HOW DO ‘LEADING-EDGE’ OPINION LEADERS
BRIDGE THE INNOVATION GAP?
ADVANCING A NEW ADOPTER CATEGORY
Salah S. Hassan, The George Washington University, USA*
Philippe Duverger, Towson University, USA
EXTENDED ABSTRACT
Empowering users and/or involving them in the new product development (NPD)
process defines the customer-centric organization. Some researchers have even argued
for involving users with particular characteristics allows the firm to tap into new markets
needs, develop radical innovation and move the firm closer to market orientation.
From a diffusion theory perspective, rate of adoption is dependent on the
consumer’s propensity to accept the new product. The traditional adoption categorization
model by Rogers emphasizes the importance of opinion leadership in increasing adoption
rates, and a recent study shows that users presenting high leading-edge status also have
high opinion leadership qualities. These leading-edge users tend to perceive attributes
that are less complex and more innovative when assessing new innovations within their
particular domain of user expertise. Hence, firms that are seeking rapid diffusion of their
radical innovations should target user segments that possess high levels of both leadingedge status and opinion leadership qualities.
This paper presents empirical research evidence advancing “leading-edge opinion
leaders” as a new adopter category. The purpose of this paper is threefold: (1) to evaluate
the influence of leading-edge opinion leaders on accelerating the diffusion rate, (2) to
measure their propensity to switch brands and pay a price premium, and (3) to offer
insights on the characteristics of the proposed new adopter category that will provide
directions for future research and immediate application for management.
ADOPTION BY LEADING-EDGE USERS
Rogers observed that potential adopters assess the following attributes of
innovations: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability.
Several researchers have studied the diffusion phenomenon in light of the adopters
categories and have explained the rate of diffusion as a function of the characteristics of
each category relative to the perceived attractiveness of the innovation based on the set of
attributes observed by Rogers. Within the adopters’ categories, the innovators and the
early adopters share similar characteristics that would allow these two groups to
successfully convince the other groups to adopt the innovation at a later point in time.
Modelling that phenomenon, Bass demonstrates that the diffusion follows a two-step
communication process. Other researchers have challenged the two-step process in light
of the level of usability or relative advantage of the innovation as perceived by the
innovators and early adopters versus the mass market, while others have expanded the
model to show the social networking effect.
Opinion leadership is a defining characteristic of the opinion leader. It is also a
strong characteristic of the early adopter. Therefore, it explains the high personal
communication effort (WOM and eWOM/ “Word of Mouse”) used by the opinion leader
to influence the behavior of other people in terms of search, purchasing and usage of new
products. Generally, the communication mode of the opinion leaders is informal;
however, they play a major role in influencing the consumer decision-making process as
they represent a reliable source of information. As a result, marketers work to create
communication channels to reach opinion leaders in order to encourage them to spread
positive word of mouth.
Accordingly, this research identifies three types of users: 1) Leading-edge users
with high levels of opinion leadership, from here on called “leading-edge opinion
leaders”; 2) Leading-edge users with low levels of opinion leadership, now referred to as
“leading-edge users”; and 3) consumers with low level of leading-edge status and opinion
leadership referred to as “the Mass consumers”. At the aggregate level, it is proposed that
the behavior of a new adopter category possessing lead-user characteristics and opinion
leadership attributes will accelerate the rate of innovation diffusion.
METHODS AND RESULTS
This study evaluated the perception and adoption intentions of leading-edge users
when confronted with a choice between a current new product, and a radical new
innovation. Our first task was to develop a radical new innovation that would be
believable to the participants. In the first stage, we extracted leading-edge users’ ideas on
innovative laptop features using an electronic ideation process (244 respondents to an
electronic survey, from which 58 ideas were extracted from 52 participants). The ideas
were then ranked using the Amabile consensus assessment technique (CAT) where
higher scores define the most creative ideas as assessed by the expert panel composed of
11 people averaging 9.6 year of experience in the technology field.
Using a stepwise regression with the idea scores as dependant variables and the
characteristics of the respondents as independent variables (participants’ characteristics
construct measures were taken from the existing literature and confirmatory factor
analyses led to satisfactory goodness-of-fit measures greater than 0.95 and alpha
coefficients greater than 0.70) led to a good fit of the model (Global F p-value < 0.0001)
and significant parameter estimates for the leading-edge user and opinion leader
characteristics (both p<0.0001). Out of the 76 ideas extracted from the toolkit participants
34 of the most creative ideas (ideas above the mean of 164.45) were selected for the
second stage of our analysis.
The adoption of innovation construct was measured using two manifest variables:
the intent to purchase the idea if it was available on the market (a 5 point-likert scale was
used) and the intent to speak (WOM) to a friend, family or colleague about the idea.
Using a latent score method, an analysis of the interaction effect between the underlying
characteristics: leading-edge status and opinion leadership as they relate to the adoption
of radical innovation construct was conducted.
This research demonstrates that leading-edge users have a critical role in the
diffusion of radical product. Beyond the widely accepted adopter categories, a new
hybrid category named: “Leading-edge Opinion Leaders” can be seen as emerging from
the known innovators and early adopters categories. They will help diffuse the radical
new product by adopting it, propagating it to others, and will pay a price premium to
acquire it. Managerial implications of this research relate directly to the possibility of an
extension of the traditional adoption categories.
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* Lead author’s contact address: Hassan@gwu.edu