Identifying early adopters of new IT products: A case of Windows 95

This paper presents the findings of an empirical study into factors identifying early adopters of new IT products. Drawing two well-researched concepts (opinion leadership and consumer innovativeness) developed in the marketing field, several hypotheses were formulated to test against data collected from 145 microcomputer users who had or had not adopted Windows 95. The findings indicate that early adopters tend to be younger males who are of opinion leadership type, like to seek novel information, and have a lot of computer experience. Implications of the findings, from both a research and a managerial perspective are discussed.