Product Adoption Process

Meaning of Product Adoption Process

Product adoption process refer to process of customers getting aware of new product, understanding it and finally adopting for usage. It is a mental process through which a person passes from initially knowing about innovated products to finally making purchase decisions. Process of product adoption serves as a mean via which people came to know about new product or services in market and then ultimately becomes regular user. It plays a key role in success of customers, being a crucial aspect of client’s health. Higher product adoption results in raising the customer retention rates, bringing down churns and better revenues for organizations. Companies which are able to build loyal set of customers find easy in upselling or cross-selling their products thereby leading to expansion of marketing footprint. 

Buyers of product may have some common needs but they are not alike in every aspect. The purchasers may vary from one another on distinct points which can be either their demographic characteristics, purchasing motives or buying behaviour. The adoption process was proposed by market experts in order to understand the buyers making product purchases during a course of its lifecycle. This process needs to be considered by management team for building an effective market penetration strategy. 

Stages in Process of Product Adoption  

There are six stages involved in product adoption process which are as discussed below: – 

1. Awareness stage: Product awareness stage is one where consumer initially get to know about products in market. The customer lacks information which creates interest in him for seeking details about new product. He discusses with his friend, relatives, salesmen and dealers for grabbing enough information regarding innovation. Various means of advertisement, publicity or other efforts of marketer also serve as a key source of information to clients. The adopters during the awareness stage does not pay much attention to new product. 
2. Interest and information stage: During the interest and information stage, a prospect builds interest towards the innovative product and make efforts for acquiring detailed information. He tries to get product details either directly from the company or through distinct indirect sources. Customer is keen to know about features, qualities, functions, shape, size, color, price, brand, producers, incentives, availability and many other aspects. He is motivated to find out whether the innovation is related to their needs for which he collects as much information as he can. 
3. Product evaluation stage: Evaluation stage is where customer test the product using the accumulated information. Product is examined by customer from different aspects for knowing its real worth. Key aspects of product like quality, price, features, performance, after-sale services etc. are compared with existing products in market for finally arriving at a decision whether the innovation should be tried or not. Brands can make the decisions of clients in their favor by simply making their communication message clear and describing how their product differs from other similar products available. 
4. Trial stage: Trial or sampling stage is one where customer gets convinced about value propositions offered by brand and decide to try product. He decides to examine the product practically by trying out at small scale to get self-experience. Companies by providing free samples or running campaigns like money back guarantee can attract prospects towards their product trail without much introspection. Trial stage is the most significant stage of product adoption process where customer decides whether to buy a product or not. 
5. Adoption stage: It is where customer finally adopts and purchases the innovation. He will decide to go for regular or full use of new product in case if its trial results are found to be satisfactory. New product may be a good, service or an idea which is perceived as new by prospects. Various decisions related to model, quantity, type, dealer, payment, and several other product matters are taken by client in this stage. A consumer may use product either individually or jointly with other members.  
6. Post adoption behaviour stage: Post adoption behavior stage is the last stage of product adoption process. A customer will continue to buy the product frequently if he is satisfied with the quality of new product or its related services. He speaks favorably about brand to others after becoming a regular user of innovation. It is a very essential step for each marketer on which kind attention should be paid. 

Factors Influencing the Product Adoption Process

There are three important factors which influences the adoption process which are discussed in points given below: – 

1. People’s Readiness: All people differ in their willingness to accept the innovative products, services or ideas in market. There are some peoples who prefer adopting new market offers and therefore more frequently purchases the new products. Whereas, some persons are tradition bound who are more suspicious and prefer buying a product only when a masses start using it. 

In order to develop a better understanding of adaptor categories and find out who all are early adaptor, an extensive study on adaptors need to be performed by marketer. The study should be focused on psychographic, demographic and media characteristics of potential customers.     

2. Personal influence: Interpersonal influences plays a great role in decisions of human beings. The degree of its influences in buying decisions differs in accordance to purchasing situation and the individual in question. Many times, we gets affected more by others during the buying situations which is again determined by personality type of individual. An aggressive person is less likely to be influenced by other as compared to submissive ones. The personal influence more in case of complex buying situation where an individual is purchasing expensive items.   
3. Innovation characteristics: The characteristics of innovation affects the adoption process to great scale. Innovation characteristics are as follows:

• Relative advantage- A new product will be adopted more quickly if it is superior to present products. 
• Complexity- Lesser the complexity in innovation, faster will be its adoption rate. 
• Compatibility- Customer will adopt product sooner if it is compatible with their values and experiences. 
• Communicability- A innovative product will be adopted faster if its qualities or benefits can be easily observed. 
• Divisibility- There are more chances of adoption for innovation where it can be tried on sample basis. 

Techniques for Improving the Product Adoption

Some methods for enhancing the product adoption are: – 

1. Improve your onboarding: Proper onboarding is must for every business to provide satisfactory shopping experience to their customers. An ineffective onboarding may result in your business failure causing a lot of churns. People may fail to get your product potential if its user interface is complex, involving a lot of features and it is difficult to know from where to begin. Hence, if your onboarding is poor then it will render all your hard efforts to waste. Good onboarding improves customer retention rate, decrease support costs, raise revenue and enhance customer satisfaction level. 
2. Improve your support: Business should focus on building an efficient support team for guiding customers with regard to product. Customers are bound to leave if they are not able to understand your product even after the onboarding help. In such scenarios, support team should be more accessible who helps clients in each and every step they go through. There are very less chances that a customer will come back once he leaves. Therefore, you need to ensure what you do is right. Implementing measures such as chatbots, webinars, video tutorials and in-app chat can help in improving your customer support.
3. Improve your product: Quality of product is also the main determinant in its adoption process. Manytimes bad adoption rate of product is not just because of the onboarding and support team of brand, but it is because of inadequate built quality. For overcoming such issue, company must ask for feedback and suggestion from present users, opinions of current users should be fastrack and usability testing study should be carried out for knowing out the behavior of peoples who are using the product.