Abstract
The authors study global adoption processes where the units of observation are countries, which sequentially adopt a particular technology. The authors’ goal is to provide a better understanding of how exogenous and endogenous country characteristics affect this diffusion process. They develop a general model of global adoption processes, which allows researchers to test extant theories of cross-country adoption, and illustrate the approach using data from the cellular telephone industry for 184 countries. The findings generally support previous theories, whether generated by academicians or managers. In particular, the authors find support for the “demonstration effect”: as the number of countries adopting the technology becomes larger, the likelihood of “similar” countries following their example increases. They also find that planned economies lag in adopting technologies, and that countries with homogenous and concentrated populations, and with a high level of economic development are, on average, earlier adopters. Finally, the authors’ model supports the managerial intuition that, eventually, all countries will adopt the new technology.