KEY POINTS:
The day Microsoft launched its new computer operating system Windows Vista, Amit Govind walked into Dick Smith Electronics and paid $650 for the most expensive version available.
Only three copies of Vista Ultimate were on the shelf at the time. The retailer obviously wasn't expecting a stampede of
customers for it.
Govind, a 26-year-old software developer from Wellington, is what is known to marketers of technology products as an "early adopter".
He's ahead of the curve - quick to buy and use new technology and prepared for it not to work exactly as promised.
"It was not an impulse buy," says Govind of his Vista purchase.
"I put money aside, I did my homework. And I've no loyalty to any brand. I'm not a fan boy of Apple or Windows, Nokia or Sony Ericsson."
Govind sits at a crucial point in the "technology adoption lifecycle", a model created by academics in the 1950s that divides people into innovators, early adopters, the early majority, the late majority and finally laggards.
Simon Kemp, a lecturer in the psychology department at Canterbury University, says one theory is that if manufacturers want a new product to take off they need to convince the innovative consumers to adopt it and then tell their friends about it. In the case of products like the hugely successful iPod music player, he adds, this obsession with early adopters has more than paid off.
"The marketing strategy has worked. They got the early adopters to use them. These things have gone past the innovative stage now and spread throughout society."
Psychology research involving people who had invested early in the volatile technology sector during the dotcom boom shows they had a propensity for taking risks, Kemp says.
"It turned out that people who bought shares in those companies were notably different in personality tests to the people who bought shares in ordinary companies," he says. "They generally liked to take risks."
He believes the same goes for early adopters of technology who now seem to constitute an expanding group. As consumers become more comfortable with technology, thanks to the Apple iPod, Google, the Motorola Razr and the Sony PlayStation, they have in turn become quicker adopters of new technology - more comfortable with the risk of buying in early.
The tech sector is prospering as a result, having learned to leap the metaphorical chasm outlined in Geoffrey Moore's 1991 book Crossing the Chasm. Moore made a fortune advising Silicon Valley tech companies on how best to push products from early adopters to the mass market.
He felt there was a barrier separating those prepared to sit on the bleeding edge of new technology and the "pragmatists" who embraced it later and were more sceptical of its merits. Clever marketing, product design and distribution had to be dreamed up to cross the chasm. The industry seems to have taken his advice to heart.
Society is using more technology than ever before and taking to it faster. Consumption is driven by the global shift to digital storage of media, the proliferation of web service and the availability of better-quality, high-definition video. Disruptive delivery systems like internet TV and music and video downloads are changing how people access content.
Consumers are spending more of their disposable income on consumer electronics and will continue to do so, says Sean Wargo, an analyst for the American Consumer Electronics Association. Speaking to reporters at the massive Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month he said new technologies were developing faster than ever.
"New technologies we haven't even seen yet are sure to be adopted faster than their previous generations."
According to the CEA, the average American household spent $2164 on consumer technology last year and is expected to spend close to $3122 this year. Kiwis spent $937 million on consumer electronics last year, an increase of 10 per cent on 2005.
The spend-up on consumer electronics seems to have breathed new life into materialism. Mobile phones, laptops and other electronic gadgets are increasingly regarded as status symbols.
Kemp says some people get pleasure in showing off their possessions to others.
"That is conspicuous consumption. If you can afford something like this, it's a demonstration that you're doing reasonably well."
But some are making big financial sacrifices to be early adopters. Mt Eden retailer, Computerlounge, builds powerful computers to order but finds student gamers and retirees tinkering around with digital video editing make up a large portion of its clientele.
"Some of them are still at university," says co-founder Paul Pattison. "I wouldn't put them in the high-end earning bracket."
Most machines sold at Computerlounge cost between $4000 and $6000, a hefty outlay for someone on a part-time wage or student allowance.
"The thing forcing them to buy high-end is the games. The software pushes the hardware," says Pattison.
One customer, a middle-aged, male customer forked out $9500 for a custom-built computer just so he had a machine powerful enough to do justice to the new flying game, Flight Simulator X, he says.
But it's about more than having the hardware grunt to handle the latest and greatest games. This class of PC owner also requests glowing lights and water-coolers built into their computers. They buy super-fast processors and the best graphics cards available.
Pattison says it gives them "internet bragging rights" in the competitive online multiplayer gaming community, where people gather to play cult hits like Warcraft, 1942 and Counterstrike and obsess over hardware configurations.
After three-and-a-half years in the game, Pattison says business is booming. "We're getting a lot more mainstream people. With the popularity of large screens, people want to put all their media on the computer."
As a result, computers designed to sit in the lounge and act as media hubs for music, photos and recorded TV programmes have become popular and people are prepared to pay more for them.
People know that they can spend $900 on a computer but that they'll throw it away after a year, says Pattison.
"It's a generational thing. Ten to 15 years ago computers weren't around to the same extent. You spent money on cars."
A look at the latest junk-mail flyers from Harvey Norman or Noel Leeming suggest the technology spend-up is also under way in more mainstream retailers.
Among the most coveted products are the computers and music players developed by Apple.
James Wigg, a 37-year-old gardener and freelance Apple Mac operator, is a self-confessed Apple fan, despite owning a PC himself. He does have a 30GB iPod and his big buy this year will be an iMac with 20-inch screen.
Wigg isn't an early adopter - he still accesses the internet over a dial-up connection.
But he loves Apple products for their "industrial design, consistency of appearance, attention to detail and the fact that [an Apple Mac] just looks good sitting on your desk".
"It tends to become evident when you compare the scroll wheel on the iPod with the navigational buttons on virtually any other music player," he adds.
Many others share his love of Apple design and outlay serious sums to buy Apple computers, which have traditionally sold at a premium to similarly equipped PCs.
However, as Tyler Durden poses in Fight Club, that wonderful satire on modern consumerism, do the things you own end up owning you?
Technology publishing veteran Chris Keall says the "rats-on-a-treadmill" pressure to upgrade used to be confined to the PC market, but now pervades all consumer electronics.
"Replacement cycles just get faster and faster too. It's not just a matter of junking that Walkman CD player you've owned since 1985 in favour of an iPod. It's a matter of upgrading your iPod every six months. Or every three months if you want to stay really current," says Keall, who has witnessed a decade of technological change from the editor's chair at PC World magazine. Bombarded with virtually every new gadget, he's the living embodiment of the early adopter and isn't ashamed to admit having the latest gadgets gives his ego a boost.
"For better or worse I did think I looked cool when I became the first person to clip on one of the new cuff-link style iPod Shuffles, coupling it with some giant noise-cancelling headphones just-released by Phitek."
The same can be said for 42-year-old Henderson beneficiary Tom Bollard. He's not an early adopter, but the only thing that stops him from being one is a lack of money. Tom has cerebral palsy but puts his knowledge of computers to good use in his volunteer work teaching children computer skills.
For Christmas his parents bought him a Navman in-car navigation unit, a model that's been on the market for about a year.
"My sense of direction is awful. If I get lost, I get flustered."
