product class investigation of innovators and opinion leaders

A Medial Product Opinion Leaders

Class Investigation

of Innovators

and

Albert V. Bruno, University of Santa Clara Thomas P. Hustad, York University

A frequent problem confronting managers who deal with products or services and the placement of advertisements is the choice of an appropriate medium for communicating with a desired audience. In the past, much market segmentation research has defined groups of potential buyers without considering the need to reach these segments economically throrrgh the use of mass media. Yet, “the manager cannot change the audience of a medium or the media exposure profiles of consumers. Rather, he must select media. In turn, these media are read, reviewed and listened to by different kinds of consumers in various mixes” [ 13. This article examines the selection problem by exploring both the reach and audience composition of 25 diverse media vehicles relative to two complementary, but often distinct, segments of the market-that is, innovators and opinion leaders- in the context of five dissimilar product categories. Specifically, the degree to which the percentage of product-specific innovators and opinion leaders, heavily exposed to specific media, varies significantly by media is reported. This point addresses the circulation or redch of the media. Also, the percentage of individuals, heavily exposed to specific media, who are productspecific innovators and opinion leaders is reported. This point relates to the relative composition of media audiences. Innovators-those persons who are among the first to adopt new ideas and products- account for the early sale of a new product. Opinion leaders-those persons who are capable of informally influencing the a.ctions and opinions of others-often account for sub. sequent growth in new product saies. Hence, these two behavioral classes become extremely important when new concepts arc to be communicated to the general population; their widely recognized imVolume 3, Number 4

Ocrober, 197’5

lourm?

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of Business

portance justi.fies the selection of these two behavioral consideration in the present study. Relded

Research

classes

for

Resewch

Unfortunately, only rather modest empirical research results have emerged thus far to aid the mamger in makmg media purchasing de&ions. For the most part, traditional tools such as reach and frequency, cost per exposure indices, and, more recently, geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic profiles of media audiences have ncrt been replaced by potentially more useful discriminating variables. The available research is of recent origin. Koponen [8], Massy [ 1 I], Bass, Pessemier, and Tigert [ 11, King and Summers [ 71, Bruno 121, Wells and Tigert [ 141, and others have demonstrated that media exposure is related to certain managerially useful characteristics such as, personal values, life style, personality, and product usage. In an effort to consolidate some of these results, Bruno, Hustad, and Pessemier [3] have presented a compr&ensive discussion and investigation of the extent to which attitudinal, brand preference, and product-category usage rate characteristics for one product category vary across the heavily exposed segments of television and print media audiences. The majority of these studies offer results which are suggestive but not necessarily managerially useful. One unanswered question relates to the pervasiveness of specific consumer segments across product categories and media alternatives. The present study is concerned with the pervasiveness of two such consumer segments-that is, opinion leaders and innovators. The published research on opinion leaders is extensive and traces its antecedents to the early 1940s when Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Caudet conducted their classic voting study [9], The published re.search on innovators, although of more recent origin, also demonstrates a substantial amount of interest (e.g., [4]). A central issue in marketrelated research on innovators and opinion leaders is the extent to which such consumers can be identified through product-specific or generalized constructs. Marcus and Bauer [lo], Silk [X3], King and Summers [6], and numerous others have been involved in investigating these and related questions. In particular their findings suggest that, while a degree of overlap of innovators or opinion Ieaders exists across related product categories, this overlap is small for dissimilar products. Thus, research involving a wide variety of consumer products is capable of producing richer insights into reIatisnships between media exposure and the presence of opinion leaders and innovators. The presence of opinion leaders and innovators frequently has

Media/Product

337

Innovators and Opinion Leuders

been assessed through the use of generalized consumer traits. Many of the cited studies indicate hat both should be measured specific to 3 particular product category. In this regard, Bruno, Mustad, and Bessemier [3] conclude: Generalized innovativeness and opinion leadership are weakly associated with print media exposure. This conclusion is strengthened by examining the product-specific case. For television, however, the general innovator and the product-specific innovator and opinion leader appear to differ more strongly in the degree to which they are heavily exposed to specific media vehicles. These vehicles also differ in the extent to which the heavily exposed portions of their audiences cou$st of these selected “behavioral classes.” Thus, the present study reports opinion leaders and innovators.

