a means of keeping germs at bay . Indeed the first person to suggest that doctors should wash their hands between patients a Hungarian doctor , Ignaz Semmelweiss , was harshly criticized when he presented his hand washing theory in the mid-1800s to the medical society in Vienna . It is said that his approach in
How does a new product lend itself to be offered in free samples ? Can it be made in smaller than average sizes ? This is very important in stimulating new product trial because it reduces the perceived risks associated with newness . Trial-ability is vital to enabling the marketer to provide consumers with the opportunity to try new products and get direct product experience with little or no risk . introducing the new idea offended the doctors , because his research implied that doctors caused patient deaths . It was only much later , after his death that others brought the hand-washing theory to the forefront , and it got acceptance . Today , we all know the importance of washing our hands , and of course even more now , because of the challenge we are facing of the deadly Covid-19 .
We have all adopted new products , habits or practices into our lives , at least once in a while . Our phones , cars , those apps that we take for granted today like Facebook , Twitter and the like were all new to us at some point . Adoption happens when we accept to use a new item on a regular basis . Just think of the new products introduced in the last few years that today feel like second nature to you . In everyday life , we adopt new products and services to improve our lives .
In recent times , we have all been required to adopt new behaviors such as wearing of masks , social distancing , sanitizing and the like . Some of these have had to be enforced because of resistance to change . This resistance is seen through the different rates of acceptance or adoption of this behavior . Furthermore the pandemic has caused serious disruption of production , distribution and retail operations greatly impacting our own shopping and consumption habits . Many of us have had to adopt online shopping , online meeting platforms like Zoom , Teams , Blue Jeans and Webex in order to get work going on and to maintain relationships during this pandemic .
The acceptance of an innovation , new
38 MAL39 / 20 ISSUE