adopter category

The rates of adoption for innovations are determined by an individual's adopter category.

Rogers defines an adopter category as a classification of individuals within a social system on the basis of innovativeness.

In the book Diffusion of Innovations, Rogers suggests a total of five categories of adopters in order to standardize the usage of adopter categories in diffusion research.

His books are derived from his Silicon Valley consulting work at The McKenna Group and the Chasm Group (which he founded), and earlier work by Everett Rogers on adopter categories and diffusion of innovations.

While India, for example, has islands of high technology, it ranks at the bottom of the dynamic adopters category, just above marginalization - not only well below China by virtually every measure, but also far behind Southeast Asia, Latin American and parts of Africa and the Arab world.