Separating early-adopters from the majority: The case of Broadband Internet access in Korea

This paper examines key static determinants and dynamic diffusion processes to develop a diffusion model of network products from the case of rapid growth of Broadband Internet in Korea. In the competitive environment of shortening product life cycle, there have been few studies on the key factors affecting the rapid and dynamic diffusion of network products. This paper identifies that market and technological factors have had a great impact on the explosive diffusion speed, while government and socio-cultural factors moderately contributed to the rapid diffusion. This paper also explores the dynamic diffusion processes: diffusion for the early-adopter and diffusion for the majority. Finally, theoretical propositions are developed on the diffusion of innovation for network products and practical implications for expediting the diffusion of emerging technologies are discussed. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.