Transcript Opinion Leaders

Change Agents
and Opinion
Leaders
Who are they?
Change Agent
 Is
an individual who influences client’s
innovation-decisions in a direction deemed
desirable by a change agency
 Change
agents use opinion leaders in a
social system as their lieutenants in
diffusion activities
Characteristics of Change Agents
 Are
usually professionals with a university
degree in a technical field
 They
are heterophilous from their typical
clients
Roles of Change Agents
 Develop
a need for change
 Establish an information exchange
relationship
 Diagnose a problem
 Create a intent to change
 Translate an intent into action
 Stabilize adoption and prevent
discontinuance
Change Agents Connect
 Change
agents tend to reach the first few
adopter categories
Innovators
Early Adopters
Early Majority
Late Majority
Laggards
20
15
12
5
3
Problems with Change Agents
 Fail
to penetrate to lower adopter
categories because
 Elite
clients are homophilous with change
agents
 Lower
status clients are socioeconomically different from change agents
–heterophily gap impedes communication
Opinion Leadership
 Is
the degree to which an individual is able
to influence other individuals’ attitudes or
overt behavior in a desired way with a
relatively high frequency
Opinion leadership and Media use
 Opinion
leadership is not a trait
 High knowledge of particular subjects and
media experts
 These people absorb certain media
messages and inform their friends,
families, and peers
 Opinion leaders are not politicians and
clergy and the like (although they can be)
Opinion Leaders
 Magnify
the change agents’ efforts
 Give sanction and credibility to new ideas
 Have followers
 In
some cases if opinion leaders adopt an
innovation, it is impossible to stop its
diffusion
Innovators and change agents
 Innovators
are first to adopt a new idea
 They are often perceived as deviant in
norms
 Behavior
does not necessarily convince
average members to adopt
Confusion with innovators
 Innovators
are mistaken for opinion
leaders
 If
opinion leaders are too innovative then
they are perceived as too close to change
agents and become less credible