Discontinuance - When adoption goes wrong

We all like to think about how we can encourage or speed up adoption of a brand or idea. What we rarely think about is how to stem the flow of people "de-adopting" or discontinuing it's use.

You only have to think about this if things go really wrong. Don't you?

Not so! Truth is that even for the newest brands and ideas, people are discontinuing as other people are becoming true adopters. The more you can stem the tide of this discontinuance, the steeper your overall adoption (and sales) curve will be.

So if you're really serious about making a product launch successful, or perhaps trying to remedy a brand disaster, you need to have a proactive look at where and how your discontinuance will, or is, happening.

We've written a little paper about it which might give you a few more ideas, which you can download by clicking here Read more....

Innovation Adoption vs Word of Mouth

The buzz phrase 'word of mouth marketing' has been pretty hot over the past few years and understandably so, after all, 'colleague recommendation' is regularly cited as the greatest influence over a physician adopting a new therapy. Also WoM has the allure of being cost efficient and contagious - very sexy indeed.

However, while the flashy 'WoM' turns heads and gets all the attention, it's the greyer figure of 'Innovation Adoption' that I've come to realise is really the big player sitting quietly, but omnisciently, in the background.

Of course, it's not actually an either / or situation with these two. 'Innovation Adoption' describes the whole process that someone goes through in adopting an innovation (like a new medicine), and Word of Mouth can be a player in a number of the steps within the process.

Where I'm going to with all of this is that in the quest for a marketing model that describes how pharma marketing really works, Word of Mouth is a lot better than the poor rip off the outdated consumer model. However, it's really Innovation Adoption that's the daddy, and it might sound a little strange, but I've been getting pretty excited about it.

This has been going on for a while now (should I tell my wife?) but some recent work with a client in the telecomms industry rekindled the fire. On the face of things you might say telecoms and pharma don't have a lot in common. But by applying adoption of innovation principles to their product, we not only got some great insights to their challenges and opportunities, but also saw a lot of direct parallels between the industries.

All driven by the fact that both sectors are in the business of driving the adoption of technical innovations, not selling a new brand of frozen peas or alco-pop.

Read more....