The Importance of Peer-Peer Conversations and Peer Networks

The Importance of Peer-Peer Conversations and Peer Networks:

• The second important insight is that impersonal marketing methods like advertising and media stories may spread information about new innovations, but it is conversations that cause them to be adopted.
• Why? Because the adoption of new products or behaviours involves the management of risk and uncertainty.
• It’s usually only people we personally know and trust – and who we know have successfully adopted the innovation themselves – who can give us credible reassurances that our attempts to change won’t result in embarrassment, humiliation, financial loss or wasted time.
• Early adopters are the exception to this rule.
• They are on the lookout for advantages and tend to see the risks as low because they are financially more secure, more personally confident, and better informed about the particular product or behaviour.
• Often they will grasp at innovations on the basis of no more than a well worded news article.
• The rest of the population, however, see higher risks in change, and therefore require assurance from trusted peers that an innovation is do-able and provides genuine benefits.
• As an innovation spreads from early adopters to majority audiences, face-to-face communication therefore becomes more essential to the decision to adopt.
• This principle is embodied in the Bass Forecasting Model (below), which illustrates how of face-to-face communication becomes more influential over time, and mass media less influential.

• The emphasis on peer-peer communication has led diffusion scholars to be interested in peer networks.
• Many diffusion-style campaigns now consciously attempt to utilise peer networks, for instance by using Popular Opinion Leader techniques or various “viral marketing” methods. These methods – which are becoming increasingly popular – aim to recruit well-connected individuals to spread new ideas through their own social networks.