Late Majority

Late majority refers to the last segment of a population to adopt an innovative technology. The late majority accounts for roughly 34% of the population, and will adopt a new product only after seeing that the majority of the population already has. People in this segment are typically older, less affluent and less educated than segments that more readily adopt innovative products.

The adoption of innovative products can be broken into five primary segments: innovators (the first to adopt), early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. Companies evaluate how their products will fare by taking into account the time necessary for more than 50% of the market to adopt a new product. It may take a long time for the majority to adopt groundbreaking products.

The terminology for the various stages of adoption comes out of the academic study of the diffusion of innovation. The adoption of innovation received much attention in the 1920s and 1930s with research on US farmers and their adoption of farm technology and hybrid seeds.