Diffusion of Innovations (Blog #7)

Since I did Amazon for my EOTO timeline project, and have a better baseline of knowledge of its evolution, I decided to use this knowledge to my advantage for my discussion on the Diffusion of Innovations. When we hear the word "Amazon," our head goes to many different places; Amazon shopping, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music, Amazon "Alexa" products, Kindles, and older generations may simply just think of the Amazon Rainforest. Although today my primary focus will be the shopping aspect of Amazon, the example I gave clearly shows how effective Everett Rogers's Diffusion of Innovation theory can be as we continue to evolve our technology.

Rogers's Diffusion of Innovations is a theory that was published in 1962, that expresses how and why technology and people's technological ideas spread at the rate they do.  This theory consists of five main factors that conduct the research for this theory; Social System, Communication Channels, Time, Adoption, and of course Innovation. Social capital plays a massive role in this theory of Rogers, which basically gives us the understanding that the people who use certain technology have their social reasons to be using said technology compared to the people who choose not to.

When it comes to Amazon's online shopping, we see a trend in who uses this platform the most in today's society. Studies conducted from surveys show evidence that people in Generation X and lower are far more likely to online shop compared to senior citizens. The reasoning behind this can be as simple as the fact that older people did not grow up in an environment where they needed to order anything online. They went into this constant groove of going out to the store when they needed or wanted something, and once you are so used to doing something you just continue to roll with it. 

For younger generations, we have grown up in the period in which our parents began to discover the perks of online shopping since they were young enough to like to conquer new things in technology, which then began to rub off on us. Since that is the way we learned to buy things for certain reasons, we picked up a bit of ordering things online rather than in-store. Another huge factor of this was also the 2020 pandemic, since we were glued to our technology and told we could not leave the house. Ordering products online has become a norm for millennials and younger adults. Although Amazon online shopping was still popular before the pandemic, the pandemic allowed us to adopt this invention to our everyday lives. 

Bouncing off the Idea of the pandemic influencing online shopping, particularly for Amazon since it had the fastest and cheapest delivery options, this is easily a negative aspect that online shopping holds on us as a society. Since so many people order everything online now many in-person stores are beginning to close or go bankrupt since you can just order it on Amazon. This is unbeneficial to the business itself and for those older people who have not learned or had an interest in online shopping. 

This brings us to the idea of early adopters vs late adopters of online shopping. Late adopters of online shopping tend to be those who have no choice but to start ordering online, also usually known as older people. Early adopters of online shopping tend to be people under 20 because younger people tend to repeat what they see their parents do around them. Also, younger people keep up with trends more easily than middle-aged to senior-aged people do, and Amazon is one place that is advertised all over social media platforms daily.