MT451 Unit 3 Battery Mower Adoption Analysis Example

Not Runtime but the Whole Product: An MT451 Unit 3 Adoption Analysis of Battery Commercial Mowers

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT451: Managing Technological Innovation

Unit 3 Adoption Analysis

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Harlan Turf Equipment, the region's registrations and the eighteen contractor interviews are composite; the sources cited are real.

The Question

Harlan Turf Equipment, the composite Lima, Ohio commercial mower maker introduced in Unit 2, launched its first battery stand-on mower in 2023. Sales have disappointed. The engineering team believes the problem is runtime, which Unit 2 showed is still short of a full crew day. This analysis tests that belief by asking who has adopted battery mowers in Harlan's region, who has not and why.

Segments Before Theory

An adoption rate means something only once the buyers are separated. Of 8,800 commercial mowers registered across Harlan's five-state region in 2025, 270 were battery powered, about 3 percent. That overall figure hides a nearly tenfold difference between segments.

Among municipal and university grounds crews, 70 of 500 new mowers were battery powered, 14 percent. Among lawn care contractors based in the eleven cities that have passed ordinances restricting gasoline lawn equipment, 90 of 1,000 were battery, 9 percent. Among all other contractors, 110 of 7,300 were battery, 1.5 percent. The mainstream of Harlan's market, contractors outside the ordinance cities, has barely begun to adopt.

Assigning Rogers's Categories

Rogers (2003) sorts buyers into five adopter groups, from the venturesome few who try a technology first to the traditional holdouts who adopt last. The groups are assigned here by segment rather than to the market as a whole. A handful of urban contractors who bought battery machines before any ordinance required it behave as innovators: enthusiastic, tolerant of problems and few. Municipal and university crews behave as early adopters. They buy on a mandate, often a sustainability goal set by a council or a board, they have public budgets that can absorb a price premium and they tolerate rough edges because the purchase serves a policy aim. Mid-size contractors look like the early majority: pragmatists who buy only after firms like their own have succeeded.

Why a Parks Department Is No Reference

Moore (2014) argues that between early adopters and the early majority lies a chasm, because pragmatists do not take visionaries' experience as evidence. A pragmatic buyer wants references from companies like its own. That explains a frustration Harlan's sales team reports: dealers point contractors to a city parks department running battery mowers successfully, and contractors are unmoved. A city crew with a sustainability mandate, a central depot with charging and a public budget offers little evidence to a contractor bidding homeowner associations on price, driving a trailer between fifteen properties a day.

A contractor pricing jobs for homeowner associations learns little from a city crew whose budget and depot it does not share.

Eighteen Interviews, Counted

To learn what holds the early majority back, eighteen owners of mid-size contracting firms, with three to twelve mowers each, were interviewed, and their barriers were coded. Barriers are counted rather than quoted at length.

Charging on trailers and at job sites was raised by 15 of 18 contractors. Their crews leave the yard at seven and return at five; there is nowhere to charge during the day, and few trailers carry enough power to recharge a mower pack. The price premium, about $12,000 over a comparable gasoline mower, was raised by 13. Doubts about battery replacement cost and resale value were raised by 11: contractors resell mowers after three or four years and have no idea what a used battery mower will be worth. Dealer service was raised by 8, who worried that their dealer's technicians had never worked on a battery machine.

Runtime was raised by only 6 of 18 contractors, and in every case together with charging. Contractors did not say the mower ran out too soon; they said there was nothing to do when it did.

The Whole Product

Moore uses the term whole product for everything a mainstream buyer needs for the core product to deliver its promise. For a contractor, the core product is a battery mower. The whole product adds trailer charging, a pack-swap program so a crew can exchange a depleted pack at a dealer or depot, financing that spreads the premium across the mower's working life and dealer technicians trained on battery machines. Each interview barrier maps to one missing element. Charging maps to trailer charging and pack swaps; premium maps to financing; resale maps to a guaranteed buyback or pack warranty; service maps to dealer training.

Harlan's battery mower today is a good core product sold without any of these. Schilling (2020) notes that adoption often depends on complementary goods as much as on the technology itself, and the interviews suggest that complements, not runtime, are what the early majority lacks.

A Beachhead

Moore's advice is to cross the chasm one niche at a time, choosing a segment small enough to dominate and with a compelling reason to buy. The analysis recommends mid-size contractors in the eleven ordinance cities. Regulation already supplies part of the reason to switch, so Harlan must supply only the whole product. Their success would then give contractors outside those cities the references they need: firms like their own, bidding the same work, finishing the same days.

The recommended package for that beachhead is a factory trailer-charging kit, a pack-swap arrangement with Harlan dealers in those cities, a five-year financing offer that brings the monthly cost close to a gasoline mower's, a four-year pack warranty and battery training for every technician at dealers serving the eleven cities.

What This Means for Engineering

The engineering team is right that runtime matters, and Unit 2 showed it is improving. But a mower with nine acres of runtime and no way to charge on the road would still leave contractors with a crew stranded at two in the afternoon. The adoption problem is the whole product, and much of it can be solved now, before the runtime threshold arrives.

Testing the Explanation

The whole-product explanation makes predictions that next season's data can check. If it is right, contractors in the ordinance cities who are offered trailer charging and pack swaps should buy battery mowers at a markedly higher rate than similar contractors who are not, even though both groups face the same runtime. If runtime is the real barrier, the two groups should buy at about the same rate. Harlan can run this test in 2026 by offering the charging kit and swap program through dealers in five of the eleven ordinance cities and comparing battery share there with the other six. The test costs little beyond the kits themselves and would tell the engineering team whether its next dollar belongs in runtime or in the equipment around the mower.

References

Moore, G. A. (2014). Crossing the chasm: Marketing and selling disruptive products to mainstream customers (3rd ed.). HarperBusiness.

Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). Free Press.

Schilling, M. A. (2020). Strategic management of technological innovation (6th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.