Early Adopters Measuring a Niche Audience Bite Sized Thought Piece 2008 The term 'Early Adopters' was first coined by Everett M. Rogers in his book, 'Diffusions of Innovations' (1962), where he proposed that the uptake of any new innovation or idea was staged and that the rate of adoption can be categorised by five groups – innovators; early adopters; early majority; late majority; and laggards.

Adoption Curve Users of a product or service 100

75

% 50

25

0 Innovators Early Adopters Early Majority Late Majority Laggards

Early adopters are an attractive group of people to advertisers. They are generally perceived to be those who are interested in new ideas and technologies, often trialling and purchasing before others. They are also likely to have a shorter renewal cycle and to be more interested in researching and seeking out new technology. Consequently, they represent a relatively small proportion of the population and a challenge for quantitative survey measurement. Defining this niche audience Traditional demographic classifications provide the basic currency for media buying. However, they are not ideal when trying to target a niche audience and can result in wastage of advertising expenditure. Therefore, researchers seek to define early adopters more tightly in order to achieve more cost-effective targeting.

Measures can be used to define early adopters based on individual or household ownership of technology items. This is a straightforward approach and can be easily implemented on a survey.

A stronger classification may be to establish how these technologies are used rather than if they are owned. For example, a number of people own internet-enabled PCs and laptops but a better discriminator may be establishing how many are downloading music or watching films via the Internet. Furthermore, people may have received such items as a gift, so may not be active early adopters.

A further consideration is to extend the definition to attitudes rather than behaviour. This may lend itself to ask agree/disagree questions for a battery of statements, for example 'I love to buy new gadgets', 'People come to me for information on new technology' and so on.

It may be that a combination of the responses to questions on ownership, behaviour and attitudes provides the best definition of an early adopter. Finding early adopters The measurement of niche audiences often relies on surveys with large, nationally representative samples in order to reach them in sufficient numbers, whether for screening for further research or for data analysis. Capturing early adopters represents one such challenge.

Online methods, such as access panels, could be considered in order to provide a cost-effective option for reaching this group. It is often felt that there is a correlation between early adoption and regular Internet usage.

This could be a good route for exploring behaviours or creating a research community. However, caution would be needed if the intention were to run analyses on media consumption – Internet usage is itself correlated with usage of other media.

Often, advertisers want to know if a media brand delivers an above average proportion of a target market in its audience. For this, nationally representative samples are usually required to provide reliable estimates of the penetration of niche audiences. In-street or in-home interviews may be suitable for screening purposes. Keeping up with the latest technologies Whatever the approach used, there will be a need to keep up to date with new technologies that are available in the market. With a dedicated Technology team and our own in-house tracking studies in Ipsos MediaCT, we have access to a wealth of data relating to new technology.

Looking for owners and users of new technology items is likely to yield very small sample sizes. Nevertheless it is sometimes possible to identify a large enough sample by asking questions about a range of items used or owned, as well as frequency of replacement or intention to purchase.

New products coming on stream and moving into the mass-market means that the questions asked need to be updated on a regular basis. For example, purchasing an HD-ready television may have been considered early adoption one or two years ago, but is now fast becoming mainstream. One should be careful of the terminology used in order to minimise any possible mis-claiming. As dedicated media and technology specialists we recognise the importance of emerging technologies in a rapidly converging digital world and apply this knowledge to researching niche audiences, of which early adopters are a good example.

For more information, please contact:

John Carroll, Director Matthew Hester, Director Tel.: +44(0)20 8861 8114 Tel.: +44(0)20 8861 8210 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] www.ipsos-mori.com www.ipsos-mori.com