on product-specific

measures

of

Analysis and Discussion The data utilized in the investigation were derived from a large survey (n=912) completed in late 197O.l The identification of innovators and opinion leaders was achieved through the use of variables created via self-designated evaluations, as shown in Table 1.’ ‘T%e media exposure variables represented discrete categories with the following labels and descrilptors: “not exposed” (never or almost never exposed), “moderately exposed” (exposed to 25 or 50 percent of all programs or issues), and “heavily exposed” (exposed to 75 percent of all programs or issues). The 25 media alternatives were selected to provide a wide variety of both television and print media.3 ranging from nonsa?ient, low priced, Five diverse product categoriesfrequently purchased items such as toothpaste and cooking oils to highly salient, high priced, infrequently purchased items such as subcompact cars and room airconditioners-were selected to enhance the generalizability of the rest&s; in addition, to introduce an element of uniqueness, a quasi-service category-i.e., fast-food restaurantsalso was included. The results appear :in Table 2 through Table 4. Table 2 summarizes the extent to which the presence of product-specific innovators and opinion leaders was associated with exposure to specific print media and television shows; for example, data in the upper half of Table 2 reveal that 22.1 percent of the toothpaste innovators were heavily exposed to “Glenn Campbell” and 54.3 percent were heavily exposed to “Marcus Welby,” while data, in the lower half of the table show that (30.0 percent of the heavily exposed pofiion of the “Dating Game” audience and 18.9 percent of the heavily exposed portion of the Reader’s Digest audience were composed of

Journal

of Business Research

vators Scales Stimuli

Self-DesignatedStatements .. Innovators when new things come along in this type of product (INSERTPRODUCT), I learn about them . . .

Very

Very Soon 1

Late 2345

Very Late

Very Soon When new things come along in this type of product (INSERTPRODUCT), I try or buy them ...

Opinion

tmders

My actions

and opinions influenceothers about this type of product (IHSERTPRODUCT).

1

2345

Very Often 5

4321

0

Much Less Likely

More Likely 1

6

Never

Kuch

Compared with most other people you know, how l%kely are you to be asked for your ideas or your advi.ce on this product (INSERT PRODUCT)?

6

2345

6

cooking-oil opinion leaders. Table 3 contains a summary of the signifieant relationships by media; and, Table 4 illustrates the effectiveness of selected media in reaching productqecific innovator and opinion leader segments as defined across five product categories. The percent of product=speciGc innovators and opinion leaders who were heavily exposed to media varied widely by media, but not by produti category. Data in the upper half of Table 2 demonstrate &at for certain media such as “Marcus Welby” and Reader’s Digest the percent of product-specific innovators was nearly half of the eavily exposed. respondents, while for other media such 3s ‘60

Media/Froduct Innovators and Opinion Leaders

a Y

3i

339

Journal of Business Research

340

Minutes” and Glamour the percentages were more modest. This is the reach phenomenon referred to earlier. Thus, substantial variation existed across media for each of the product categories, but results were similar for all product categories within each medium. For example, pairwise significance tests (at the .05 level) of the 25 media pairs yielded 206 significant relationships for the compact-car product category and 2312 significant relationships for the cooking-oil product category, out of a possible 500. (The number of significant relationships expected by chance would be 25-i.e., 5 percent of 500 pairs.) The findings for opinion leadership were similar. Considering the large differences in reach of individual media vehicles, these results are not surprising. Table 3 summarizes the relationship between product-specific innovator and opinion leader characteristics, and exposure to television

Tab&z3: Significance

of Correlation

Category

of Exposure (.05 level)

T.V.

Product-spec.tf inmvativeness

Shows

Print

ic for:

toothpaste

11 of 16”

1 of 9

compact cars

4 of 16

1 of 9

fast-food

6 of

16

1 of 9

room air-conditioners

7 of 16

2 of 9

cooking

5 of 16

1 of 9

toothpaste

9 of 16

2 of 9

compact cars

2 of 16

4 of 9

fast-food

7 of 16

2 of 9

1 of

1 of 9

restaurants

oils

Product-specific opinion leadership

restaurants

room air-condi cooking

for :

oils

tdoners

16

7 of 16

2 of

9

a”Por 11 of 16 T.V. shows, exposure was significantly related to the consumers’ self-designated degree of innovativeness in the toothpaste product category.”

