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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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