00:00:01
thank you very much that was a very nice
00:00:03
introduction and it's very nice to be
00:00:05
here or to be back here
00:00:07
uh at uh at Illinois
00:00:11
a lot of great things have happened at
00:00:13
Illinois and I want to just mention a
00:00:15
couple of them
00:00:16
before getting into the main topic
00:00:19
um I think everybody here knows that the
00:00:24
American Marketing Association was
00:00:25
founded I believe in 1937 here at the
00:00:30
University of Illinois
00:00:33
um
00:00:34
Illinois back in that era was
00:00:38
particularly known as a football school
00:00:41
and it was the Supreme Powerhouse in
00:00:45
football in America at that time
00:00:48
the most famous football player of
00:00:51
course was Red Grange
00:00:54
called
00:00:56
various nicknames to his prowess his
00:01:00
coach was Robert zucki and a stranger to
00:01:05
Champaign Urbana notices Zuki Drive
00:01:11
Grange Avenue and so on in honor of
00:01:15
these two people who excelled so much
00:01:20
there is a somewhat sad story however to
00:01:26
coach soup cake uh he
00:01:30
refused to adopt an innovation
00:01:33
and The Innovation was that of giving
00:01:38
football players fellowships
00:01:41
he saw this as the beginning of creeping
00:01:44
commercialism of college football which
00:01:47
of course it was
00:01:50
and so he would have nothing to do with
00:01:53
fellowships no fellowships at Illinois
00:01:56
needless to say the football program at
00:01:59
Illinois went downhill fast so here is a
00:02:05
famous person who refused to adopt an
00:02:08
innovation
00:02:09
as many of you know but some of you
00:02:12
might not know code sub key is buried
00:02:14
parallel to the 50-yard line of Memorial
00:02:19
stadium
00:02:20
in a in a cemetery at this was at his
00:02:25
wish that he'd be buried parallel to the
00:02:29
50-yard line now a little about Red
00:02:33
Grange and how he is affected some
00:02:36
important things also
00:02:39
um
00:02:40
he was elected to the Board of Trustees
00:02:43
of the University this in the years
00:02:46
after his
00:02:48
football greatness and he wasn't a very
00:02:52
active member the record shows in
00:02:56
attending Board of Trustees meetings but
00:03:00
he did attend the most famous trustees
00:03:02
meeting of all
00:03:05
which happened uh
00:03:09
I think around 19
00:03:12
um
00:03:15
54.
00:03:17
the president of the University of
00:03:19
Illinois at that time was a scholar
00:03:21
named George Stoddard he had
00:03:24
taught he was a psychologist and taught
00:03:27
at the University of Iowa
00:03:31
where he knew Wilbur Schram now SRAM is
00:03:34
a very important name to me because
00:03:37
he's widely considered the founder of
00:03:39
the field of communication here at
00:03:41
Illinois
00:03:43
started the University of President
00:03:45
wanted to hire Schram who he knew from
00:03:48
Iowa and so in 1947 he made him a
00:03:55
a bargain that he couldn't say no to
00:03:58
president Stoddard hired SRAM to be the
00:04:03
director of Allerton house
00:04:05
the editor of the University of Illinois
00:04:08
press the director of the radio station
00:04:11
the director of the television station
00:04:14
Director of Veterans Affairs
00:04:17
anything that had anything to do with
00:04:20
communication Schram was in charge of it
00:04:23
in return Schram asked president
00:04:26
Stoddard that he be allowed to start a
00:04:31
Department of communication at first an
00:04:34
Institute of communications research
00:04:36
which would give the world's first phds
00:04:39
in communication this all happened at
00:04:42
Illinois around 1947.
