Merchants don't adopt Bitcoin because their clients don't use it. Clients don't adopt it because merchants don't support it, and people want to have a payment method that can be used anywhere they go. How can this vicious circle be broken? Who will make the first move?
And by adopt I mean adopt for payments, not hodl it as an investment.
Isn't it easier for merchants to see if their customers are interested in a Bitcoin payment option than for customers to individually express their wish for this? Most brands nowadays have presence online, so they can easily at least make polls on Twitter or something to learn if their audience is interested. Then there's also an option of actually choosing a way of making Bitcoin a payment option in your shop and placing a sticker with "Bitcoin accepted here" on the counter. Individual people are not likely to talk to people in a shop and ask them about Bitcoin. It's also way less efficient than making a public poll because it's hard to understand the demand by the number of people who actually say something.