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.

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%