By Joel Cadwell
| A Flower That Fits the Bill |
Marketing borrows the biological notion of coevolution to explain the progressive “fit” between products and consumers. While evolutionary time may seem a bit slow for product innovation and adoption, the same metaphor can be found in models of assimilation and accommodation from cultural and cognitive psychology.
The digital camera was introduced as an alternative to film, but soon redefined how pictures are taken, stored and shared. The selfie stick is but the latest step in this process by which product usage and product features coevolve over time with previous cycles enabling the next in the chain. Is it the smartphone or the lack of fun that’s killing the camera?
The diffusion of innovation unfolds in the marketplace as a social movement with the behavior of early adopters copied by the more cautious. For example, “cutting the cord” can be a lifestyle change involving both social isolation from conversations among those watching live sporting events and a commitment to learning how to retrieve television-like content from the Internet. The Diary of a Cord-Cutter in 2015 offers a funny and informative qualitative account. Still, one needs the timestamp because cord-cutting is an evolving product category. The market will become larger and more diverse with more heterogeneous customers (assimilation) and greater differentiation of product offerings (accommodation).
So, we should be able to agree that product markets are the outcome of dynamic processes involving both producers and customers (see Sociocognitive Dynamics in a Product Market for a comprehensive overview). User-centered product design takes an additional step and creates fictional customers or personas in order to find the perfect match. Shoppers do something similar when they anticipate how they will use the product they are considering. User types can be real (an actual person) or imagined (a persona). …read more
Source:: r-bloggers.com