The role of users and suppliers in the adoption and diffusion of consumer electronics. The case of portable digital audio players.

摘要

The diffusion of innovations is a fundamental aspect of the innovative process, to whichudthe literature on innovation dedicated a lot of attention. This voluminous literatureudcovers a variety of themes, such as different kinds of innovations, potential adopters,udand mechanisms by which the innovation spreads among its potential users. However,udsome aspects of this vast literature still deserve some further investigation. Theudobjective of the thesis is to study the adoption and diffusion of a consumer technology,udthe portable digital audio player (DAP) market in Europe and Japan. The methodologyudis quantitative and consists on the collection and analysis of two original datasets. Theudfirst dataset regards the demand-side consisting in a survey of 1562 young potentialudadopters from 9 countries (France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, Spain,udSwitzerland, UK, and Japan). The other source of data is a dataset of 585 DAPsudmarketed between 2001 and 2009, including information on product characteristicsud(storage space, size, etc.) and price. The analysis of the data is carried out at threeudlevels. The first one regards the demand-side, with the aim of assessing how users’udcharacteristics shape the adoption decision, and providing a classification of potentialudadopters that goes beyond the usual classification based on timing of adoption or onudthe distribution of a single variable such as income. The second level concentrates onudthe supply-side, testing if there is a systematic relationship between product price andudits objectively measurable characteristics and evaluating how technical change in theudsector influences the diffusion path by matching products’ quality change with users’udpreferences and patterns of adoption over time. Finally, the third level aims atudproviding evidence on whether conventional models of diffusion are able to provide anudadequate explanation of the diffusion of DAPs, and moreover, on how the assumptionsudunderlying these models might be combined or synthesised into a coherent framework.