Responsible: Assistant. Prof. Lajla Klamer, TDC, Denmark

Participants: Jo Pierson (Vrije Universiteit Brussels), Enid Mante (KPN Research), Carina Pettersson (Linköping University), Tomaz Turk (University of Ljubljana), Kristin Thrane (Telenor R&D), Jeroen Heres (KPN Research).


This workgroup was formed during the 3rd MC-meeting (Brussels, March 2000). The group aimed to study processes affecting the adoption, use and domestication of ICTs. Given the variety of influences and considerations involved they decided to bring these together within a general framework or model provided by Jeroen Heres since it was a useful way of organising these factors. Then each group member was to consider the case studies that they were already working on in the light of the framework to see if using this model could add to their analysis.


Results

The ‘Capabilities’ workgroup has reported the result of its work in the form of a book (Klamer et al, 2002. Capabilities in Action — What People Do). The aim of the work was to provide a framework and checklist for both researchers and product developers to think about the factors shaping adoption and use of ICTs. After outlining the framework and the key concept of ‘capability’ the various chapters tested out the framework through diverse case studies to analyse what insights it provided.

The framework, when applied to different markets, users, or technologies, enables scientists and marketers to make better segmentations and better predictions of the possible success of new services for different user groups. It has already been successfully used experimentally as a tool to locate possible successful services for residential users within a telecom company and to test whether putative services might attract a large enough market.

Within the workgroup the framework was applied on the qualitative and quantitative data from several case studies conducted in different European countries

The overall conclusions were that innovation does not always require innovative people, that we should look beyond the type of people who are early adopters. In terms of gender differences, males and females appear on balance to have somewhat different values and ways of looking at innovations: what may be termed a more masculine approach involves asking what can an ICT do, what are its functions, while the equivalent feminine one in this context asks what is an ICT good for, what use is it to me. Although particular males and females may be located at different points between the two ways of evaluating ICTs, early adopters tend to have these masculine values, while in the later mass market feminine ones become more important.

Although it is important to look at trends — and a number of examples were listed — in themselves they do not always lead to innovation. And in fact nor do the ‘needs’ discussed by operators — rather, new ICTs have to be better than existing solutions (partly because people are good at managing their lives, meeting ‘needs’ with the ICTs that they already have, so adoption requires them to throw away things that they are currently using). In addition, micro enterprises have extra demands, with potential adopters asking how useful an innovation is for the business.

It is also important to build on existing ICTs: if people already have a PC or TV in the home it is easier to consider buying a second one than it is to adopt a totally new innovation. Ownership of existing ICTs is also a predictor of the more advanced us of new ICTs — for example, if a business has a fax it is easy to think about moving to the next stage and adopting something more sophisticated.

In sum, the framework is a useful analytical tool for organising the different factors at work. All the factors were important, but they had different degrees of importance according to different ICTs and different situations. Part of the strength of the framework is that it addresses both wants and possibilities (not just the wants of interest to marketing staff, and the possibilities examined in social research). It takes into account different levels of analysis, including the macro. And it is possible to start from different angles without forgetting the relationship between the ICT perspectives and user perspective.


Content

Preface

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: The Theoretical framework

Empirical research results; the framework in practice:

Chapter 3: The Screen fridge, adoption of an innovation (Lajla Klamer, lkla@tdc.dk)

Chapter 4: Economic factors in adoption (Tomaz Turk, tomaz.turk@uni-lj.si)

Chapter 5: Computer appropriation by small businesses (Jo Pierson, jo.pierson@vub.ac.be)

Chapter 6: Existing technologies: ICT based entertainment in the home (Kristin Thrane, kristin.thrane@telenor.com)

Chapter 7: Existing technologies: The use of the PC in Swedish households (Carina Petterson, cpn@hig.se)

Chapter 8: Future technologies: Mobile ICTs in Japan (Jeroen Heres, j.h.heres@kpn.com; Enid Mante, e.mante@usg.uu.nl)

Chapter 9: Conclusions and evaluation