The Hindu Business Line : Grooming customers to be `techno-ready'

COMPANIES launching high-tech gadgets need to be sensitive to the "technology-readiness profiles" of their customers before putting their products out in the market. They also need to develop marketing strategies, which evolve as a product ages in the marketplace, to cater to later waves of customers who may not take to new technology as initial customers of the products do.

Prof A. Parasuraman, who holds the James W. McLamore Chair in Marketing at the University of Miami, US, has developed the concept of `techno-readiness,' a concept gaining relevance in the spate of new technologies being unleashed on consumers. "Tech-readiness as opposed to techno savvy is a measure of mental readiness to embrace technology as opposed to dexterity or skill with regard to gadgets," he told Business Line.

In India recently, this former IIT Madras graduate, who went on to specialise in marketing in the US, authored a book along with Charles Colby two years ago, Techno-ready marketing: How and why your customers adopt technology, which first discussed this concept.

Prof. Parasuraman said that with the proliferation of technology services and products in the US there is growing frustration. "There were instances of consumer frustration with software programmes and other gadgets and that got us interested in the downside to this tremendous explosion of technology," he said.

A series of focus groups and qualitative studies on technology impact on people's lives followed and the pair identified four facets of techno-readiness. Two dimensions that propel people towards technology is innovativeness and optimism. Innovativeness is a general tendency to experiment with new things and share with other people, while optimism is an overall positive view of technology, he said. The two other dimensions are inhibitors to technology discomfort, which is a general fear of technology, while the other dimension is insecurity. "Techno-readiness is really an amalgam of these four feelings," he added.

"The key message of techno-ready marketing is that you have groups of people with varying levels of techno-readiness and the type of marketing strategy that you use to market to one group of consumers may not really work with another group of people," he explains. Based on their studies, the duo came up with five segments or clusters of individuals and their attitude to technology.

The first cluster is explorers or those who are gung-ho about technology and lead in innovativeness and optimism. The next cluster consists of the pioneers; they share the enthusiasm of the explorers but also have fears. The next cluster is sceptics; they are not afraid of technology but don't believe in it and question the benefits of technology. The fourth are the paranoids, who are unwilling to try anything. The last one is the laggard group, the exact opposite of explorers. "They have to be dragged kicking and screaming to try any new technology," elaborated Prof. Parasuraman.

He explains that these concepts are very new, so what companies are doing now is trying to understand the TR profile of customers. For example, if a company knew what percentage of its customer base are explorers, it could be useful because then the company's marketing strategy should be to come up with the next best version of the product. "The next wave of consumers may demand a different kind of product or service," he said.

Income alone, said Prof. Parasuraman, is not a key driver of adoption of technology; there are a lot of wealthy people in the US who are afraid of technology. "So it's not an issue of affordability of technology, for example sceptics, one of the five segments I mentioned, have a higher income profile than the pioneers. It's more a matter of understanding consumers' requirements and coming up with a marketing strategy that will appeal to that segment," he added.

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Grooming customers to be `techno-ready'

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