Business Dynamics Model for Market Acceptance Considering Individual Adoption Barriers

The technological developments of our time provide the basis for a continuous flow of new applications and services. But even when allowing for significant improvements in everyday life, some of these innovations need an incredibly long time to be broadly – if at all – accepted in the market. Marketing and technical implementation are often only partially responsible. Consumers additionally need to overcome personal barriers to adopt an innovation. The height of this barrier is determined by manifold aspects like: Financials, required infrastructure, technical affinity, expected learning efforts, and safety concerns. In this article we introduce a market diffusion model that explicitly takes individual adoption barriers into account, while maintaining the top down approach of Business Dynamics. An extendible method is used which bridges the gap between the level of individual traits and a macroscopic view. It enables system dynamics models to be designed on an individual level and to be simulated on an aggregated level. The model includes a feedback loop between the number of existing adopters and the number of consumers prepared to adopt the innovation. It explicitly allows for the adoption by only a portion of the potential customers. Furthermore, the model can reproduce tipping points and visually explain slow market developments or unexpected late successes.