Research: When Are Customers Willing to Try a New Technology?

"Marketers often assume that visibility and buzz tell them when consumers are ready to try a new technology. But these don't tell the full story. The real trigger for consumer adoption is attention-created when people suddenly have a bit of unexpected time."

"Guneet Kaur Nagpal is an assistant professor of marketing and GenAI teaching fellow at the Ivey Business School, Western University, Canada. Her research examines consumer search, time shocks, decision biases, pricing, channels, information breaches, and agentic AI, with a focus on causal empirical modeling."

"Amrita Mitra is a lecturer (assistant professor) in marketing at the University of Melbourne and holds a PhD in Marketing from Ivey Business School, Western University, Canada. Her research focuses on firm resilience and governance in franchising, alliances, and B2B sharing platforms."

Visibility and buzz do not reliably indicate consumer readiness to adopt new technology. Genuine adoption occurs when consumers allocate attention after experiencing unexpected pockets of free time. Marketers should prioritize creating or capturing attention during time shocks and moments of downtime rather than relying solely on publicity. Understanding consumer search patterns, decision biases, pricing strategies, channels, and information security can improve targeting of these attention windows. Agentic AI, causal empirical modeling, firm resilience, governance in franchising and alliances, and B2B sharing platforms influence adoption dynamics and can inform effective trial strategies.

Read at Harvard Business Review