Chapter 5 – Advanced Frameworks
157
products fall into this chasm, and consequently fail to
succeed commercially because of a lack of substantial user
base. The early majority of users are willing to wait while
the early adopters try out a new technology first, prior to
committing investment dollars. In other words, they are
practical enough not to invest in passing technology fads,
and are looking for a business justification prior to buying a
new product.
Whereas the early majority is somewhat comfortable using
a new technology, the late majority is not. Consequently,
they do not buy a technology based product unless it
becomes a standard, and until they are convinced that they
will incur losses if they don’t use the technology / product
in their business. In other words, these two groups
represent two different psychographic customer segments.
Consequently, targeting and positioning strategies need to
be different for these two differing market segments.
It is relevant to discuss here the Product Life Cycle (PLC),
which was covered in the “Basic Strategy Frameworks”
chapter. The PLC portrays products to move through
introductory, growth, maturity, and decline stages in a
product’s complete life cycle. It is clear that a product can’t
reach the growth stage if the early majority of users don’t
adopt it. In other words, for a product to move successfully
beyond the introductory stage, without falling into the
chasm, considerable marketing effort may be required, so
that the huge user base of early majority is successfully
tapped to buy and adopt the product.
Whether a chasm exists or not for a particular technology
based product, it is clear that the product life cycle (PLC)
and the technology adoption life cycle (TALC) are clearly
related to each other. These two frameworks are also
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