Microsoft Windows, Windows Offers

It wasn’t long before the blonde, hard rock version of Brooks disappeared and the good old country boy reemerged. Since then, however, Brooks has failed to hit the level of popularity he claimed in the early to mid 1990s.

Marketers sometimes underestimate the time required for innovative new products to diffuse through the population because of failure to understand generalization. Products that require a substantial change in behavior are classified as discontinuous innovations; they take more time to diffuse and be accepted than products that consumers perceive as similar to what they’ve used in the past. Microsoft Windows dominates the market in part because of the evolutionary nature of its product. Rather than create a new system every few years that requires that consumers abandon what they know and learn something new. Windows offers upgrades that consumers can adopt quickly, easily, and voluntarily-or they can choose to pass and wait until the difference is great enough to warrant a change.

Just as Microsoft Windows had the focus to become the operating system of the masses (not just the opinion leaders as in the case of Apple), the Rolling Stones did whatever it took to grow their fan base and be adopted by the masses. The Ed Sullivan show was important enough in reaching the U.S. mass market that the Stones modified their product to fit the culture in which they found themselves- accepting the cultural boundaries of America. When they appeared on Sullivan’s show in 1967, Jagger changed the words of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together.” Foregoing a purist view of their art form, the Stones were realistic and pragmatic about how to get the product out and accepted by potential fans.