00:04:45
so SRAM did all of these administrative
00:04:49
jobs and in the few minutes a week that
00:04:53
he must have had left over
00:04:56
ran this first PhD program in The
00:05:00
Institute of communications research
00:05:02
uh now Red Grange and president Stoddard
00:05:07
come together in a famous midnight
00:05:09
meeting of the Board of Trustees in the
00:05:12
Union
00:05:13
he said the Illinois Union Illinois
00:05:17
and this was a meeting
00:05:20
to determine whether the Board of
00:05:23
Trustees had confidence in the president
00:05:25
they were concerned that he was very
00:05:28
involved in UNESCO and in the world
00:05:30
peace movement and that he wasn't
00:05:32
spending enough time
00:05:34
as president here in Champaign
00:05:39
Urbana
00:05:40
so there was a vote of no confidence it
00:05:44
passed
00:05:46
so that was the end of Saturday's
00:05:48
president and the deciding vote was that
00:05:51
of Fred Grange Grange explained his vote
00:05:54
by saying this guy's been buying too
00:05:57
many pianos so Stoddard was out that
00:06:02
also meant the end of all these
00:06:03
administrative jobs that SRAM was
00:06:05
performing so he was
00:06:08
stripped in the weeks after this
00:06:11
midnight meeting of being in charge of
00:06:15
Allerton house the Wags in The Faculty
00:06:18
Club at Illinois used to refer to SRAM
00:06:21
as the Duke of Allerton
00:06:23
um
00:06:24
that was their favorite term for him so
00:06:27
he eventually went back to just being
00:06:30
the a professor he was a tenured
00:06:33
professor and running this PhD program
00:06:35
and it went much better after this no
00:06:39
confidence
00:06:40
in president
00:06:42
Stoddard so a lot of history
00:06:46
has happened here in Illinois those are
00:06:50
a couple of the high points as I know
00:06:54
them
00:06:55
and I've been able to determine them
00:06:58
let's now get into my presentation just
00:07:02
for beginners here's a quick definition
00:07:04
of diffusion
00:07:05
it turns out that it's heavily a process
00:07:08
of people talking to people
00:07:10
interpersonal communication but more
00:07:13
about that in the bass model shortly
00:07:15
next
00:07:17
here's a definition of an innovation
00:07:19
it's very broad both the definition of
00:07:21
diffusion and the definition of
00:07:23
innovation are very broad Innovation is
00:07:26
sort of what you think it is if it's new
00:07:28
to you if you perceive it as new
00:07:31
then it is an innovation
00:07:34
next
00:07:35
uh this field really got underway with a
00:07:40
study of the diffusion of hybrid seed
00:07:42
corn as many of you know
00:07:44
this was a study done at Iowa State
00:07:47
University
00:07:48
and uh I want to tell you a little about
00:07:51
this study because it has had such a
00:07:55
long Shadow on
00:07:57
diffusion studies ever since
00:08:01
um
00:08:02
Bryce Ryan was a new PhD in sociology
00:08:06
from Harvard University and accepted a
00:08:09
faculty position at Iowa State his main
00:08:13
interest was in non-economic influences
00:08:17
on Farmers economic decisions basically
00:08:20
he was trying to understand why didn't
00:08:23
Farmers choose the most economically
00:08:27
Wise Choice when faced with such a
00:08:30
choice
00:08:31
Neil gross was a new Master's student
00:08:35
from an urban background in Milwaukee
00:08:38
who came to Iowa State and just as this
00:08:41
project began Ryan offered gross a deal
00:08:45
of the kind that professors have made to
00:08:48
grad students over the years he said if
00:08:50
you'll interview all these Farmers for
00:08:52
free he's not talking about a research
00:08:55
assistantship now then you can use the
00:08:57
data in your Master's thesis all of
00:08:59
which came to pass
00:09:01
they selected two Iowa communities and
00:09:05
it happened that these two communities
00:09:07
of Scranton and Jefferson
00:09:12
were neighboring communities to where I
00:09:14
was growing up at the time on an Iowa
00:09:17
farm in Western Iowa my community was
00:09:20
Carol uh Jefferson incidentally was
00:09:23
where George Gallup came from I can work
00:09:26
the names of almost every one of the
00:09:28
converse
00:09:30
I won't it would take too long anyway
00:09:33
one of the things that Ryan and gross
00:09:35
find is amazingly it took about 13 years
00:09:39
for the average
00:09:42
well for all the farmers in this these
00:09:45
two communities to reach a hundred
00:09:47
percent adoption that despite the fact
00:09:49
that hybrid corn increased their yields
00:09:53
about 20 percent
00:09:55
so here are people delaying for many
00:10:00
years to gain a 20 percent increase in
00:10:04
their the main crop that they were
00:10:06
growing this seemed
00:10:08
surprising at the time furthermore it
00:10:11
took the average farmer about seven
00:10:13
years to adopt completely that is to go
00:10:16
from planting part of their corn acreage
00:10:18
to hybrid to planting all of their corn
00:10:21
Acres so seven years of delay on the
00:10:24
part of the individual farmer this
00:10:26
seemed
00:10:28
these were very surprising findings
