Hydrogen powered innovations - Insight into the Attitude of Consumers towards Hydrogen as an Energy Carrier

Diploma Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Marketing, Corporate Communication, CRM, Market Research, Social Media, Technical University of Munich, language: English, abstract: Nowadays a technology push isn't enough for the success of innovations; people make this success happen! An insight into the consumer behaviour can help to evaluate the market potential of a coming technology even before it enters the market. The success of innovations is not only the challenge of research and development; it is the capacity of foresight.
We are facing the future of narrow primary energy sources, rising energy costs and increasing regional political and economical instability due to the dependence on energy imports. Now, more than before, the need for a new, renewable, energy carrier is evident. Especially for the transport sector, which constitutes more than 30% of the world's energy consumption and consumes more than 60% of the world's oil production (IEA 2007; EC 2006), alternative solutions are evidently needed.
Sustainable mobility is nowadays essential for the world economy (WBCSD 2004); adding the severe problem of climate change, seeking for C02-free renewable energy sources has become a priority for scientists all over the world. Among the candidates for this new fuel are bio diesel, bio ethanol, solar power and hydrogen. Hydrogen has the potential of becoming oil's successor and spread out throughout the world in this new hydrogen based economy.
Producers and scientists are developing new technologies based on renewables; consumers, the demand side, with their choices, will play a strong role in the diffusion of these innovations. From the producer side, it is very important to gain information about the consumer side in order to develop a better marketing strategy.
This work was developed with the Linde-hydrogen marketing department, with the goal to gaining deeper insights of potential early adopters in order to deploy strategies which place hydrogen as a leader in the renewable energy market. Focused on hydrogen based innovations, at this early stage, it is very important to achieve a positive attitude towards the innovation. A positive attitude could enforce adoption when launching the product (s) to the market.