Consumer acceptance of new products across nations

This chapter provides a brief background to the problem and spells out objective of the
study, research issues, hypotheses and research methodology. This chapter also gives the
reader the limitations of the study and a disposition of the following chapters.
New product adoption behavior is defined as a degree to which an individual adopts
innovation relatively earlier than other members of his system (Rogers and Shoemaker,
1971). Consumers' new product adoption behavior is of fundamental interest to
marketing managers and researchers alike because of its role in the new product diffusion
processes (Rogers, 1995). Understanding what differentiates visionary customers who
adopt the products earlier in the process from more pragmatic customers in the
mainstream market has been suggested as the key to new product marketing in today's
high-tech era (Moore, 1999). Despite extensive research on new product adoption
behavior, the literature does not contain studies examining the validity of the adoption
paradigms across countries, demographics and cultures. This study will attempt to fill the
gap by studying new product adoption behavior across four countries, namely Australia,
India, China and New Zealand, through consumer surveys in these countries.