00:10:34
uh
00:10:35
how did I get
00:10:37
trapped into this business
00:10:40
it happened very easily I can tell you
00:10:43
that and very naturally
00:10:45
I had grown up on an Iowa farm as I said
00:10:49
and I was puzzled I had noted the same
00:10:52
thing that Ryan and gross found in their
00:10:54
study
00:10:55
my father and other neighboring Farmers
00:10:58
would were very reluctant in adopting
00:11:02
agricultural Innovations and I was
00:11:06
getting an education
00:11:07
in high school and in college in
00:11:09
technical Agriculture and I came home
00:11:12
and worked on My Father's Farm every
00:11:14
summer and I was very puzzled as to why
00:11:17
my father and our neighbors
00:11:21
paid very little attention to what I
00:11:24
told them little pipsqueak that I was
00:11:26
about the latest and best in farming
00:11:30
technology
00:11:31
eventually after getting a bachelor's
00:11:35
degree at Iowa State and Agriculture and
00:11:37
serving in the Korean War I came back to
00:11:41
Iowa State to study diffusion research
00:11:45
Iowa state was sort of a Mecca in on
00:11:49
this topic at that time
00:11:52
my dissertation actually was a study of
00:11:55
the diffusion of 240 weed spray in an
00:11:58
Iowa Community College so you can see
00:11:59
this was a sort of parallel studied to
00:12:02
the hybrid Seed corn study different
00:12:03
Innovation different Community but
00:12:06
similar methodology
00:12:08
while I Was preparing uh my review of
00:12:13
literature for my dissertation to my
00:12:16
surprise I found diffusion studies that
00:12:19
had already been completed
00:12:21
on the diffusion of educational
00:12:23
Innovations among schools
00:12:25
with some very similar findings
00:12:28
likewise there was a study here in
00:12:30
Illinois
00:12:31
in four communities of a new medical
00:12:35
drug it was tetracycline
00:12:37
which diffused among medical doctors
00:12:41
that is the prescription of this drug
00:12:43
and so I included these studies in my
00:12:46
review of literature chapter arguing
00:12:48
that there was a general process of
00:12:51
diffusion that seemed so obvious to me
00:12:54
at the time
00:12:56
my committee however composed of five
00:13:00
elderly gentlemen
00:13:02
uh were not so easily convinced
00:13:06
my data analysis was
00:13:09
um basically using
00:13:12
um multiple regression to predict
00:13:15
innovativeness when Farmers adopted
00:13:19
240 weed spray and there was a rather
00:13:24
eminent econom attrition on my committee
00:13:27
Professor Gerhart tintner of Viennese
00:13:31
Refugee to Ames Iowa
00:13:34
and I was sure he was going to give me a
00:13:37
difficult time about my Beta weights I I
00:13:40
was very uncertain about my Beta weights
00:13:42
well we never got to the beta weights we
00:13:46
never got past the review of literature
00:13:49
chapter
00:13:50
with committee members typically saying
00:13:53
now Mr Rogers how can you maintain that
00:13:57
the diffusion process applies to all
00:14:01
kinds of people to all kinds of
00:14:02
Innovations in all kinds of places with
00:14:05
all kinds of cultures this is ridiculous
00:14:07
and so here I was with my weak little
00:14:11
voice trying to argue against these
00:14:13
eminences
00:14:14
and it didn't seem that I was convincing
00:14:17
them at all you see I didn't really
00:14:19
understand the purpose of a PhD exam
00:14:27
I had accepted a faculty position at
00:14:29
Ohio State University which began at
00:14:32
nine o'clock the following morning
00:14:34
this was Midday in Ames Iowa so
00:14:38
um
00:14:39
my wife was waiting with the engine of
00:14:43
our Ford
00:14:44
already running downstairs
00:14:47
and I turned my dissertation in in the
00:14:51
department office and on my way out of
00:14:53
the building for I suppose the last time
00:14:56
who do I run into but professor tintner
00:15:00
he's reading a book as he walks along
00:15:02
which was his habit but when we pass
00:15:05
each other he says oh Dr Rogers he said
00:15:08
um
00:15:10
you know committee had many questions
00:15:12
about how generalizable the diffusion
00:15:15
model is but he said and this was over
00:15:18
his shoulder as he walked off down the
00:15:20
hall you could have an interesting book
00:15:23
written out of your review of lit
00:15:25
chapter
00:15:26
well I went down
00:15:28
I joined my wife and drove during the
00:15:31
night to Columbus
00:15:33
I told her about this conversation I
00:15:35
said what a Nutty old guy and she said
00:15:38
well you know she said sometimes people
00:15:41
tell you something and at the time you
00:15:42
think it's crazy and then you find
00:15:44
yourself doing it as I did
00:15:47
now there's a little more to this
00:15:50
General diffusion model
00:15:53
while I was at Iowa State
00:15:58
my advisor George Beal and another
00:16:01
faculty member with whom he worked
00:16:03
closely Joe Bolin
00:16:05
were asked to make a presentation about
00:16:08
diffusion to the extension workers of
00:16:11
Iowa and their annual conference which
00:16:14
was in December of 54.
