Factors Influencing the Decision of Technology Adoption in Construction

History has shown that innovative new technologies are key contributors to improving productivity, quality and safety in construction. While the innovation process has been studied in the past, procedures that companies apply to make decisions have received little attention. This paper presents the initial results of an on-going study to understand the processes, sources of information and the critical success factors that companies depend on when buying new technologies. It presents a technology adoption model that is being validated using the results from an in-depth study of vendor strategies and visitor interviews from two equipment exhibitions in Australia. Vendors displayed an array of products ranging from spirit levels to large hydraulic excavators and applied various methods to attract customers to their booths. The presented analysis uses a wide range of measures used to categorize each vendor booth to include the nature of the product, the area occupied and type of information offered. As was expected, the analysis reveals heavy clusters of vendors applying similar strategies strongly influenced by the size of the vendor company and the technology. The data also supports the adoption model as the vendors make use of specific techniques to serve the needs of novices as well as better informed customers with the aim of establishing a relationship that extends beyond the exhibit.