Explain the Product Adoption Process and the Product Adoption Categories or Groups.

Customers learn about new products, try them, and buy or reject them. There are five stages that adopters of new products exhibit –

1) Awareness – the prospect becomes aware of the new product but doesn’t has details about it.

2) Interest – the prospect seeks information about the product and wishes to explore the benefits of the product.

3) Evaluation – the prospect considers the benefits and is inclined to try it.

4) Trial – the prospect tries the product and assess the value of the product for him/her (importance).

5) Adoption – the prospect buys the product and may become a regular buyer if satisfied.
Some customers buy products more quickly than others and vice versa. An individual can be categorised into different groups depending on how quickly they adopt a new product.

These groups are –

1) Innovators – they are willing to try new ideas. They help get the product exposure.

2) Early adopters – these people adopt new ideas early but carefully. They serve as the opinion leaders.

3) Early majority – these form around 34% of the market and adopt a new product earlier than an average consumer.

4) Late majority – these people buy the product only after majority of the market has bought the product. They want to avoid the risk of buying a product with defects.

5) Laggards – these are the people who mostly resist change and adopt a product only once it is not considered an innovation. They are tradition bound and buy the product as a tradition.

Advantages of Market Testing are –
• Easy and less risky to do variations to the marketing mix elements.
• Helps define target groups and buyer behaviour.
• Realistic market response obtained rather than relying on market research data and past experience.
• Limited investment needed.
• Forecast of sales, costs, and profits of the total market can be made.
• If the product is not accepted in the test market, there is less negative impact on brand reputation, costs of production, cost on other marketing efforts, and less unsatisfied customers.

Disadvantages of Market testing are –
• Risk of getting information about the new product being leaked to competitors.
• Competitors getting hold of the product which can result in a similar product launch from them.
• Difficult to influence distributors as most of them don’t agree for sale in a small area (Test market).
• Lot of efforts needed to get the right area as Test Market.
• Information interpretation received from market testing may delay the introduction of the new product in the whole market.
• Competitors may buy lot of products to create inaccuracy in the test data.