Media/Product

lnnovntor.~ and Opinion Leaders

341

and print media. The findings suggest that product-specific innovativeness and opinion leadership are related more strongly to television exposure than tc print media exposure. For innovators, 41 percent of the possible television-viewing/product-category relationships were statistically significant while only 13 percent of the possible print. media/product=category relationships were significant. For opinion leaders, the results -were similar but not as dramatic-that is, 33 percent of the possible television=viewing/product-category relationships were significant while 24 percent of the possible print-media/ product-category relationships were significant. On an individual product-category basis, television shows enjoyed more significant relationships than did print media in all but one of the cases, the exception being the relationship betweeu opinion leaders and the corn= pact-car product category; in this particular case, 44 percent of the compact-car/print-meldia comparisons were significant wiaile only 13 percent of the compact-car/television-viewing comparisons were sig nificant. As indicated in Table 3, the number of significant correlations was highest for the toothpaste product category for both innovators (12 of 25 relationships) and opinion leaders (11 of 25 relationships). The second highest number of significant correlations was found for room air-conditioner innovators while, for opinion leaders in this category, the lowest number of significant relationships was identified. The fast-food restaurant product category enjoyed reasonable success for both behavioral characteristics. The compactScar product category enjoyed only modest sti: zcss. Perhaps the nature of the product cate= gories in each of these cases had some impact on the extent to which product-specific innovators and opinion leaders prevailed. This point is researchable. In terms of audience composition, data in the lower half of Table 2 show that the percentage of heavily exposed individuals who are product-specific innovators and opinion leaders did not vary substantially by media. the effectiveness of selected media in Table 4, summarizing assessing managerially useful market segments, should be interpreted in light of the results presented in Tables 2 and 3. The number of significant relationships identified in Table 3 for each of the consumer characteristic/product category/media groups was substantially larger than the number due to chance. While a large percentage of these significant relationships probably can be attributed to the reach/ frequency phenomenon relating to the media vehicle in question, this explanation is not sufficient to justify all of the significant relationships identified. Thus, in addition, audience composition should be examined. For example, considering data in the lower half of Table

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342

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Research

Table 4: Effectiveness of Selected Media in Reaching Managerially Useful Market Segments Frequency in Sample Population (percent)

Basis for Xarket Segmentation

Product-specific innovators defined

via

21.8

cars

21.7

“Johnny Csrson ’ Pageant “AS the World Turns” fYlal?iOUF

“Gunsmoke” “Dating Game” Cosmopi-~li tan fast-food

Media with Lowest Proportion of Desired Heavily Exposed Segment in Audience

:

toothpaste

compact

Ytedia with Highest Proportion of Desired Heavily Exposed Segment in Audience

restaurants

Time Atlantic

Good Mousekeeping “Johnny Carson”

19.1

Glamour “Eddie “s Father” “Bold Ones”

room air -conditioners

24.5

!‘Dat ing Game” ‘Gunsmoke” “Gallcpinq Gournet”

Glamour Qeader's 3igest

cooking

25.0

“Lawrence Welk ’ “As the !Jorld Turns” “tlarcus Welby”

Reader's Digest ‘Glenn Campbell”

oils

Prouuct-specific opinion leaders

defined

t<>othpaste

via: 21.3 Game” ‘Laugh-In”

compact

cars

17.3 Cosnkopl i tan “Love American

fast-food

restaurants

room air-conditioners

18.9

American “60 ‘linutes” ‘Dnting

18.3 ‘Johnny “Love American

cooking

oils

“Gunsmoke” ‘As the World Turns” Reader's Digest

19.8

C~osmopoIi ‘TJating Game” ‘Love American

‘60 ‘iinutes” Time

“Lawrence Welk,’ Reader's Digest

Reader's Digest “Gunsmoke”

“Glenn Camphell” “Lawrence Welk”

Time Qeader's Digest

2 for the market segment defined as compact-car innovators, the number of heavily exposed individuals in the audience of “Gunsmoke” (31.3 iiercent of its heavily exposed viewers are Iproduct-specific innovator-e) and the number in the audience of “Johnny Carson” (20.4 percent of its heavily exposed viewers are product-specific innovators) were 09 and 103, respectively. Thus, while ‘Johnny Carson” recIched more of the heavily exposed viewers than did “Gunsmoke,” the number of heavily exposed viewers who also were compact-

Me&a/Product

Innovator:: and Opinion Leders

car innovators was only 21 in the “Johnny Carson“ audience as pared to 31 in the “Gunsmoke” audience. Similar results for significant media/product-category pairs suggest that selected vision and print media are capable of delivering audiences consumer characteristics potentially more managerially useful those found by examining only reach and frequency.

