Chapter Preview
TopBackground
Marketing managers of successful technology-based companies stress that there is not a large difference between marketing traditional products and high-technology products. They contend that the customer philosophy remains the same and that only the specific features of a technology product shape its marketing and give it a distinctive twist (Viardot, 2004). However, as the marketing of technology products is contingent on the technological context, it has adapted its own set of theoretical concepts, especially regarding the adoption of the technology by the markets because the main function of Marketing is to contribute to the adoption of a new technology by potential customers, which can be consumers or organizations.
Historically, the technology adoption process has been conceptualized following a behavioral perspective, which has been enriched with the concepts of attitude and emotion, and then completed with a cognitive perspective.
The first theory to explain how a person adopts a technology was the stages model of adoption with the different phases a person goes through before adopting a new technology, later completed by the theory of reasoned action (TRA) which includes five variables which influence a person’s behavior: beliefs and evaluations, attitude toward the behavior, subjective norm, normative beliefs and motivation to comply (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). From the Theory of Reasoned Action originated the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). It was developed specifically for the information technology to model how users come to accept and use a technology (Davis et al., 1989). Today, the TAM Model is widely accepted as one of the dominant theories to explain the process of user acceptance of technology products.
The TAM model suggests that when users are presented with a new technology, such as a software package, a number of factors influence their willingness to use it. The main idea of the model is to describe the external factors affecting the internal attitudes and use intentions of the users and, through these, to predict the acceptance and use of the system.
The first version of the TAM considers that a very important driver of the behavior to adopt a new technology is its perceived usefulness (PU), i.e. “the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her performance.” Equally important is a second driver for the adoption of a technology is its perceived ease-of-use (PEOU) defined as “the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free from effort.”
Key Terms in this Chapter
Toolkit Approach: marketing technique which enrolls lead users in the development of new products.
TAM Model: Most commonly used theoretical model to explain the acceptance of technology by the markets. It was originally developed for IT solutions.
Marketing-Mix: Mix of controllable marketing variables that the firm uses to pursue the desired level of sales in the target market.
Creative Consumers: Individual users or groups who adapt, modify and transform existing products and services.
Lead Users: Professional customers who are key influencers in the diffusion of a technology.
BRAND: name, a set of words, a sign, a symbol, a design, or a combination that identifies a seller’s goods or services.
Direct Distribution: Direct selling and delivery of a product to a customer without the use of a third party distributors such as retailers.
Value Pricing: Marketing technique of setting the price of a product according to the value that the market is ready to pay and independently of the product´s cost.