스마트폰 브랜드 경험소비자의 감성적 브랜드 애착에 미치는 사용기간의 조절효과와 사용량 및 사용다양성의 매개효과 연구

The term of an experienced consumer used in this study means one who experiences responses related to behavior derived from the process of usage, consumption, and retaining a smart phone(Belk, 1988; Brakas et al., 2009; Lofman, 1991). The researcher considered that experienced consumers who use the smart phone are suitable for the subjects to have emotional brand attachment. The smart phone is a product of characteristics of consumption experience in that consumers have high involvement as well as direct brand experience, and need a time period until next purchase(Sohn and Yoon, 2014). The period of experience is needed for emotional brand attachment, so called the strength of relationship between consumer and brand by direct consumption experience. As general evaluation of usage or aesthetic to the interactional product vary by usage experiences and time periods(Hassenzahl, 2004), so user’s perceived value and relative superiority do by period of use(Karapanos , 2010). The attachment is reorganized with self-satisfaction by the period of use in the internal working model of attachment. Here, the term of working means not to be fixed in a time but to be varied continuously(Bowlby, 1969 ; Kogut and Kogut, 2011). But a meditating effect of use-diffusion(amount of use and variety of use) in the relationship among brand experience, period of use and emotional brand attachment has not been tested in the existing empirical researches. In this context, the researcher questioned “brand experience affects emotional brand attachment by period of use for an experienced consumer of a particular smart phone brand?”, and “Amount of use and variety of use in terms of use-diffusion reach to emotional brand attachment?” Accordingly, this study has purposes to confirm the meditating effects of amount of use and variety of use as well as the causality between brand experience and emotional brand attachment by types of period of use. Three types of brand experience by period of use(less than 2 years, 2-4 years, more than 4 years) were derived from the existing studies for this purpose and their direct effects was tested. Next, the influence of brand experience to amount of use and variety of use by time period was confirmed, and then the meditating effects of amount of use and variety of use to emotional brand attachment by the types of period of use were empirically analyzed. The findings are as follows. The first, The effect of brand experience on variety of use was statistically significant and the extent of strength was respectively sort-term, long-term, and mid-term in turn. The short-term users need much brand experience to be familiar to various functional characteristics of the smart phone, which influence variety of use. The second, the effect of variety of use on brand attachment was most strong for short-term, long-term, and mid-term users in turn. This result means that variety of use is related to the functional benefit to be acquired through brand experience on the contrary to amount of use to be related to the behavioral dimension of brand experience. In other words, the short-term users try to be familiar to the smart phone by acquiring various functional benefits. Accordingly, the smart phone makers focus marketing activities on offering various benefits not through amount of use but brand experience for short-term users. The third, These days, interaction among smart phone users is much more frequent than ever, and also many applications to be specific for the smart phone have been developed. Furthermore, there exist applications not to be shared because of different operation systems, Android and IOS. Accordingly, this korean context of smart phone market has to be considered when marketing programs are planned and developed.