Diffusion of Information Technology: An Extension of the Bass Model

Successful diffusion of information technology is the key point for IT firms to gain competitive advantages. Compared with other types of technology, most of information technology is characterized by significant network externalities, coherent cross-product interaction and high knowledge barriers. As the main impetus underlying diffusion modeling methods, the Bass model provides a general framework on depicting the diffusion process of technology while failing to capture the distinctive characteristics of IT innovation diffusion. This paper extends the Bass model by relaxing some assumptions and incorporating into it three additional variables to reflect the natures of IT innovations. Centering on the influence that characteristics of IT innovations exert on the willingness of potential users to adopt new technology, the paper redefines the coefficients of innovators and imitators in the Bass model so that the refined model is tailored to information technology diffusion. At the end of the paper, several implications are obtained from the extended model to give some useful suggestions for IT researchers and practitioners.