00:16:17
and I helped them formulate this
00:16:21
presentation in advance
00:16:26
and then watched its enthusiastic
00:16:29
reception and they were arguing that
00:16:32
there were two main things to the
00:16:34
diffusion model The Innovation diffusion
00:16:37
process this is wonderful you just cough
00:16:39
and there's water
00:16:41
laughs
00:16:49
um The Innovation diffusion process that
00:16:51
is that people first
00:16:53
had to know about an innovation then be
00:16:55
persuaded and then decide to adopt it
00:16:58
and then implement it and adopter
00:17:00
categories that not all Farmers adopted
00:17:02
at once and what were the
00:17:04
characteristics of the first farmers to
00:17:06
adopt and so on and so on
00:17:10
their presentation was strictly about
00:17:12
agricultural Innovations
00:17:15
they were not interested in any of this
00:17:19
silliness about a general diffusion
00:17:21
model but as their Fame grew and as this
00:17:25
presentation came to be in demand by
00:17:28
various groups soon they were giving
00:17:31
talks to civil defense officials about
00:17:35
the diffusion of Home bomb shelters
00:17:37
which was an important innovation of
00:17:39
that time
00:17:41
so it was beginning to be diffused
00:17:44
and generalized
00:17:49
in 1962 I was at Ohio State at the time
00:17:54
I published the first book of the five
00:17:57
Editions all all but one of which was
00:18:01
called diffusion of Innovations and at
00:18:04
that time there were about 400 diffusion
00:18:06
Publications
00:18:08
um two of them were in marketing and
00:18:10
I'll say more about those later
00:18:12
the occasion for the decision to publish
00:18:15
this book
00:18:16
I had sent it a prospectus for the book
00:18:19
to five Publishers and four of them did
00:18:22
not respond
00:18:25
but the editor of Free Press
00:18:27
headquartered at that time in Glencoe
00:18:29
Illinois
00:18:30
did his name was Jeremiah Kaplan and we
00:18:34
met in Chicago at a conference in an old
00:18:38
hotel that's no longer there the
00:18:40
Edgewater Beach Hotel
00:18:41
in the bar he invited me to a meeting in
00:18:45
the bar now I'm the rural sociology
00:18:48
Professor from Ohio State he's the
00:18:50
Urbane big city slicker editor of an
00:18:54
important publisher so he's applying me
00:18:57
with um
00:18:58
Manhattans I had never heard of
00:19:00
Manhattan until that day
00:19:02
and I think when it gets me to the right
00:19:05
point
00:19:06
he
00:19:07
tells me I don't know why but I'm going
00:19:10
to publish your book
00:19:12
now I can't pay a very high royalty we
00:19:16
can't print it on very nice paper and
00:19:20
you can't have more than 30 figures in
00:19:22
it because they cost more but I'm going
00:19:25
to publish it and I'm going to publish
00:19:27
it in 10 000 copies
00:19:30
but I'm sure that 10 years from now we
00:19:33
will be destroying most of those copies
00:19:36
in our warehouse so this is a very
00:19:38
gloomy unenthusiastic edited
00:19:42
only in later years did I learn that
00:19:44
that was his approach with every author
00:19:48
and indeed he was wrong about the 10 000
00:19:51
copies being left over in the
00:19:56
um
00:19:57
in the warehouse 10 years later in this
00:20:01
book
00:20:01
one of my main contributions in
00:20:04
retrospect is I gave standard
00:20:06
definitions of these terms and of how to
00:20:09
measure them
00:20:11
this of course was very important in
00:20:15
launching a general model of diffusion
00:20:17
one not limited to hybrid Seed corn or
00:20:20
to 240 weed spray or to Farmers
00:20:23
it made it possible or easier for anyone
00:20:27
in any field to start using this model
00:20:32
and indeed that began to happen in the
00:20:36
by the 70s which was the second edition
00:20:39
of my book in 1971.
