Social Character and Acceptance of New Products

It has been almost twenty years since David Riesman published his famous work on the social character of people 8. In brief, Riesman's theory is that individuals can be grouped into three types: tradition-directed, inner-directed, or A person who is tradition-directed guides himself by membership in a particular clan or caste. Riesman believes that there are few, if any, such individuals in America today. Instead, he conceives the social character of the majority of the people in the United States as falling somewhere along a continuum from innerto other-directed.