Amir Heiman

Marketing for Economists and Life Scientists presents a new perspective on marketing, i.e., viewing it as a mechanism to reduce pre-purchase risks. Since products are designed, produced and marketed to pre-selected target markets, there are consumers whose preferences differ from that design and may find ex post that the product does not fit their needs. This long assumed heterogeneity among producers and consumers is viewed as the ground for uncertainty. Spanning over 18 years of research, Heiman and Zilberman focuses on marketing tools designed to reduce uncertainty and incorporates marketing thinking and principles into an economic framework. The mathematical detailing has been reduced to a minimum and the theoretic principles will be presented in the text. The book has been written for economists and life scientists to understand what marketing is and how it can be used to create demand and profit and market innovations.

Adoption of Innovations reviews the Bass model and its new generation extensions as well as the alternative approach – the threshold model, which analyzes an individual’s decision whether, and to what extent, to use a new technology given economic conditions. The authors show that the threshold model has a notable advantage in incorporating marketing tools that are targeted to and/or aim at reducing risk. This monograph describes the two models. It shows how they relate to each other, and then discusses how marketing tools, and in particular marketing tools that are designed to reduce risk, can be incorporated into each of the two models.