Adopter categories

Rogers defines an adopter category as a classification of individuals within a social system on the basis of innovativeness. In the book Diffusion of Innovations, Rogers suggests a total of five categories of adopters in order to standardize the usage of adopter categories in diffusion research. The adoption of an innovation follows an S curve when plotted over a length of time.[13] The categories of adopters are: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards (Rogers 1962, p. 150) In addition to the gatekeepers and opinion leaders who exist within a given community, there are change agents from outside the community. Change agents essentially bring innovations to new communities– first through the gatekeepers, then through the opinion leaders, and so on through the community.