소비자의 하이테크 제품 수용 및 수용 후 행동에 관한 연구: 스마트 폰을 중심으로

High-tech industry is innovative and has a higher global market share than other industries,and therefore every nation has been intensively cultivating High-tech industry. The uncertainty of business success in High-tech IT industry is much higher than in traditional consumer goods industries, its products exert great effects on other industries once developed successfully. For this reason developed countries put emphasis on High-tech industry. High-tech industry is also attracting interests of enterprises as a new growth power. Apple corporation had been in a slump in 1990s; but the launching of iPhone and App Store resulted in hot responses from consumers, eventually bringing about a rapid growth, and its total market value has overtaken that of Microsoft corporation. As High-tech industry has been showing such a rapid growth, acting as a new growth power of enterprises, there have been many research reports concerning consumers behaviors to explain the process of their adoption of High-tech products or services. The researches about how consumers accept new High-tech products have been based on social psychological theories,which deal with conviction, behavior intention and behavior. Representative theories in this field include TRA of Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), TPB of Ajzen (1985) and TAM of Davis (1989). These researches have been recognized as providing good models that are simple yet have high explanatory power for understanding consumers' adoption of High-tech products and their use behaviors, and they are providing theoretical grounds for extended researches. However, such researches have the following limitations: First, existing theories and previous researches about the adoption of High-tech products have been placing emphasis only on the initial adoption of High-tech products. Second, the adoption factors suggested by existing theories are based on intra-organizational status of accepting information systems, and therefore may not be applicable to High-tech products. Third, most of the researches about the adoption of High-tech employed cross-sectional analysis of initial adoption only. And fourth, most of the existing researches suggested and empirically proved the adoption factors that considered only reasonable and rational aspects. Therefore, this research aimed to develop a comprehensive model for consumers' adoption of High-tech products and their behaviors after adoption. For this purpose, a multi-dimensional approach was attempted, considering both the initial adoption stage of High-tech products and the stage after adoption. Affecting factors were first deduced based on literature review and in-depth interviews, and based on the deduced factors, a comprehensive hypothetical adoption model was established for consumers' adoption of High-tech products and their behaviors after adoption. As the factors affecting the initial adoption of High-tech products, this research suggested ‘relative advantage,’ which is a reasonable and rational variable; ‘aesthetics,’ which takes emotional aspect in consideration; and ‘social image,’ which takes social aspect in consideration. Whereas, as the factors affecting the continuous adoption of High-tech products, the author suggested ‘relationship investment,’ ‘switching cost,’ and ‘emotional attachment,’ in an effort to analyze consumers' continuous adoption behaviors. In this empirical research a survey was conducted using an organized questionnaire, involving consumers in their 20s and 30s who were accepting smart phones, which could be taken as the most advanced High-tech products. A longitudinal survey was carried out from March 2010 to May 2010 in order to analyze consumers' behaviors before and after adoption. The first survey (before adoption) secured 628 valid responses; however, the second survey secured 286 valid responses. Therefore, the questionnaire sets of the 286 consumers who responded to both the first and second surveys were subjected to coding for empirical analysis. The results of the empirical research were as follows. First, relative advantage, aesthetics and social image are positively related to adoptive intention of high-tech product. Second,adoptive intention of high-tech product is positively related to adoption of high-tech product. Third, adoption of high-tech product is positively related to relationship investment. fourth,relationship investment is positively related to switching cost and emotional attachment. fifth,switching cost is positively related to continued adoptive intention. sixth, emotional attachment is positively related to switching cost and continued adoptive intention. The results of the research provide the following suggestive points: First, in order to have consumers more promptly accept High-tech products, there must be an initial marketing strategy that considers relative advantage, aesthetics and social image. The reason is that, unlike in the case of existing traditional products, the adoption of High-tech products is substantially affected by relative advantage, aesthetics and social image. Second, in order to have consumers to continuously accept High-tech products, there must be a marketing strategy that considers relationship investment, switching cost and emotional attachment. This means that a suitable marketing strategy is required for High-tech products, in whose case relationship investment is made immediately after adoption and continuous adoption depends on switching cost and emotional attachment. Third, there must be a comprehensive strategic management that encompasses the strategy for initial adoption as well as the one for continuous adoption. The results of this research showed that in the case of High-tech products, the factors affecting initial adoption were different from those affecting continuous adoption. Therefore it would be necessary to establish differentiated marketing strategies. That is, in the initial adoption stage, a marketing strategy that can make consumers better perceive relative advantage, aesthetics and social image would be necessary; whereas in the continuous adoption stage, a strategy that can positively develop such factors as relationship investment, switching cost and emotional attachment.