I think there is an unseen earthquake in the Bell Curve!!

Reading the title of this post, I am dead sure that majority of you may be thinking as to what this slim and weird guy means by "BELL CURVE"?. For those of you who are not the student of Marketing, I will take excuse from the ones who knows marketing and would cover up the next few lines of this post with the definition and history of Bell Curve and its resemblance to Marketing.

Everette Rogers  , professor of rural sociology, explains in his famous book "Diffusion of Innvoations" about how the purchasing psychology of individual vary from person to person. He says that there are 5 types of categories into which these individual patterns can be captured and segregated, 

1. Innovators,

2. Early Adopters,

3. Early Majority,

4. Late Majority and 

5. Laggards.

These categories are shown in the picture just beside. This is based on a concept of Mathematics called "BELL CURVE".

Let us try and see it in a more simpler way. Let us pick and put the following categories into one i.e.

the Early Adopters, Early Majority and Late Majority into one segment and term them as Masses. 

So now we have three categories i.e 1) Innovators 2)Masses and 3) Laggards

- Innovators are the one who are nerds and geeks who doesn't hesitate to try on new things and are the first one to use the newly launched products. This segment of the "Diffusion in Innovation" Theory are crazy about the product they prefer and want to have the hands on experience with the product as soon as it is launched.

- Masses are the ones who buys or owns the products once it is proven to be a hit or a good product in the market. These are mostly calculative buyers who spends on a product only after a certain period of time and they are mostly reviews driven.

-Laggards are the one who are last in the que. They are the last to adopt the product or in buying the product. 

It is very important to note that in every area of interest, different individual may put them into different segments. For example; a farmed my have interest in buying the seed in a innovators manner and may have an laggard approach in buying a mobile. On the other hand a student may have an innovators approach in buying a Mobile phone. So it differs from person to person on the basis of their tastes and preferences. 

This theory has been in use for long by Marketers. But according to me, now the bell curve is changing and sensing an earthquake affect.There are more and more people willing to be innovators now a days and are ready to buy the new products. Even the Marketers are trying to turn the Masses and the Laggards into the Innovators because of the ever changing technologies and quick changes in the products specializations.

We now live in a society with more people more willing to change more often. And that means your customers are restless, and more likely to switch if you don't treat them the way they want to be treated. .. And they just want to be treated as INNOVATORS........ 

Regards,
Rohit Tiwari