Adoption Process

Adoption process is a series of stages by which a consumer might adopt a NEW product or service. Whether it be Services or Products, in todays competitive world, a consumer is faced with a lot of choices. How does he make a decision to ADOPT a new product is the Adoption process.

There are numerous stages of adoption which a consumer goes through. These stages may happen before or even after the actual adoption.

1. Awareness – This is the area where major marketeers spend billions of dollars. Simply speaking, if you are not AWARE of the product, you are never going to BUY the product.
2. Interest and Information Search – Once you are aware, you start searching for information. Whether it be your daily soap, your car or for that matter your home, you wont buy it unless you KNOW about it.
3. Evaluation / Trial – Evaluation is wherein you test or have a trial of the product. This is pretty difficult in services as services are generally intangible in nature. However service marketing managers do find ways of offering Trial packs to users. Comparatively, it is pretty easier in Product marketing and finds a major usage in BTL ( Below the Line) sales promotion.
4. Adoption – The actual adoption of the product. Wherein the consumer finally decides to adopt the product.

Although this is  a well scripted adoption process, however consumers might tend to skip over the whole process. For example you wife asks you to buy a product for her. Would you go through the process of actually collecting information, Evaluating it and than making a decision??? I dont think so!!! So in this case (Word of Mouth) the consumer tends to directly adopt the product rather than going through stages. This is one of the primary reason word of mouth is so much in demand.

On the other hand, The process might end in Rejection. Any of the stages can result in rejection of the product. No brand recall,  No interest generated, Trial improper, Product didnt satisfy, so on and so forth.

The task of the marketer here is to understand what is involved in the psychological adoption process of consumers for particular product and service in order to be able to positively influence such consumers at appropriate stages. Only when this process has been understood we can encourage our consumers to actually purchase the product / service offering.

For example –

• Product trial may be an important stage to be completed before adopting some new products such as newly flavored soft drinks, prompting marketers to offer free samples of the products in supermarkets.
• One strategy adopted in FMCG’s is to give away small trial-sized packages of products such as shampoos or laundry detergents to encourage adoption. Yet, in adopting other products such as mobile phones, awareness, interest, and evaluation become more essential. Thus in these sectors, marketers emphasize on marketing communications and promotions to lead consumers towards adopting their product.
• Finally, Market research needs to be done by marketers to understand the time and effort taken by the consumer in each stage of the adoption process so as to lead the consumer to the final stage of ADOPTION.