126 The Marketing Book
additional benefits to the consumer that were
not previously available. Electric lawnmowers,
for instance, do the same job accomplished by
manual versions, but with less effort and more
quickly. Their ‘disruptiveness’ consists of the
change they effect in consumers’ lifestyles.
These moderately novel products which do a
known job better are called dynamically con-
tinuous innovations. Finally, there are the most
familiar ‘new’ products of all, the improved
shampoos, slightly faster cars, third editions of
successful textbooks. These are minimally dis-
ruptive of established consumption patterns;
they allow life to go on much as before but
provide the benefits of the most recent develop-
ments in technology and thought. They are
continuous innovations.
Genuinely discontinuous innovations are
few and far between. When such an item is
introduced, it is the first brand in a wholly new
product class, right at the beginning of the
product life cycle (Howard and Moore, 1982).
People are often suspicious of such radical
innovations. Most prefer to wait and see what
happens to the first adopters before they
themselves make a purchase. The consumers
who do buy at this stage are usually highly
involved in the product field. They are heavy
users of whatever preceded the innovation –
perhaps radio and movies in the case of
television, audio cassettes in the case of VCRs,
conventional air travel in the case of Concorde.
In terms of personality factors, they have an
apparent ‘need for newness’, wanting to be the
first to try novel ideas and thereby to commu-
nicate them to other, more cautious consumers
who buy later, if at all. They are better off than
these later adopters, have a higher social status,
are upwardly mobile, better educated, and
socially integrated with broader horizons.
All of this adds up to a strong personal
interest in the product field or what has become
known as high involvement. Their decision
processes are not necessarily longer or more
intensive than those of later adopters; it
depends how familiar they are personally with
the product field and the new product. In a lot
of cases, because of their heavy use of its
precedents, they require very little information
processing before quickly adopting the dis-
continuous innovation (cf. Howard, 1989). In
other cases, where their personal innovative-
ness relies more on having the money to spend
and seeking the status of being first, they may
need to go through most of the stages in the
consumer choice process shown in Figure 6.1
before testing the water. What sets both types of
early consumer off from later adopters is the
degree of involvement they show in the prod-
uct, their personal interest (in both senses) in
possessing and using it, and in showing it off.
Their decision process is likely to have
been formal: they became aware of the innova-
tion through their more accentuated use of the
mass media for such items; their search and
evaluation procedures will have been deliber-
ative, even though there is limited information
to go on. They may have insisted on trying the
product before buying if this is feasible and will
have been eager to ascertain its compatibility
with their present lifestyle and practices, its
advantages relative to what they already use,
and maybe its conspicuousness in use (since
they are often motivated by the thought of
being seen with the radically novel). They are
likely to minimize the risks and the complex-
ities involved in owning and operating the
innovation, while those who do not adopt at
this stage will magnify these ‘problems’.
New products that survive the introduc-
tion stage of the life cycle attract the attention
not only of consumers but of other manu-
facturers. As the product progresses through
the growth stage of the cycle, it is likely to be
modified by the original marketer and those
who are drawn to enter the field by the
expectation of high profits. All of these suppli-
ers introduce changes to the product, tailoring
it to the needs of successive market segments
and incorporating technological changes as
they are created. The new versions they market
are often dynamically continuous innovations
which attract the initially sceptical consumer,
who now sees that the early promise of the