Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
In addition to the contagious diffusion on the play-
ground and in the classrooms, the diffusion of Silly Bandz,
as opposed to a competing brand, is going to be greatest
around the 18,000 stores in 25 states that sell this particu-
lar product. The stores create a hierarchy, a structure to
the diffusion of the innovation, in this case a particular
brand of bracelets.
Instead of Silly Bandz on their wrists, many Major
League Baseball players now wear necklaces. The colorful
necklaces are not made of silicon. They are made of a
nylon fabric that matches their uniform and is imbued
with titanium. The baseball players, including Justin
Morneau of the Minnesota Twins, Joba Chamberlain of
the New York Yankees, and Josh Beckett of the Boston
Red Sox, wear titanium necklaces sold by Phiten. Phiten is
a Japanese company with corporate stores in Honolulu,
Hawaii, Torrance, California, and Seattle, Washington.
Formed in 1983, the Phiten Company uses what it
calls aqua technology to disperse titanium throughout the
nylon fabric it uses to make necklaces and bracelets.
Phiten supporters believe the titanium helps restore bal-
ance and allows the fl ow of energy through fatigued mus-
cles. The company's website states that wearing a Phiten
will “restore normal relaxation” for customers. Phiten not
only sells necklaces and bracelets, but also compression
sleeves and shorts, athletic tape, patches, and even bed-
ding infused with aqua metals, typically titanium.
The diffusion of Phitens from its hearth in Japan to
the United States began with a sport the two countries
share: baseball. In 2001, New York Yankee Randy
Johnson traveled to Japan and saw baseball players wear-
ing titanium necklaces. He started wearing a Phiten, and
other Major League players in the United States soon
followed. The custom caught on hierarchically, from
team to team and contagiously from player to player. In
an article published by CBS News, a regional sales man-
ager for Phiten in Seattle is quoted as saying “I'd say
about three-fourths of the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota
Twins players use them.” Baseball players adopted the
custom because they believe the titanium helped allevi-
ate muscle pain.
An idea such as a new fashion or new genre of
music may not always spread throughout a contiguous
population. For example, the spread of Crocs footwear
is a case of
hierarchical diffusion
, a pattern in which
the main channel of diffusion is some segment of those
who are susceptible to (or adopting) what is being dif-
fused. In the case of Crocs, founder Scott Seamans
found a clog manufactured by a Canadian company that
was created out of the unique croc resin material.
Seamans, an avid sailor, put a strap on the back and
holes for drainage. He and two co-founders of the crocs
company based the company in Boulder, Colorado, had
the shoes manufactured, and sold them at boat shows in
2002 and 2003. Crocs footware diffused from boating
enthusiasts to gardeners to the American public-
becoming especially popular among children, who
adorned their crocs with Jibbitz, or charms designed
for crocs. The hierarchy of boaters, gardeners, and
then the contagious diffusion that followed helps
explain the rapid growth of the crocs brand, which had
revenues of over $800 million in 2007.
A third form of expansion diffusion is
stimulus dif-
fusion
. Not all ideas can be readily and directly adopted by
a receiving population; some are simply too vague, too
unattainable, too different, or too impractical for immedi-
ate adoption. Yet, these ideas can still have an impact. They
may indirectly promote local experimentation and even-
tual changes in ways of doing things. For example, the dif-
fusion of fast, mass-produced food in the late twentieth
century led to the introduction of the hamburger to India.
Yet the Hindu religion in India prohibits consumption of
beef, which is a major cultural obstacle to the adoption of
the hamburger (Fig. 1.23). Instead, retailers began selling
burgers made of vegetable products. The diffusion of the
hamburger took on a new form in the cultural context of
India. With expansion diffusion, whether contagious or
hierarchical, the people stay in place and the innovation,
idea, trait, or disease does the moving.
Relocation Diffusion
Relocation diffusion occurs most frequently through
migration. When migrants move from their homeland,
they take their cultural traits with them. Developing an
ethnic neighborhood in a new country helps immigrants
maintain their culture in the midst of an unfamiliar one.
Relocation diffusion
, in contrast, involves the actual
movement of individuals who have already adopted the
idea or innovation, and who carry it to a new, perhaps dis-
tant, locale, where they proceed to disseminate it (Fig.
1.22). If the homeland of the immigrants loses enough of
its population, the cultural customs may fade in the
hearth while gaining strength in the ethnic neighbor-
hoods abroad.
Once you think about different types of diffusion, you will
be tempted to fi gure out what kinds of diffusion are tak-
ing place for all sorts of goods, ideas, or diseases. Please
remember that any good, idea, or disease can diffuse in
more than one way. Choose a good, idea, or disease as
an example and describe how it diffused from its hearth
across the globe, referring to at least three different types
of diffusion.
