Marketing communication: principles and practice

Adoption
process
Robertson’s
process of
adoption
Rogers’
model
Figure 3.10
Models of the adoption/diffusion process
Source
: Based on Wells and Prensky, 1996: 493

---

transfer, as we saw in chapter two. As David Bernstein (1984) wrote, we don’t
communicate with targets, we hit them! In addition, both technologies and
people often mediate communication. Here we are interested in the influence
that people may have in the marketing communication system.
Some people apprehend a message directly, while others may interact with
them but will not have heard or read the message directly (Figure 3.11).
Mediators may reinforce or undermine through reinterpretation of the
message in their interactions. Presenters in TV travel shows are opinion
formers in that they can experience a place or event ‘on our behalf’ and give
us an opinion for something that we have not ourselves experienced directly.
Reviews and tests have the same impact. Credibility of the mediator is crucial
to the outcome. 
Word-of-mouth communication is significant because our customers and
those consumers with whom we might wish to forge a trading relationship
may interact with highly influential people. The recommendations of highly
credible people are sought, especially during the evaluation phase of the
purchase decision process. 
Some people are active in receiving data, interpreting it, and communi-
cating about their judgements with others (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955). These
opinion leaders
are more persuasive in exerting interpersonal influence than
those who interact directly through mass media. Opinion leadership can be
simulated in product testimonial advertising. These people are very important
to managed product diffusion, but are very difficult to identify through
conventional market research methods.
Opinion formers
are able to exert personal influence because they have
authority or status. Others seek information and advice from them because
they are recognized as expert. They are gatekeepers, relatively easy to identify,
and are often ‘lobbied’ in an effort to persuade them to pursue opinions and
policies that are favourable to the lobbier.
People act within a network of other people. The challenge for marketers
is to identify those customers and prospective customers who are significant
because they are influential to others and those who are not amenable to