00:20:42
there were active sets of Scholars
00:20:45
studying diffusion in each of these
00:20:48
fields and others almost too many to
00:20:52
keep track of
00:20:53
in fact I've tried to keep track of how
00:20:56
many diffusion Publications are
00:20:58
published each year
00:21:00
and became increasingly difficult to do
00:21:02
because
00:21:03
I had to go to specialized a greater and
00:21:07
greater number of specialized
00:21:09
journals
00:21:12
here's a rough idea of the number of
00:21:14
diffusion
00:21:16
Publications as well as I could keep
00:21:18
track of them
00:21:20
by year or by decade roughly as editions
00:21:25
of this book were published
00:21:29
oh
00:21:31
today I think there's something more
00:21:32
than 52 5200 diffusion Publications but
00:21:36
I don't think anyone knows for sure
00:21:38
because they're published
00:21:41
so widely in so many different journals
00:21:44
that it's very difficult to keep it up
00:21:47
to date record of the number and I guess
00:21:49
it doesn't matter after you get past
00:21:51
five thousand who cares for those five
00:21:54
thousand two hundred or three hundred no
00:21:56
all right
00:22:00
I wonder who briefly describe three
00:22:02
different applications of the model
00:22:05
it is one real one argument for it being
00:22:08
a general model is in because it will
00:22:11
apply to a number to a wide variety of
00:22:15
applications
00:22:17
and here are three of them three rather
00:22:21
different applications
00:22:25
uh one that I had nothing to do with
00:22:29
personally although my book did it was
00:22:33
the Bible of the for the people who ran
00:22:35
the stop age campaign
00:22:37
when the epidemic began in the U.S it
00:22:40
began in the U.S and when it began in
00:22:42
the U.S it began mainly in three
00:22:45
Metropolitan centers one of which was
00:22:47
San Francisco and San Francisco was
00:22:50
really
00:22:52
ready
00:22:54
for the epidemic about 40 percent of the
00:22:58
male population were gay because of the
00:23:00
tolerant attitude of the city
00:23:04
and so the stop AIDS campaign was
00:23:07
organized by and for gay men to keep the
00:23:10
epidemic from spreading in their
00:23:12
Community
00:23:14
they organized small group meetings of
00:23:17
10 or 12
00:23:19
I came in
00:23:20
they tried to attract opinion leaders to
00:23:24
these meetings and each meeting was
00:23:26
addressed by a gay man who was HIV
00:23:29
positive and who spoke in part from
00:23:32
personal experience about means of
00:23:34
transmission and so on
00:23:37
uh
00:23:41
the seven thousand that were trained in
00:23:44
these meetings
00:23:45
stop AIDS estimated reached another
00:23:48
thirty thousand out of the total
00:23:51
community of 142 so they reached
00:23:54
critical mass that was their goal was to
00:23:57
train enough
00:23:58
leaders to reach critical mass
00:24:01
and then almost miraculously the number
00:24:04
of HIV infections per year dropped
00:24:08
the number of the percent of gay men
00:24:12
practicing unprotected anal intercourse
00:24:14
dropped and AIDS deaths per year dropped
00:24:19
precipitously although part of that drop
00:24:22
is not really due to stop AIDS but it's
00:24:24
due to
00:24:26
antiretroviral drugs in recent years at
00:24:29
least so here was a success it came to
00:24:33
be called the San Francisco model and it
00:24:37
spread throughout the world even though
00:24:39
it couldn't be applied exactly the same
00:24:41
way in other cities because they didn't
00:24:45
have a dense network of gay men as San
00:24:49
Francisco did
00:24:53
here's a definition of critical mass I
00:24:56
think you use this term many people do
00:24:58
some people call it other names like the
00:25:00
Tipping Point the best title of the
00:25:03
best-selling book by Malcolm Gladwell
00:25:08
also very wisely the stop AIDS movement
00:25:13
built on the knowledge which was then
00:25:15
quite
00:25:17
um
00:25:18
clear that the very first people to
00:25:21
adopt a new idea the innovators are not
00:25:24
also the opinion leaders they're the
00:25:26
group who adopt next so stop aides did a
00:25:29
lot of things that were very wise
00:25:33
next
00:25:36
uh now to a case that is much more a
00:25:40
marketing case
00:25:43
in the early 1990s California and
00:25:47
Arizona both passed a state law
00:25:52
requiring that
00:25:55
um
00:25:56
in order for an auto company to sell any
00:26:00
autos
00:26:01
in these states
00:26:03
they had to sell 10 of the Autos that
00:26:06
they were selling
00:26:07
as non-polluting and at the time this
00:26:11
pretty much meant electric vehicles
00:26:14
so General Motors gets into this game in
00:26:18
a large way it's board votes two billion
00:26:22
dollars for a project to design and
