4 Products, 5 Factors - Understanding Diffusion
In our next class of branding, we’re looking at how innovations diffuse and gain adoption. We also learn about Rogers’ Five Factors, which are used as a framework to understand how quickly innovations spread.
With this product, Kennedy targets individuals who find spreading peanut butter (PB) with a knife is too much effort. This product might do well if targeted towards parents who would like to enable their kids to feed themselves PB&J sandwiches. I can imagine children watching commercials during cartoon time that heavily market this product. Then, when the parents are out grocery shopping, the kids can come running to them about how awesome the PB slices are.
Through the article, we know that the producer has met a few challenges along the way, such as getting the right consistency with FDA-approved ingredients, so we might be able to trust that the final product is edible. My concern is that there doesn’t appear to be any significant research to determine whether people who don’t want to dirty a knife to spread PB prefer to have it in sliced form. My proposition for targeting parents isn’t what they’re thinking. They’re oddly specific about dirty knives being an issue, and I believe that’s a hard market to reach. There is also no mention of how to store the product. Does it need to be refrigerated? If so, I would ask how often people eat refrigerated PB. I am personally not a fan of cold and hard peanut butter.
From the five factors standpoint, I’m not convinced about the relative advantage of the slices. It might take up more space in the fridge than it does in the pantry. The cold factor would definitely deter me. Also, are they individually wrapped? Will they be messy? Is the packaging recyclable? I do like PB&J sandwiches, but I also use peanut butter in more complicated recipes. I’m not sure sliced PB is compatible as a cooking ingredient. Will it be more expensive? If so, I’d probably still purchase a bottle of PB, at which point I’d probably skip the PB slices. I’d expect this is a simple product, so adoption won’t be limited on that front. It will probably also be priced reasonably, so parents wouldn’t oppose trying it if they market it as I proposed. As for observability, I don’t believe this will play a role in how quickly this product goes mainstream. Who looks inside other people’s sandwiches?
With this invention, Fitzsimons targets a problem than many people experience - bicycle storage. As an engineer, he is thinking about the multiple situations where a standard bicycle is too cumbersome to deal with in day-to-day life, and he proposed a new solution to this problem. The bike with collapsible wheels would attract city dwellers and commuters alike since a common concern for these populations is bike storage to prevent theft.
My concern with this product is the price point. At $2k-6K, this is an expensive bicycle for everyday commuters and most city dwellers. If this product does make it to the market, I would expect very few customers would pick this bicycle. Even for those who have a budget large enough for a bicycle such as this one, they are probably looking for other features such as extremely lightweight, high performance, etc. We can see that this collapsible wheel feature slowly gets overshadowed by other features that are more important to someone to invest this much on a bicycle.
On Rogers’ five factors, we can see that the product is lined up to replace the original bicycle wheel design. The bicycle also works like a traditional bicycle in the sense that it gets you from one point to another. The additional effort required in collapsing the wheel does add to the complexity. Still, perhaps through the training material and great design, customers won’t be discouraged. Trialability and observability might pose a challenge. That price point for a bike might mean that customers aren’t even considering it when they’re shopping around. Stores might not even carry it.
The puzzles produced by Starve are not for everyone. These puzzles, starting at $500 for a small, are out of reach for typical consumers. Instead, these are probably targeted at individuals who have plenty of discretionary income and leisure time to engage in expensive puzzle solving. While the market for this population is reasonably small, the price point and allure might be enough to make this a viable business.
For the five factors, I’m not sure how valuable the relative advantage of this handcrafted puzzle will be. Sure, it’s higher quality than a cardboard puzzle. Still, I’m not sure consumers want this extreme level of quality from their puzzles. For compatibility, the puzzle is meant to be solved, but it’s more challenging than typical puzzles. The placement and direction of pieces aren’t as obvious. These puzzles are more complicated, but that is a feature puzzle solvers crave. Trialability is limited, however, to boutique shops that might sell the puzzles or observing a friend who may own one.
This product is intended for thoroughbred horse racetracks, implying that they’re probably targeting wealthy individuals who splurge on horse races. While I don’t know much about the sport, I do know that with all the betting that happens in these events, thoroughbred horse owners are keen on extending the usefulness of their horses. This could then be used at leverage to get racetrack venue owners to convert to the Polytrack material.
From the five factors perspective, the article highlights the superior quality of this material versus the traditional sand track. This provides a relative advantage if racehorse owners push for such a material to be used to replace existing racetracks. Other than special instructions required for installation, there is no added complexity to the racehorses or the jockeys. Trialability and observability are possible because once a track has been replaced, riders and owners will recognize the benefits of the track. This will help the material spread faster as racehorse owners demand it at other sites.
Of the four products we studied, I believe the Polytrack would spread the fastest. Only a select few sites need to pioneer the technology before racehorse owners demand it everywhere. The Starve puzzles will also spread, but not as quickly. This is purely a luxury item intended for personal enjoyment, and probably won’t be the first choice of entertainment for the vast majority of people. The sliced peanut butter might take off as a novelty item at first but ultimately will end up being too much of a gimmick to survive. The bicycle with collapsible wheels is too expensive for consumers to consider.
