How innovative offerings gain acceptance within market segments How innovative offerings gain acceptance within market segments Solution In the face of cut-throat competition in today’s world, producers are expected to stay ahead if each other but offering something new to the customers. This requires constant innovation offerings that make way into the market through two ways: Diffusion and Adoption. The innovation in a product or service can be very small, or very large so as to change the structure of the whole product or service. After the innovation has been done, two factors play an important role: (i) Diffusion: This deals with the question of whether at all the innovated offering (product/service) would be accepted by the market segment (ii) Adoption: If the answer to ‘diffusion’ is ‘yes’ then this deals with how fast the innovative product or service offering would be accepted into the market segment. Diffusion is seen from a macro point of view wherein focus is put on creating awareness about the new product/service offering so that it gets accepted in the market segment. It is the process by which an innovative offering either is absorbed into the market or is not accepted in the market segment. This process is carried out mainly through communication by mass media, sales persons, word-of-mouth advertisement, etc. There is a target market that needs to be addressed within a specific period of time. Typically there are 4 elements of diffusion: Adoption on the other hand is seen from a micro point of view wherein stress is put on the various stages that a potential consumer goes through while accepting or rejecting the innovative offering, after is has been introduced in the market segment. Sometimes it may so happen that an innovative offering was there in the market but the consumer was unaware of it. This is where advertisement and selling strategies play extremely important roles. There are 5 factors that influence adoption: Thus, the above two processes are the ways through which innovative offerings gain acceptance within market segments..