00:26:26
manufacture and market a vehicle that
00:26:29
was originally called the impact the
00:26:32
name was later changed this was a
00:26:34
battery powered
00:26:36
very Sleek looking
00:26:39
aerodynamically styled
00:26:41
powerful electronic vehicle here's a
00:26:45
photograph of the
00:26:47
impact as it was called
00:26:49
it was silent it was lightweight heavily
00:26:53
made of aluminum
00:26:56
along with a number of several marketing
00:26:59
Scholars
00:27:00
I worked as a consultant to GM on how to
00:27:04
introduce the GM in Southern California
00:27:08
and in Phoenix and then in the Phoenix
00:27:11
era area
00:27:13
the first step was
00:27:17
ads in local newspapers to recruit test
00:27:21
drivers and large numbers of them
00:27:25
applied in Sacramento as an example
00:27:28
which is Jim deering's hometown
00:27:30
there were seven thousand applicants in
00:27:33
the first week
00:27:35
they filled out a lengthy and odious
00:27:37
questionnaire
00:27:38
to measure their opinion leadership and
00:27:41
their innovativeness
00:27:42
uh it turned out that they were mavens
00:27:45
they were car nuts the people who
00:27:47
applied 200 were selected in Sacramento
00:27:50
and that was typical in the 18
00:27:53
cities in which this introduction was
00:27:57
launched
00:27:59
each were given
00:28:01
um this eight by ten color photo of a
00:28:04
red
00:28:06
um impact
00:28:08
and they were given 50 baseball cards
00:28:11
little cards with the photo on one side
00:28:13
and performance data on the other and
00:28:16
they were asked to distribute these to
00:28:18
their friends they were supposed to post
00:28:20
the color photo at their place of work
00:28:22
or wherever
00:28:24
then more test drivers applied
00:28:27
and were given the questionnaire and so
00:28:31
on and so on the test drive was a
00:28:33
30-minute test drive of the impact with
00:28:37
AGM Auto engineer sitting as a passenger
00:28:41
beside them
00:28:44
the results of this expensive and very
00:28:48
detailed
00:28:50
introduction campaign were not
00:28:52
satisfactory
00:28:53
there were only modest sails and rentals
00:28:56
of the ev1 the impact's name was changed
00:29:00
to the ev1 you can imagine why impact
00:29:03
turned out not to be a very good name
00:29:05
for a lightweight aluminum vehicle
00:29:08
on the road with big heavy SUVs and
00:29:12
trucks and so on
00:29:14
um
00:29:15
and eventually this year early this year
00:29:18
GM withdrew further rentals or sales of
00:29:24
the ev1 and all of the EV ones that were
00:29:30
on lease were gathered back up by GM and
00:29:36
sent to the junk keep in the New York
00:29:37
Times a couple of weeks ago there's a
00:29:40
sad photograph of a stack of EV ones
00:29:43
being crushed for their scrap metal
00:29:46
which would has been sold to Japan
00:29:50
so that's the end of this introduction
00:29:53
why did it fail
00:29:56
a basic reason is that Battery
00:29:58
Technology was very limited at that time
00:30:01
and still is so that the vehicle could
00:30:04
never go more than about a hundred miles
00:30:06
without recharging it had to be
00:30:09
recharged at a 220 volt outlet and GM
00:30:13
hoped that as these vehicles diffused
00:30:16
there would be more and more 220 volt
00:30:19
Outlets free outlets at places like gas
00:30:22
stations fast food stores and so on and
00:30:24
that never happened
00:30:25
and then the hybrid vehicles like the
00:30:30
Toyota Prius came along in the year
00:30:32
2000. and furthermore
00:30:36
rather early on in about 1999
00:30:41
the two state governments changed their
00:30:45
mandate
00:30:46
so that the Auto industry no longer had
00:30:50
to sell 10 percent of their Auto Autos
00:30:53
as non-polluting so everything went
00:30:56
wrong that could go wrong with this
00:30:59
campaign but at least the method of
00:31:02
introduction was probably in my opinion
00:31:04
at least in retrospect a very sound good
00:31:07
I'm now to
00:31:09
a third application briefly and then to
00:31:14
the marketing tradition into Fusion
00:31:18
the internet has had one of the fastest
00:31:20
rates of diffusion of any innovation in
00:31:23
human kind
00:31:26
even perhaps rifling the cell phone
00:31:30
today well actually two years ago 2002
00:31:34
it's estimated that there's more than
00:31:36
450 million users per day of the
00:31:40
internet that would be eight percent of
00:31:41
the world's population
00:31:43
61 percent of U.S adults the latest data
00:31:47
from the Pew Center as of a couple days
00:31:50
ago show that that's now 73 percent
00:31:53
risen in the last year
00:31:56
uh the internet of course changed as it
00:32:00
diffused it was constantly being
00:32:01
reinvented the World Wide Web Commercial
00:32:05