343

comother telewith than

Conchions The rest?% of this study provide ample evidence that selected media can deliver consumers with potentially useful characteristics through the heavily exposed segments of their audiences. The fact that tclevision audiences appear to have highe* proportions of innovators and opinion leaders in the product categories examined is somewhat surprising since the television audience self-selection process does not require as strong a commitment as that required for print media readership. It is interesting to note that the presence of product-specific opinion leaders and innovators does not vary more widely by product category. Hustad [ 51, using the same data base, has reported very low overlap of opinion leaders across the entire five product categories; specifically, he found only 4 percent of respondents to be influential for all five product categories. Thus, in the present study the seeming consistency in the figures is not due to overlap of influentials across product categories, and the results would suffer if product-specific measures were replaced by more generalized ones. The supportive nature of the overall findings of the current investigation is encouraging. However, it is left to future research to attempt to identify other, more useful behavioral characteristics in the heavily exposed portions of media audiences. More efficient media buying decisions ultimately may be the consequence.

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Journal of +iness

Research

Footnotes ?A detailed discussion of the design and the instruments employled in this survey is avatiable in 1121, and a more limited description is contained in [S]. fWhile it is recognized that substantial controversy exists regarding the validity of the self-designated method, it is not the purpose of the current investigation to resolve this controversy; ‘iather, it is proposed to use self-designated opinion leader and innovator measures to illustrate the nature of media audience similarities and differencea 8The set of media alternatives was identical to that reported elsewhere by the authors 133; thus, the studies are comparable.

References 1. Bass, Frank M.: Pesac”ntier, Edgar A.; and Tigert, Douglas d. “A Taxonomy of Magazine Readership Applied to Problems in Marketing Z&rate&yand Media Selection.” Journal of Business (July 1%9) : 337-63. 2 Bruno, Albert V. “‘The Network Factor in TV Viewing.” Journu( of Advertising Risearch (October 1973) : 33-39. 3. Bruno, Albeit V.; Hustad, Thomas P.; and Pessemier, Edgar A. “Media Approaches to Segmentation.” lournul of Advertising Research (April 1973) :, 35-42. 4. Darden, William R. and Reynolds, :Fred D. “Backward Profiling of Male Innovators.” ,Iournal of Murketing Research (February 1974) : 79-85.1 5. Hustad, Thomas P. “Information Handling Behavior for Consumer Typologies.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Purdue University, 1973. I 6. King, Charles W. and Summers, Johm 0. “Overlap of OpinL/l Leadership across Consumer Product Categories.‘” Journal of Marketing Research (F;bruary 1970) : 43-50. 7. King, Charles W. and Summers, John 0. “Attitudes and Media; Exposure.” Journal of Advertising Research (February 1971) : 26-33. 8. Koponen, Arthur. “Personality Characi:eristics of Purchasers.” Jo,‘srnat of Advertising Research, (September l%O) : 612. 9. Lazarsfeld, Paul; Berelson, Bernard; and Gaudet, Hazel. The P’~ople’s Choice. New York : Columbia University Press, 1944. 10. Marcus, Alan and Bauer, Raymond. ‘(‘Yes: There Are Generalized Opinion Leaders.” Public Opinion Quarterly (Winter 1964) : 628.32. 11. Massy, William F. “Discriminant Analysis of Audience Charactqristics.” Journal of 4dvertising Research (March 1965) : 39.48. I 12. Pessemier, Edgar A. ; DeBruicker, F. Stewart; and Hustad, Thi>mas P. “The 1970 Purdue Consumer Behavior Research Project.” Unpublished workling paper, Krannert Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Purdue IJniversity, ‘June 1971. 13. Silk, Alvin. “Overlap among Self-Designated Opinion Leaders: 11, Study of Selected Dental Products.*’ Journal oj Marketing Research (August 1966)‘: 255.60. 14. Wells, William D. and Tigert, Douglas J. “Activities, Interelits, and Opinions.” .2’ournal of Advertising Research, (August 1971) : 27.35,