The Adoption and Diffusion of Wearables

Abstract

Although the sales of wearables are increasing in the last few years, it is still unknown how wearables are actually adopted and being used in everyday life by consumers. In this study, we try to identify the adoption and diffusion patterns of wearables by performing a sentiment analysis on 97 semi-structured interviews with wearables owners/users focused on relevance and requirements of and resources and resistance related to wearables. Based on this analysis we conclude that developers and manufacturers of wearables should make their devices more relevant, more reliable and easier to use. They should also address privacy issues and foster habit (using it all and every day) in order to speed up the adoption and diffusion of wearables. The theoretical contribution of this paper is that habit should be studied as a potential dependent variable for intention to use.