Nonmonotonic Status Effects in New Product Adoption

We investigate how the tendency to adopt a new product independently of social influence, the recipients' susceptibility to such influence, and the sources' strength of influence vary with social status. Leveraging insights from social psychology and sociology about middle-status anxiety and conformity, we propose that for products that potential adopters expect to boost their status, both the tendency to adopt independently from others and the susceptibility to contagion is higher for middle-status than for low- and high-status customers. Applying a nested case-control design to the adoption of commercial kits used in genetic engineering, we find evidence that status affects (i) how early or late one adopts regardless of social influence, (ii) how susceptible one is to such influence operating through social ties, and (iii) how influential one's own behavior is in triggering adoption by others. The inverse-U patterns in (i) and (ii) are consistent with middle-status anxiety and conformity. The findings have implications for how to use status to better understand adoption and contagion mechanisms, and for targeting customers when launching new products.