Services and so on were added to it and
00:32:09
if we looked at the rate of diffusion of
00:32:12
the Internet it's a spectacular example
00:32:14
of the critical mass 20 years to get to
00:32:17
critical mass and then in 12 or 13 years
00:32:21
since a very rapid rise of diffusion
00:32:27
here's a definition of reinvention
00:32:30
this wasn't recognized back in the days
00:32:33
of the hybrid Seed corn study because
00:32:34
you couldn't reinvent hybrid corn and to
00:32:37
buy new hybrid Seed corn every year
00:32:39
for genetic reasons but most Innovations
00:32:43
can be changed by the users as they
00:32:46
adopt them and they do with inventions
00:32:51
one of the problems with the internet's
00:32:53
diffusion is the so-called digital
00:32:54
divide this Gap that's created between
00:32:57
well now the 73 percent and the
00:33:01
27 percent
00:33:03
the users are Urban well-educated Anglo
00:33:07
higher income they tend to be computer
00:33:09
owners and so on
00:33:11
and so they can do banking services
00:33:14
purchase airline tickets do all these
00:33:16
things we do sell old stuff that we
00:33:20
don't want anymore
00:33:21
on the internet but the 27 percent can't
00:33:26
next
00:33:28
in uh one of the solutions
00:33:32
and one of the reasons for The Gap is
00:33:34
access people that don't own computers
00:33:37
or have them at work
00:33:40
or at school
00:33:42
can't really adopt the internet and so
00:33:46
since 95 the first cyber cafe we see
00:33:50
cyber cafe springing up in various parts
00:33:52
of the world especially outside the U.S
00:33:55
but also in the U.S in areas
00:34:00
where poor people live who don't have
00:34:03
their own computers
00:34:05
next
00:34:07
uh I've been involved in recent years as
00:34:10
was mentioned in the introduction in
00:34:13
Taos County
00:34:15
New Mexico is a very poor state it ranks
00:34:18
48th or 49th and per capita income as we
00:34:21
say thank God for Mississippi
00:34:26
and within New Mexico one County Taos
00:34:30
county is the poorest county yes it's
00:34:33
the center of the ski industry in the
00:34:36
winter but that only lasts a couple of
00:34:38
months and the rest of the time most
00:34:40
people are unemployed so there's a very
00:34:42
low level of use of the internet in Taos
00:34:45
County and
00:34:47
um with a couple of colleagues in recent
00:34:51
years we've been establishing Community
00:34:54
Access centers some of which are cyber
00:34:56
cafes in charge of fee some of which are
00:34:58
free
00:35:00
Outreach workers to try to show teach
00:35:04
people how to use a computer and the
00:35:06
internet in their home
00:35:08
and then special websites
00:35:12
on the internet
00:35:14
that are of special interest to the
00:35:17
people in Taos County Taos has a very
00:35:20
high percent of diabetes very high
00:35:23
rate of obesity and a concern with
00:35:27
nutrition is very important and we find
00:35:30
that individuals can learn to use
00:35:32
computers in the internet rather easily
00:35:35
okay
00:35:38
now let's turn to the final part of my
00:35:41
presentation and the one of probably
00:35:43
greatest interest to you and that's the
00:35:46
rise of
00:35:47
diffusion research and marketing
00:35:51
in 1962 when I wrote the first edition
00:35:54
of diffusion of Innovations there were
00:35:56
only a handful of diffusion Publications
00:35:59
they dealt with consumer Innovations
00:36:04
and there were only a couple of them
00:36:09
so few that I didn't even consider
00:36:13
marketing as one of the six main
00:36:15
Traditions or Fields doing diffusion
00:36:17
research
00:36:18
and to my surprise when I look back at
00:36:21
my 1962 Edition
00:36:24
marketing wasn't even cited in the index
00:36:26
to the book so it was just sort of out
00:36:30
of sight for as far as diffusion was
00:36:33
concerned in 2003 at the time of the
00:36:36
fifth edition of my book uh marketing
00:36:38
studies represented 16 percent of all
00:36:41
diffusion Publications the 5000 Plus
00:36:45
and Rising fast it was one of the most
00:36:48
important
00:36:50
diffusion traditions
00:36:54
why this growth well a very important
00:36:57
reason is Frank bass another Converse
00:37:00
winner
00:37:01
and his forecasting model
00:37:05
I met uh Frank for the first time at a
00:37:08
small marketing conference at Purdue
00:37:11
University I was at Michigan State
00:37:13
University at the time
00:37:15
and I remember he and I having rather
00:37:17
intense conversations during the two
00:37:19
days of this conference about diffusion
00:37:22
he was very interested in it very
00:37:23
knowledgeable about it and very puzzled
00:37:27
at the time as to why no one had made a
00:37:29
forecasting model based on what had been
00:37:33
found post-hoc about diffusion uh
