Market Resistance and Acceptance

Market resistance is the resistance of consumers (or other businesses, in the case of business-to-business activity) to a product or service, while market acceptance is the reverse. Sometimes resistance eventually gives way to acceptance, but sometimes it doesn't. Predicting how the market will respond to a product or service is historically an unreliable practice, even with the extensive focus groups and marketing research available for corporations and other interested parties.

Recent history is full of examples of products that thrived or failed seemingly independent of merit or practical concerns. DVDs caught on quickly despite complaints within the industry about its technical specifications and limitations, while the Laserdisc never emerged from its obscure niche; the Minidisc player and other formats that offered much of what the CD did but with further advantages that never caught on significantly; digital cable and the promise of hundreds of television channels were discussed for at least two decades before [Page 410]becoming commonplace; and three-dimensional (3D) movies bomb in one decade and become phenomena in the next, only to bomb again later.

Meanwhile, various technologies and product concepts wax and wane in attractiveness, from alternate energy sources to portable computing devices. In nanotech, one of the concerns about market resistance is that advocacy groups' push for regulation and health and environmental safety studies could create a public perception that nanotech is dangerous. This, in turn, is an impetus to to conduct such studies early, in order to avoid hazardous products that, like the rotten apple in the barrel, taint the reputation of nanoproducts across the board.

Where market acceptance is an issue is mainly in consumer goods. Companies have been inconsistent in their treatment of nanotechnology, perhaps uncertain about consumer response. Consumer Reports pointed out that of the eight sunscreens on the market that used nanoparticles (titanium dioxide), only one disclosed this fact on the label—suggesting at a minimum that the other seven did not consider the use of nanoparticles to be a marketing benefit. Samsung's Silver Nano line of appliances launched around the same time not only incorporated “nano” in the name, but based its entire product identity around the use of nanosilver coating and its attendant antibacterial properties.

The difference, if not random, may be that sunscreen is a cosmetic product, one used on the skin, while appliances interact less directly with the consumer. Although there are nanotech food goods on the market, there are surprisingly few of them compared to the slew of specialized “scientific” foods marketed with words like nutra-ceuticals, superfood, and antioxidant—in other words, though food companies and their marketing firms clearly see a value in associating some food products with science and high tech, an almost negligible minority have employed nanotechnology in this regard. (A University of Zurich study has found that the public would be hesitant to buy nanofoods unless there is a perceived benefit attached to them.)

At the same time, there has been a surge of health and fitness products in the nanotech field, which as of 2007 became the largest category in the list of nanotechnology products maintained by the Project on Emerging Technologies (PET); by 2010, 604 of the products on PET's list were in the health and fitness category, nearly four times as many as the 152 products in the next largest category of home and garden. Cosmetics in particular have made heavy use of nanoparticles. However, the consumers buying these products are not necessarily aware of the use of nanotechnology in them.

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