What are the five stages of the consumer adoption process in the correct sequence?

Back to Rogers’ research, we see that not everyone will immediately adopt a disruptive idea despite obvious benefits. Over years of research, Rogers identified some fascinating personality traits that help us organize how people will accept a new innovation. It turns out we approach innovations in the following ways.

(From Diffusion of Innovations)

Innovators (2.5%) – Innovators are the first individuals to adopt an innovation. Innovators are willing to take risks, youngest in age, have the highest social class, have great financial lucidity, very social and have closest contact to scientific sources and interaction with other innovators. Risk tolerance has them adopting technologies which may ultimately fail. Financial resources help absorb these failures. (Rogers 1962 5th ed, p. 282)

Early Adopters (13.5%) – This is the second fastest category of individuals who adopt an innovation. These individuals have the highest degree of opinion leadership among the other adopter categories. Early adopters are typically younger in age, have a higher social status, have more financial lucidity, advanced education, and are more socially forward than late adopters. More discrete in adoption choices than innovators. Realize judicious choice of adoption will help them maintain central communication position (Rogers 1962 5th ed, p. 283).

Early Majority (34%) – Individuals in this category adopt an innovation after a varying degree of time. This time of adoption is significantly longer than the innovators and early adopters. Early Majority tend to be slower in the adoption process, have above average social status, contact with early adopters, and seldom hold positions of opinion leadership in a system (Rogers 1962 5th ed, p. 283)

Late Majority (34%) – Individuals in this category will adopt an innovation after the average member of the society. These individuals approach an innovation with a high degree of skepticism and after the majority of society has adopted the innovation. Late Majority are typically skeptical about an innovation, have below average social status, very little financial lucidity, in contact with others in late majority and early majority, very little opinion leadership.

Laggards (16%) – Individuals in this category are the last to adopt an innovation. Unlike some of the previous categories, individuals in this category show little to no opinion leadership. These individuals typically have an aversion to change-agents and tend to be advanced in age. Laggards typically tend to be focused on “traditions”, likely to have lowest social status, lowest financial fluidity, be oldest of all other adopters, in contact with only family and close friends, very little to no opinion leadership.

If we were to graph these groups, we’d see the standard bell shape curve:

Where blue represents the groups of consumer adopting a new technology and yellow is the market share which obviously reaches 100% following complete adoption. This is the point of market saturation.

Which One Are You?

It is important to note that individuals do not always line up as “Innovators” in all areas of their decision making processes. For example, a person may adopt cutting-edge green technologies for their home with solar heating and yet not belong to an online social network or own a smartphone. We bounce back and forth across the curve in large part based on the pain points we are trying to solve and our interest in the underpinnings of the change presented.

Bonus: While this research can seem a bit high-level, it has profound real-world impacts on how technology products and services get adopted. Many entrepreneurs and marketers fail to take into account that you must move from left to right in the adoption curve. As a result, they drastically overestimate their market size and how much work and time will go into getting a disruptive idea into the mainstream. For a detailed must-read in this area that builds on Rogers’ research with real-world examples from the tech space, check out Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore.

We’ve broken the concept of product adoption into five key stages, outlined product adoption metrics, and provided some strategies for how to improve product adoption.

What is product adoption?

Product adoption refers to how customers embrace and use a product. It is the way in which customers discover a new product, understand its purpose and value, and then continue to use it as intended.

When product adoption is strong, that typically means the following:

• The trial period of your product has proved to have value
• Effective onboarding helps make adoption seamless and fast
• Product design and usability are seamless
• The product is the right market fit
• The company has a feedback tool in place to gather customer feedback to identify and solve issues quickly

When product adoption is not strong, it can mean the following:

• The onboarding process is arduous or confusing
• Product design or interface isn’t intuitive
• The trial didn’t prove value quickly enough
• The product is not reaching the target audience
• Customers are attempting to give feedback but the product lacks the tools to ingest and act on this information

The five stages of product adoption

Stage #1: Awareness

Obviously, customers are not going to adopt your product if they do not know about it in the first place. Digital and mobile marketing can help direct potential new customers to your product whether that lives in the app stores or elsewhere. As in all marketing, it is important to help audiences understand and solve their problems – with your product being the solution.

Stage #2: Research and discovery

After your potential customers are aware of your product, it is up to you to make sure they understand the value of your product. Whether this is compelling website copy, detailed app store listings, useful screenshots, etc., it’s critical to quickly and effectively educate customers on how your product can solve their specific problems.

Stage #3: Evaluation and decision-making

Once customers have gathered all of the information they need in the research and discovery phase, it’s time for them to make a decision. At this stage, understanding your competition is critical because your customers are likely comparing your product to other similar products. You want to stand out from the crowd, prove value, and entice customers to choose your product over anything else.

Stage #4: Trial

Whether or not your product is free, there is always a trial period of sorts. This can be in the form of a free trial before paying a fee or it can just be the first few days of using your product. Regardless, this is the testing phase where customers actually try your product for the first time. It helps them understand if they want to continue using your product or move on to a competitor instead. This is your most important opportunity to prove your product’s value.

Stage #5: Adoption OR rejection

Ultimately, there comes a point where your customers are either going to adopt or reject your product. Even though this is technically the last stage of product adoption, the work certainly does not stop here. In fact, product adoption should always be an ongoing process of collecting feedback from active customers, analyzing it, and then acting on it. Customers can leave at any point, so it’s critical to continue providing value time and time again – not just after they become regular customers.

How to measure product adoption

Some of the KPIs product managers should measure when onboarding new customers or launching a new product include:

• Trial conversions: How many people adopt your product after their free trial has expired?
• Reach: Understanding how widely the new feature/product/offering is being used can help validate product decisions, identify high-value features, and highlight key areas for improvement.
• Depth: It’s critical to understand the extent to which customers are using your product or new feature.
• Time: Understanding how long it takes customers to adopt a new feature and actually start using it can help you quickly identify friction in the onboarding process.
• Retention: How long do users continue to use a feature after learning about it? Do they just try it out a few times or continue to use it over the course of months and years?

Strategies to increase product adoption

There are five key strategies to increasing product adoption. We dive into each one more deeply in this article if you want to learn more.

1. Understand your ideal customer
2. Define success metrics
3. Make onboarding a continual process
4. Proactively communicate in-app
5. Consistently ask for customer feedback

Combine these product adoption strategies with a mobile feedback solution like Apptentive, and you’ll quickly see increased customer lifetime. Get started today!

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