Modeling Customer-Related IT Diffusion

This study develops a diffusion model of customer-related IT (CRIT) based on stock market announcements of investments in those technologies. Customer-related IT investments are defined in this work as information technology investments made with the intention of improving or enhancing the customer experience. The diffusion model developed in our study is based on data for the companies of the S&P 500 and S&P MidCap 400 for the years of 1996-2001. We find empirical support for a sigmoid diffusion model. Further, we find that both the size and industry of the company affect the path of CRIT diffusion. Another contribution of this study is to illustrate how data collection techniques typically used for financial event studies can be used to study information technology diffusion. Finally, the data collected for this study can serve as a Bayesian prior for future diffusion forecasting studies of CRIT.