.. ---- -... .. —--——— .. ________. .--..New Product Adoption and Diffusion-EVERETT M. kOGERS*This paper summarizes what we have learned !rom research on the dif-fusion of innovations that contributes to un~erstandmg new productadoption, discusses how the background of diffusion research ● ffectedits contributions and shortcomings, and indicates future research prior-ities. Diffusion research has played an important role in helping put socialstructure back in the communication process. Network analysis ● nd fieldexperiments are promising tools in diffusion studies. The diffusion modelhas aided our understandings of the consumption of new products.The studies of the diffusion of innovations, incltsd-ing the part played by mass communication, promiseto provide an empirical and quantitative basis for de-veloping more rigorous approaches to theories ofsocial change.Nfelvin I_ DC Fleur ( 1966, p. 138)Diffusion of innovations has the status of a bastardchild with respect to the parent interests in social andcultural change: too big to ignore but unlikely to begiven full recognition.Frederick C. Fliegel and Joseph E. Kivlin ( 1966,p. 235n)Difiuxion research is thus emerging us a single. in-tegrated body of concepts and generalizations. eventhough the invesrigarions are conducted by researchersin several scientific disciplines.Everett M. Rogers (1971, p. 47 )The purposes of this paper are ( 1 ) to summarizewhat we have learned from research on the difhssionof innovations that contributes to our understanding ofnew product adop[ion and diffusion, (2) to discuss howthe academic histoq and the intellectual structuring ofthe difision field have affected its contributions and itsshoticomings, and (3) to indicate future research pn-onties on the diffusion of innovations.Our focus here is especially on the last 10-year pe-riod and on the diffusion of a particular type of inno-vation (new products ), but for histoncal and compara-tive purposes, we also must briefly deal with the originsof diffusion research.Since about the mid-1 960s, there has been consid-erable interest in diffusion research on the part of con-sumer researchers and a certain degree of integrationof diffusion frameworks and research findings into theliterature on consumer behavior. For example, the lead-ing textbook on consumer behavior toda-y features a“ Everett M. Rogers is Professor, Institute for CommunicationResearch, Stanford university. The present paper borrows, inplaces, from RoEers ( 1975 b).-..chapter on the diffusion and adoption of innovations.Many marketing texts these days have a chapter ondiffusion, or at least give considerable coverage to suchtopics as the innovation-decision process, adopter cate-gories, opinion leadership, and the S-shaped diffusioncurve.Further, about 8 percent of the 1,800 publicationsdealing with empirical research on the difision of iSS-novations, available to date, were authored by research-ers associated with the field of marketing. These stud-ies, mostly conducted since the mid-1960s, focus onnew products as innovations. The present paper dealsnot only with these 8 percent of all diffusion publica-tions but also with the other 92 percent, since I believethat the findings, methodologies, and theoretic frame-works from research on various types of innovationshas applicability to consumers* adoption of new prod-ucts. The adoption of most innovations entails the pur-chase of a new product, although this fact has often notbeen recognized by diffusion scholars.THE RISE OF DIFFUS1ON RESEARCHAS AN INVISIBLE COLLEGEFrom Revolutionary Paradigm to Classical ModelThe origins of research on the diffusion of innova-tions trace from ( 1 ) the German-Austrian and theBritish schools of diffusionism in anthropology (whosemembers claimed that most changes in a society re-sulted from the introduction of innovations from othersocieties ) and (2) the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde(1903), who pioneered in proposing the S-shaped dif-fusion curve and the role of opinion leaders in the pro-cess of “imitation.” But the %evolutionary parad@rst’*I~i!i1i. . ., . . . ..for diffusion research occurred in the early- l~40s u%en .two sociologists, Bryce Ryan and Neal Gross (1943),published their seminal study of the diffusion of hybridseed com among Iowrt farmers.Any given field of scientific research begins with a290JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH . Vol. 2 ● March 1976336.-.,L:tdr-SId4;.nh,-ns-3e.st.:-.,-.,:●,t. i.,,.,.,,.,-....—NEW PRODUCT ADOPTION AND DIFFUSION291major breakthrough or reconceptualization that pro-vides a new way of looking at some phenomenon(Kuhn, 1962). This revolutionary paradi=m typicallysets off a furious amount of intellectual cflon as prom-ising young scjernists are auractcd to tie field, eitherto advance the new conceptuali=tion with their re-search or to disprove certain of its aspects. Gradually,a scientific consensus about the field is developed, andperhaps after several generations of academic scholars,the “invisible college” (composed of researchers on acommon topic who are linked by communication ties)declines in scientific inlerest as fewer findings of an ex-citing nature are turned up. These are the usual stagesin the normal grou~h of science, Kuhn (1962) claims.Research on the diffusion of innovations has fol-lmved these rise-and-fall stages rather closely, althoughthe final stage of demise has not yet begun (Crane,1,800‘1,600‘1,400Ib1,200“1,000‘800‘600t400tt1972 ). The hybrid com snsdy set forth a new approach “to the studv ‘of communication and charwc that wassoon follou<d up by an increasing number= of-+cholarsin a wide variety of scientific fields. Wilhin 10 years(by 1952 ), over 100 diffusion researches iycte com-pleted; during the next decade (by 1962), atuxher 450;and by the end of 1974, another ] ,250. SO today thereare over 2,700 publications about the diffusion of inno-~ations, including about 1,800 empirical research re-ports and 900 other writings (Figure 1 ).1 The amountof scientific activity in investigating the diffusion ofinnovations has increased at an exponential rate (dou-I All of these 1.800 empirical research publications, plusanother 900 nonempirical publications (bibliographies. thcore~-ical works. e[c. ), are held in the Diffusion Doeumcms Centerin the Department of Population Planning at the Universi~y ofMichigan. A bibliography of shese 2.700 items (Rogers andThomas, 1975 ) is available from the