New Product Adoption and Diffusion

This paper summarizes what we have learned from research on the diffusion of innovations that contributes to understanding new product adoption, discusses how the background of diffusion research affected its contributions and shortcomings, and indicates future research priorities. Diffusion research has played an important role in helping put social structure back in the communication process. Network analysis and field experiments are promising tools in diffusion studies. The diffusion model has aided our understandings of the consumption of new products.