00:37:38
Professor d kempt a European marketing
00:37:41
scholar states that the Basque model is
00:37:44
the most popular model in the field of
00:37:46
marketing
00:37:48
in any event there's a large number of
00:37:51
studies using the mass model
00:37:54
there's several published each year
00:37:58
and that's been going on since the
00:38:01
advanced model was first published in
00:38:03
1969
00:38:06
the model has been used widely by
00:38:09
marketing Scholars
00:38:11
it's also been used by non-marketing
00:38:14
Scholars it is
00:38:16
grown to have some followers outside of
00:38:18
marketing and it's been used with a very
00:38:21
wide range of Innovations
00:38:24
not all of which have a marketing Focus
00:38:29
so I think that's one big reason for the
00:38:31
rapid growth of interest in diffusion
00:38:35
in the marketing field was the
00:38:38
forecasting model and its possibilities
00:38:41
of testing whether these predictions
00:38:44
then were coming true or not
00:38:47
another reason of lesser importance is
00:38:50
social marketing
00:38:52
the application of commercial marketing
00:38:55
strategies to non-profit products and
00:38:58
services such things uh as
00:39:01
contraceptives in India and other
00:39:03
countries
00:39:05
um getting people to um
00:39:08
have blood tests for AIDS
00:39:13
and other preventive Health Innovations
00:39:18
Philip kotler at uh at
00:39:22
Northwestern and Jerry zaltman who was
00:39:25
also at Northwestern at the time wrote
00:39:27
some of the first Publications about
00:39:29
social marketing and they've been used
00:39:31
widely
00:39:33
are applied widely in marketing and by
00:39:36
many people outside of the field of
00:39:38
marketing social marketing is one of the
00:39:40
hot ideas in the field of Public Health
00:39:43
today so I think these two developments
00:39:47
were quite crucial in this rapid
00:39:49
expansion of interest in the diffusion
00:39:53
model in the marketing field
00:39:58
there's some special qualities of
00:40:01
marketing diffusion research
00:40:04
that indicate their unique contribution
00:40:09
one is this greater concern with
00:40:11
prediction
00:40:12
almost none of the other traditions of
00:40:16
diffusion study
00:40:17
none of them to my extent have an
00:40:20
interest in forecasting or prediction
00:40:23
and in marketing of course thanks to
00:40:27
Frank bass's model we do
00:40:30
the marketing diffusion studies are also
00:40:33
many of them are experimental studies
00:40:37
often field experiments in which in
00:40:40
collaboration with the marketer the
00:40:43
company that owns the product that's
00:40:45
being introduced it is introduced in one
00:40:49
way method a as opposed to Method B and
00:40:53
the two are compared and thus we've been
00:40:55
able to learn some things in marketing
00:40:58
about diffusion that other Traditions
00:41:02
have not explored
00:41:05
and in general the marketing studies are
00:41:07
more quantitative I'm sure you're not
00:41:09
surprised but they're not all
00:41:11
quantitative
00:41:20
uh today there's a number of marketing
00:41:23
diffusion studies underway of new
00:41:26
telecommunication Technologies like cell
00:41:29
phones and the internet in various
00:41:32
countries and there's a strong tradition
00:41:34
of international comparisons of rates of
00:41:39
diffusion by marketing Scholars
00:41:44
now for a couple of conclusions one of
00:41:49
which I think is the strong evidence
00:41:54
from applications and from the growth of
00:41:58
interest in the diffusion field to
00:41:59
various
00:42:01
scholarly fields that it is indeed a
00:42:05
general process
00:42:06
that it does apply across a range of
00:42:10
conditions different kinds of people
00:42:12
different kinds of Innovations
00:42:14
and there are General patterns and
00:42:17
regularities that emerge and really
00:42:20
that's what I devoted my life my career
00:42:23
to mainly is documenting these General
00:42:28
patterns and regularities and my books
00:42:31
have all argued for a general diffusion
00:42:35
model
00:42:36
the diffusion research is 60 years old
00:42:39
and most models don't last that long in
00:42:45
any field
00:42:47
and here the interest in the diffusion
00:42:52
model seems to be going on chugging
00:42:55
along at about the same rate as
00:42:57
previously by my calculations there's
00:42:59
about 120 new diffusion Publications a
00:43:03
year
00:43:04
roughly 20 of those would be in the
00:43:06
field of marketing
00:43:08
and so interest in the tradition seems
00:43:12
to be
00:43:13
continuing and I expect it will in the
00:43:17
future but there's never going to be a
00:43:19
sixth edition of my diffusion book I'm
00:43:22
done writing oh thank you very much
