Essays on the consumer decision process reshaped in mobile interactive environment

Abstract

With the advent of mobile broadband, consumers and service providers accumulate more experience with convergence. At present, the main use is ready for the next step, the mobile data, beyond simple functionality of voice telephony. With evolving technologies, mobile phones have started becoming smarter with intuitive interfaces, advanced computational capabilities and faster data connections. The smartphone is one of the fastest-growing segments in telecommunications worldwide. Likewise, in South Korea, smartphone sales have exceeded 10 million units as of March 2011. This figure is currently expected to reach more than 20 million by the end of 2011. Nearly 20\% of the mobile telephone market involves smartphones. Smart media have become the most ubiquitous communications medium in the hands of the consumers. It is expected that the smartphone may allow for various two-way interactions that would benefit both businesses and consumers due to its interactive medium. The interactive nature of the mobile-based interactivity apparently appears to play an important role in building consumer decision making process and offering practical insights for interactive advertising and marketing communication practices in computer-mediated environments. The dissertation is comprised of three integrated essays on consumer decision making reshaped in mobile based interactive environment. The first essay examines the influence of pleasure-oriented (hedonic) and productivity-oriented (utilitarian) value as drivers of usage intention of the mobile video call service, with social influences, technological characteristics and personal traits as major external stimuli. The result reveals strong causal relationships between the external variables and the perceptual values ?? usefulness, enjoyment, and social influence, which impact adoption intentions. In addition, perceived social influence was found to be important predictors of supporting traditional utilitarian motivations and he...