The Marketing Book 5th Edition

MARKET INITIATORS

Consumer decision making: process, level and style 129

Although personality measures have
proved generally poor predictors of consumer
behaviour, a considerable body of evidence has
identified the personality profile of the earliest
adopters of innovations. Market initiators
emerge as individuals who have a broader
perceptual category width than later adopters,
i.e. they perceive novel products as more closely
related to those already in use than do the later
buyers. Market initiators also show greater
tolerance of ambiguity, flexibility, self-esteem
and tendency towards sensation seeking than
do the later adopters. The evidence in each study
is somewhat weak, though positive, but the
rationale for expecting market initiators to show
an innovative cognitive style stems from the fact
that these five cognitive-personality factors also
correlate highly and consistently with the KAI,
indicating that innovators, as defined by Kirton,
are more likely to possess these traits than
adaptors.

Studies of consumers’ food

purchasing

However, the results of an investigation of the
cognitive styles of initial adopters of general

new food brands were enigmatic given the

expectation that these market initiators would

be innovators (Foxall, 1995). KAI scores of

respondents did not correlate with the number

of new brands purchased and 40 per cent of the

sample were adaptors. Most intriguing of all

was the finding that the consumers who bought

the largest number of new brands were adapt-

ors. A similar pattern of results was apparent

from a second study, this time of ‘healthy’ food

products, those promoted on the basis of their

alleged contribution to consumers’ health and

welfare, such as wholemeal flour, low sodium

salt and low calorie meals. At the time of the

study, these products were new to super-

markets; prior to that time they had to be

obtained from specialist health food stores.

Again, the expected correlation did not appear

and again 40 per cent of the sample were

adaptors. Moreover, purchasers of the very

highest level of new products in this class were

adaptive (Foxall, 1995).

A possible reason for this unanticipated

result emerged from further consideration of

adaption–innovation theory. Innovators are

likely to purchase novel items impulsively,

independently and perhaps haphazardly. By

Figure 6.2 Initiators and imitators