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"  A professor of mine once said that in this day and age, technology is changing at an exponential rate, in which the exponent itself is growing exponentially! And in my opinion, this couldn&amp;#039;t be truer. New gadgets are constantly being created and then continually upgraded in a quest for perfection. So when is the right time to buy a product? When it&amp;#039;s first released? When it&amp;#039;s been on the market for a while and all the bugs have been removed? When the product has been improved and updated? For instance, consumers are anxious to know on whether or not to invest in the iPhone 4G upfront or hold off for a while. According to Geoffrey Moore&amp;#039;s Technology Adoption Life Cycle, there are five types of consumers who buy at five different stages and there&amp;#039;s advantages to purchasing during each one. Which type of consumer you are depends on your personality.    Innovators (2.5% of purchasers): You know who they are: Your brother who had an iPod before you even knew what one was and your neighbor who was using a Kindle while you were still scoffing at the notion of reading books electronically. Innovators get to have the gadget while it&amp;#039;s still a novel concept, and let&amp;#039;s face it, look pretty darn cool. They&amp;#039;re more likely to have a closer relationship with the manufacturer, get better technical support, and sometimes even influence the product&amp;#039;s evolution with their feedback. But they pay a higher price than they would later on and have to deal with the bugs that haven&amp;#039;t been fixed yet. Bottom line? If you&amp;#039;re a risk taker and like to be trendy, you&amp;#039;re an early adopter.  Early Adopters (13.5% of purchases): They still get to seem pretty cool and their versions will work a little better as the manufacturers&amp;#039; have had a chance to address some of the problems that emerged in the first products off the assembly line.  Early Majority (34% of purchases): If it&amp;#039;s a go, the early majority will begin to follow and make a solid investment. They don&amp;#039;t want to appear to be old fuddy duddies and adopt things more quickly than the average consumer, but like their risks calculated.  Late majority (34% of purchases): At this point in the life cycle of a product, it has usually come down in cost and is much more affordable. By the time this group is buying, the product is greatly improved over the original and there&amp;#039;s little risk.  Laggards (16% of purchases): They won&amp;#039;t invest in a product until it&amp;#039;s mainstream and couldn&amp;#039;t care less about the cool factor. (You know who they are: They bragged about not having a cell phone for years and have no idea how to download their pictures.) The laggards reward? Improvements and lower prices. But they risk buying out-of-date products or not being able to buy them at all.   I tend to be an early adopter as I don&amp;#039;t like taking huge risks but do like to be in the know and have the coolest gadgets. My approach is to test out new things in a calculated manner. What&amp;#039;s your buying preference? When do you think the best time to buy a product is?  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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