Individual Innovativeness Levels of Lead Users and Non-Lead Users: The Case Study of Surgeons in Turkey
Güney Çetin Gürkan, PhD; Tülay Demiralay, PhD

Abstract
One of the important features of lead users is their desire to try and adopt new products or services being released to the market more quickly than other consumers are. Lead users are also expected to have high level of individual innovativeness. This study is to examine whether there is any difference in the individual innovativeness levels of lead users. This research was carried out on surgeons; 73 lead user and 70 non-lead user surgeons were compared and the results were presented. First of all, the individual innovativeness levels of the group were measured with the evaluation of all surgeons who participated in the survey and 60% of surgeons were determined to be in innovator and early adopter which are the highest two categories. Variance analysis showed that there was a significant difference between the individual innovativeness levels of lead users and nonlead users. Moreover, it was also found a significant difference in sub-dimensions of individual innovativeness (resistance to change, openness to experience and risk taking, opinion leading). The averages of lead users are lower than those of non-lead users in resistant to change, but the average of lead users are higher than those of non-lead users in other two sub-dimensions.

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