Early Adopter

Who Are Early Adopters?

This term indicates a business or an individual who makes use of an innovative technology or new product before others can do so. An early adopter may end up paying more for the product in comparison to later adopters.

However, this premium cost doesn’t affect in case it helps enhance Efficiency, decrease cost, and rise Market penetration. Moreover, companies also depend upon early adopters to give feedback about the deficiencies of the product and to cover the cost of research and development.

How Do They Work?

The rate of adoption of a new product, at a larger extent, by a market, can differ as per the type and price of the product. Those who are early adopters in the business may end up facing higher risk level upon using technology or product that might not be perfect.

This way, it might not work well with the expectations of customers and suppliers and may also not be compatible enough with their own products.

Risks of Being an Early Adopter

If the early adopters are using such hardware that is reliant on content, they may experience a lack of ways through which the equipment can be used. For instance, if a person is using a recorded media player, he may have to be satisfied with only a few titles with the first release.

Only after a certain period of time, manufacturers add more titles; however, this is also not guaranteed. Let’s take an early adopter example here. A few years back when HD TVs were introduced, early adopters had to wait a long period until more shows could be broadcasted in the new format with high visual clarity.

Just the same way, the manufacturers of HD DVD players and Blu-ray players were at war in terms of the format. In the early years, entertainment companies only released movies in one format. This impact early adopters as they had limited options on content and their disc players couldn’t access everything.

Eventually, the Blu-ray platform was universally adopted for HD video discs, leaving HD DVD players early adopters with unsupported equipment that had to be replaced. Of course, early adopters get to relish their prestige moments to be the first to own something new; however, the probability of gaining the most out of the same remains quite low.