Everett Rogers, a professor of rural sociology in 1962 originally introduced the AIETA model in his book, “Diffusion of Innovations”. Diffusion of Innovations is a theory that explains how, why and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures.
He stated that diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of the social system, thus, the four main elements that influence the spread of a new idea: the innovation, communication channel, time and social system.
Rogers developed a response hierarchy model for new product in an attempt to determine the process of moving from awareness to adoption; that is from knowing about the existence of the product, the purchase, preference and satisfaction. He proposed that consumers go through the steps of Awareness, Interest, Evaluation, Trial and Adoption whose acronym forms the AIETA model. This was later developed by Krugman in 1977 using the Integrated Marketing Communication. The AIETA model concerns itself with affecting the consumer in a hierarchical effect due to the fact that if the first step is appropriately created, it will affect the next step through to the last step in order to achieve the objective or task.
In the initial step of the adoption process, the potential buyer learns or becomes aware of the existence of the new product or service since there is the possibility that potential buyers would not buy products or services they are not aware of.
After being made aware of the existence of the product or services, he or she develops an interest and proceeds to acquire more information regarding the product or services. After making enquiries about the product or services, the potential considers whether to accept or reject it, its advantages and disadvantages and how it will affect or add value to his or her life.
The potential buyer then takes the next step to buy the product and experiment it. He or she then makes a final decision as to adopting or rejecting it and begins large-scale use, which hopefully leads to preference, satisfaction, and repeats purchases.
The stages of innovation affect consumer’s behaviour at every stage of a product life cycle. These are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and the laggards.
These steps in the Adoption Model can progress rapidly or slowly depending on the product or services. For instance, when MTN was taking over from Areeba, they had a communication task which is to create awareness with much emphasis on their slogan, “everywhere you go” for over a year. The communication task was achieved, thus, customers became interested after which they imagined themselves using it and then trying the service and finally adopting it. This campaign has made them win over 11million customers (subscribers) to their services.
However, in later editions of the Diffusions of Innovations, Rogers changes the terminology of the five stages to: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation though the descriptions have remained similar.
Some critics leveled against the model are that, technologies are not static. Also, that the communication approach process involved is a one-way flow of information; i.e. sender of the message has a goal to persuade the receiver and there is little or no dialogue.
References:
- Rogers, 1962
- Diffusion of Innovations, by Everett Rogers (1995) Reviewed by Greg Orr March 18, 2003
- http://www.stanford.edu/class/symbsys205/Diffusion%20of%20Innovations.htm
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations
Dorothy Adams-Quaye
Ghana Institute of Journalism
Level 300 (Top up)
TOPE2014001
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