3/29

In the next segment of The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talks about a case study of how Airwalk sneakers’ successful trend eventually died out. Airwalk sneakers started off as being shoes designed for skateboarders. They were rumored to be very good shoes, so the word of mouth caused the shoes to become very popular. Once they became very popular, however, Airwalk stopped staying true to its promise of keeping the “better” shoes for the skateboarders, and let them go mainstream. That caused the word of mouth for the product to stop promoting it, and eventually caused the upward trend to end. Gladwell talks about the importance of rumors, or word of mouth, in helping trends spread. Going back to my example of the iPhone trend, I think that one of the main reasons why iPhones are so popular is because of the “rumors” about them (not the rumors about release dates, or Samsung vs. Apple, but in the sense that Gladwell means). Gladwell also adds that there are 5 different types of people who help start a trend: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and the deliberate. The names are pretty self explanatory, and it is really clear how customers are segmented into these 5 categories. With the iPhone trend again, the early adopters, for example, are the ones who are the first to have the phones after they are released. The early majority are the people who are coerced into buying the product early on, because of the word-of-mouth. After reading a large portion of this book, I can say that the information in it is very important, but the way it is organized is a little bit confusing. I wish the chapters were a little better organized and content in them was a little less abstract.