Early adopter (marketing)

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An early adopter or lighthouse customer is an early customer of a given company, product, or technology.

Typically this will be a large, sophisticated customer that, in addition to using the vendor's product or technology, will also provide considerable and candid feedback to help the vendor refine its future product releases, as well as the associated means of distribution, service, and support.

The relationship is synergistic, with the customer having early (and sometimes unique, or at least uniquely early) access to an advantageous new product or technology.

In exchange for being an early adopter, and thus being exposed to the problems, risks, and annoyances common to early-stage product testing and deployment, the lighthouse customer is given especially attentive vendor assistance and support, even to the point of having personnel at the customer's work site to assist with implementation. The customer is often given preferential pricing, terms, and conditions.

The vendor, on the other hand, benefits from receiving early revenues, and also from a lighthouse customer's endorsement and assistance in further developing the product and its go-to-market mechanisms. Acquiring lighthouse customers is a common step in new product development and implementation.

Individual early adopters are those who like the new and have enough money to buy things when they first come out at higher prices, and have been pleased with the product. adopters, NOT just buyers.

Since they can have anything they want, they tend to be fickle, easily displeased, but if they DO like something they have bought, they recommend the product to others.

Advertisers actively cultivate them, not just for sales lists and for beta testing, but because their opinions are based on actual experience and comparisons with other new products.

Early adoption does come with pitfalls: early versions of products may be buggy and/or prone to malfunction (such as the Commodore 64 or Xbox 360), overpriced (iPhone), or prematurely obsolete (8 track tapes, Betamax, HD DVD). Furthermore, more efficient, less expensive versions of the product usually appear a few months after the initial release.[1]