Understanding the Needs of Different User Segments
Understanding the Needs of Different User Segments:
- Diffusion Segments of Innovation:
- (1) Innovators
- (2) Early Adopters
- (3) Early Majorities
- (4) Late Majorities
- (5) Laggards
- (6) Persistent Septics
Innovators:
- Often lavish great time, energy and creativity on developing new ideas and gadgets.
- How to work with Innovators:
- Invite keen innovators to be partners in designing the project.
- Recruit and train them as Peer Educators.
Early Adopters:
- On the lookout for a strategic leap forward in their lives or businesses,
- Quick to make connections between clever innovations and their personal needs.
- Tend to be more economically successful, well connected and well informed and hence more socially respected.
- How to work with Early Adopters:
- Offer strong face-to-face support for a limited number of early adopters to trial the new idea.
- Study the trials carefully to discover how to make the idea more convenient, low cost and marketable.
- Reward their egos e.g. with media coverage.
- Promote them as Fashion Leaders (beginning with the cultish end of the media market).
- Maintain relationships with regular feedback.
Early Majority:
- Pragmatists, comfortable with moderately progressive ideas, but won’t act without solid proof of benefits.
- Want to hear “industry standard” and “endorsed by normal, respectable folks”.
- Looking for simple, proven, better ways of doing what they already do.
- Require:
- Guaranteed off-the-shelf performance,
- Minimum disruption,
- Minimum commitment of time,
- Minimum learning,
- Cost neutrality,
- Rapid payback periods.
- How to work with the Early Majority:
- Offer give-aways or competitions to stimulate buzz.
- Use mainstream advertising and media stories featuring endorsements from credible, respected, similar folks.
- Lower the entry cost and guarantee performance.
- Redesign to maximise ease and simplicity.
- Cut the red tape: simplify application forms and instructions.
- Provide strong customer service and support.
Late Majority:
- Conservative pragmatists who hate risk and are uncomfortable with new ideas.
- Practically their only driver is the fear of not fitting in, hence they will follow mainstream fashions and established standards.
- Often influenced by the fears and opinions of Laggards.
- How to work with the Late Majority:
- Focus on promoting social norms rather than just product benefits:
- Want to hear that other conservative folks like them think it’s normal or indispensable.
- Keep refining the product to increase convenience and reduce costs.
- Emphasise the risks of being left behind.
- Respond to criticisms from Laggards.
- Focus on promoting social norms rather than just product benefits:
Laggards:
- See a high risk in adopting a particular product or behavior.
- Worried they stay awake all night, tossing and turning, thinking up arguments against it.
- How to work with Laggards:
- Give them high levels of personal control over when, where, how they do the new behavior.
- Maximize their familiarity with new products or behaviours.
- Let them see other Laggards successfully adopting the innovation.
How big is each segment?
- Innovators: 2.5%
- Early Adopters: 13.5%
- Early majority: 34%
- Late majority: 34%
- Laggards: 16%