101: Consumer Innovation Decision Process

Innovations steer growth and development of companies. Most innovations however, fail at different stages of consumer adoption. Such failures are costly in general, more so for a start up company in particular. Lack of complete knowledge about how consumers process innovations could be a reason for failure. To manage innovations effectively, several scholars studied diffusion of innovations. Everett M Rogers, one of the prominent scholars of diffusion of innovations in his pioneering work suggested a framework to understand Consumer Innovation Decision Process. According to this model, “individual’s decision about an innovation is not an instantaneous act; rather it is a process that occurs over time and consists of a series of different actions”. In this process an individual or a decision making unit passes from gaining initial knowledge of an innovation, to forming an attitude toward the innovation, to making a decision to adopt or reject (Roger, 1960). As propounded in the Roger’s model, this process consists of five stages:

Knowledge when the individual is exposed to the innovation’s existence and gains an understanding of how it functions; Persuasion when the individual forms a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the innovation; Decision when the individual engages in activities that lead to a choice to adopt or reject the innovation; Implementation when the individual puts an innovation into use; and Confirmation when the individual seeks reinforcement for an innovation-decision already made but may reverse the decision if exposed to conflicting messages  (Everett M Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5^th Edition)