So, You Don’t Own a Virtual Reality Headset. What Does That Say About You?

This year Apple demoed its first virtual reality (VR) headset, and Meta slashed the prices of its VR headset models. This corporate activity has motivated me to blog about innovative products like VR headsets.

In this post, I will describe consumer behavior toward innovative products and discuss some behavioral implications.

Most of us don’t own a VR headset or real estate in the metaverse. These innovative products are yet to take off.

Innovative products attract users gradually. Some users adopt the product very early, some later, and others much later. How do users, who adopt innovative products at different times, differ?

Classification of Adopters

We can classify adopters of innovations into five groups based on when they adopted the innovation.¹ These groups are:

1. Innovators (2.5 percent)
2. Early adopters (13.5 percent)
3. Early majority (34 percent)
4. Late majority (34 percent)
5. Laggards (16 percent)

Innovators, the first group, actively research novel products and are eager to use them. Their adoption decisions are self-driven and not influenced by the actions of others.

VR headset innovators were likely VR software & hardware professionals, VR academics, cutting-edge technology enthusiasts, and gaming fanatics.

The adoption decision of the other four groups is significantly influenced by word of mouth and or seeing others use the product.

I would guess the current first-time buyers of VR headsets are early adopters.

Early adopters are less offbeat consumers than innovators and tend to be opinion leaders in their social networks. Their positive opinions will attract more conventional consumers to adopt VR headsets—the early majority.

The early majority, who value advice from early adopters, are instrumental in mainstreaming innovative products.

In contrast, the late majority become users only after the product is mainstream.

Laggards resist change and adopt innovations reluctantly, sometimes out of compulsion.

Your Adoption Behavior

Given that consumption is a significant aspect of our lives, it’s wise to reflect on our consumption behavior. This reflection could lead us to modify our behavior for our betterment.

In reflecting on your behavior toward innovative products, where do you belong in the innovator, …, laggard categorization?

Upon thought, one aspect that comes to mind is that adoption categorization is product specific. For instance, as an environmentally conscious consumer, you might have been an innovator in adopting electric cars but have yet to embrace video gaming systems.

To figure out where we belong, generally speaking, in the adoption categorization, we must mentally strip away the effect of product type and demographic characteristics, such as age and income, on our adoption behavior.

Adoption Behavior Modification

For an extreme comparison, let’s assume we are more laggards than innovators. How should we act, if at all, when we realize we are laggards?

Can laggards become innovators? Not really. The two personalities are strikingly different. It is unlikely laggards would try to be innovators, no matter how much someone persuaded them to change.

Innovators and laggards are at the fringes; the meat of the adoption process is among the early and late majorities, almost 70 percent of adopters.

Assuming it is desirable to be earlier in the adoption timeline, I believe it is worthwhile for a typically late majority adopter to try to be more like the early majority.

The late majority adopt the product after it becomes mainstream because they expect a lower price, a bug-free product, enhanced product features, fully developed customer support, and seamless compatibility with existing consumption.

The early majority also values the above benefits but not as much as the late majority. The early majority are more experiential. They relish the excitement, enjoyment, and satisfaction of trying something novel. And they would regret not having adopted an innovation sooner if they adopted it late and found the experience rewarding.

Our adoption decision has emotional and rational elements. I conjecture that the late majority’s adoption decision is less emotionally and hedonistically driven than the early majority’s decision. The late majority is dominated by utilitarian concerns.

VR Headset

If we don’t own a VR headset and don’t intend to buy one over the next couple of years, we are not among this product’s innovators or early adopters.

Most of us are likely to be among the early or late majority. If we are part of the early majority that’s fine.

However, if we are typically part of the late majority and will probably be late in adopting VR headsets, we might want to ponder early adoption.

To appreciate the worth of early adoption, we must become less uptight; and more appreciative of the experiential aspects of consumption.

 

REFERENCE and NOTES

The classification of adopters used here is by Everett Rogers, a rural sociologist who studied how novel ideas, technologies, and products gain acceptance in society.

¹Rogers, M.E. (2003) Diffusion of Innovations. 5th Edition, Free Pass, New York.

The five adopter groups are generalizations. This grouping is fraught with the typical limitations of categorization.

Income/affordability is an important determinant of adoption. However, the importance of affordability is often overstated, especially in an affluent country like the United States. When you perceive value in something, a seemingly high price appears more affordable.

The entire late majority group cannot transition to the early majority. That would be inconsistent with the logic of the adopter classification scheme. Behavior modification discussed here is at the individual level.

This post has a pro-innovation bias. It’s also more technology-focused; more and more new products are technology-intensive.

The adoption of innovations discussed here is regarding individual, and not organizational, consumers.

The diffusion of innovations is affected by market (country) conditions.

As a rough rule of thumb, if we find that half the people around us, such as colleagues, neighbors, friends, and relatives, own the innovation, and we don’t, we will be the late majority or laggards.