Innovation Diffusion of Successive Generations
of High Technology Products
P.K. Kapur, Udayan Chanda and Abhishek Tandon
Deptment of Operational Research,
University of Delhi, Delhi-ll0007
pl@gmail.com
Absract
As most of the high-technology companies are trying to be more
demand driven, technological innovation and difusion have
become important force in markets today. It critically afects the
fortunes of consumers, irms, and nations. Despite research across
many disciplines, many important areas still remain to be explored
fully. Consumer adoption decision for multi-generation innovation
is one such important research area in this ield. High technology
product comes in generations where a new innovation ofers a
signiicant improvement in performance or beneits over the
previous generation. And, often two successive generations under
the same product category compete in the market. Yet technology
substitution has received little attention in the difusion of
innovation literature. Research for consumer durables has been
dominated by studies of irst purchase adoption which do not
explicitly consider the presence of an existing technology. Only a
handful of papers explicitly deal with the difusion of technology
substitution. In this work, we propose multigenerational difusion
model to study the marketing dynamics of Indian Television
Market (both Black & White and Color Television). T he model
consider repeat-adoption-substitution diffusion framework.
Comparisons with diferent existing multigenerational models are
made. The results of this study could be advanced for forecasting
new technologies of television product.
Kwors - Multi-generation, Dffusion, Substitution, Repeat
urchase, Sppers.
I. INTRODUCTION
Successul product planning requires creating a long-term pln
for generational changes and advances to maintain market share
and customer loyalty. From elecronic to sotware products, the
long-term rajectory of products requires changes to keep
products resh and appealing to customers. The most efective
multigenerational product planning generally includes
defensive measures to keep your product competitive.
Marketing growh of infomation-technology products is
continuously sustained by semiconductor products. In this paper
we study the sales patten of television product (both B& W and
978-1-4244-8343-3/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE 505
Sameer Anand
S.S. College of Business Studies,
University of Delhi, Delhi-l10095
Color) in Indian market. Television in India has been in existence
for about four decades. For the irst 17 years, it spread haltingly
and transmission was usually in black and white. In the initial
years the Indian Television Industry expanded very slowly.
Many factors were responsible for the lukewam response rom
he consumers that include he disasrous govement policies
along with he popular belief that television was a luxurious
element that Indians could do without. Sales of TV sets, as
relected by licences issued to buyers were just 676,615 until
1977. Post liberalization he industry has been witnessing robust
demand; uelled by revival in economy, increase in individual
disposable income and liberal incentive schemes by banks and
inancial institutions. The demand for CTV grew at 15% during
1985-89 but witnessed a slump rom 1990-94. With the eny of
MNCs and hereby aggressive marketing, the period between
1995-96 to 1999-2000 saw a surge in growh rate to 29%. In
between his period though the market share of B& W television
declined rapidly but it was never been out of he market. Color
television was introduced in Indian market on 1981. Though post
liberalization color television to lrge extent substitute he
market share of B& W television but it couldn't able to
cannibalize he market completely.
Study of technology-market structure analysis involves
describing how product generations compete against each oher.
New innovation in the market doesn't immediately replace the
previous one that it intends to substitute, but stts to compete
with it. This creates a sequence of parallel diusions of he
existing generational products in the market. The need for
inroduction of a new technology generation can be explained
with he help of S-cve or sigmoid diusion curve. Dring he
initial period of he product life cycle the adoption may be slow
with promoters trying for acceleration (intensity of diusion).
Later the rise in he curve is steep especially for successul
products. But sales (proitability) of a tecnology product can be
improved only till it attains its natural performance limit. When a
technology starts approaching its natral limit of performance, a