So, welcome again everyone, now we're getting into module 2.
Module 2, I think is going to be really fascinating.
It's all about how to try and find those lead users,
those special people who are really going to engage with our brand.
It's going to be about how they connect to each other in various networks,
how influence spreads and all of those good and kind of interesting things.
But just to establish our platform, I want to share with you one of the most,
I think, fundamental things that we think about in a marketing course or
in a marketing sense.
This is the notion of the Product Life Cycle.
So the Product Life Cycle says that every product goes through at least four stages.
First of all, a product is introduced, then it goes into a growth phase,
then it matures and then eventually the product declines.
And of course, at the very beginning, there has to be some research and
development done to bring the product to life.
So, as you can see on the screen, the sales kind of take off, peak and
then they peter out at the end.
Now of course, underlying that, that's the result for
the product, are the people themselves who are driving the process.
And what we want to do is to try and
figure out how to get that process going as quickly as possible.
And to identify the people on the left of the curve, who are really the innovative
ones who are going to spread word of mouth and bring other people into the fold.
So again, this is an old idea from Everett Rogers,
who was a professor who came up with this theory of defusion of innovation and
he said, you know, there are kind of five sorts of people out there.
And maybe you can think about what group you fit into for what kinds of products.
So they're first of all, there are Innovators.
Those people are the people who just run out and
buy new products on their own without any need to talk to other people.
And they're thought to account for about two and a half percent of the population.
The next group, the so-called Early Adopters, they account for about 13 and
a half percent of the population.
Going on from those people are the Early Majority.
They are another 34%, so now we're at 50% of the curve.
Now we're going to move over to the right side.
The next 34% are the so-called Late Majority and then finally,
this is probably my favorite group, I have the Laggards.
These are the people who come to the party last.
Now it's quite possible that you could be an Early Adopter when it comes to
cell phone technology.
You're one of the first people to get the Samsung or the iPhone.
But you're a Laggard in some other area.
You're a Laggard when it comes to televisions,
you don't really care about having the latest TV.
So what we're going to be talking about over the next few sessions are how do we
really focus on those innovative people, how do we understand their networks, and
how do we understand how information flows.
This is also a brief foundational concept for part number three, or
week three, because when we think about doing advertising, or
setting prices, or sending products through a channel, in many ways we
need to think about the stage of development that the product is in.
So we may price differently at the beginning of the product life cycle
compared to the end.
We may use different kinds of advertising messages.
And certainly we will have different sorts of distribution channels for the product.
So again this is a good one to internalize.
It's somewhat controversial sometimes, but I think it's still a great way to get
our minds around how products pick up, take off and eventually go into decline.
[MUSIC]
Christian TerwieschAndrew M. Heller Professor at the Wharton School, Senior Fellow Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics Co-Director, Mack Institute of Innovation Management
