The development of information communication and advent of the Internet caused a change in enterprises' marketing philosophy and marketing paradigm. Expansion of super high-speed Internet diffusion increased the number of Internet users, and is used v...
The development of information communication and advent of the Internet caused a change in enterprises' marketing philosophy and marketing paradigm. Expansion of super high-speed Internet diffusion increased the number of Internet users, and is used vigorously in consumer-to-consumer communication as well as consumer-to-business communication by communication resources.
Because of various advantages of the Internet, the Internet shopping mall has expanded and a lot of research about the attitudes of consumers at Internet shopping malls have been conducted. But, consumer characteristics are not being considered in studying the attitude of consumers toward Internet shopping malls.
The Internet is classified as an innovative media. For that reason, it would be meaningful to search out the innovative characteristics of consumers who use Internet shopping malls and form their attitude and behavior toward Internet shopping malls could exert some effect. Previous research for innovative characteristics of consumers are mostly concerned with consumer innovativeness that is domain-specific product innovativeness.
The purpose of this study is as follows.
The first purpose is to classify the concept of consumer innovativeness and market mavenism through a literature review and examine the effect of consumer innovativeness and market mavenism on consumer attitude and service quality for Internet shopping malls.
Second, the researcher classifies blog use tendency of consumers into three types: blog opinion leading, blog opinion seeking, and blog isolated to examine the different effects of consumer innovativeness and market maveism for each group. The wish is to supply useful information to the Internet shopping mall's marketing communication strategy.
To the achieve purpose of this study, the researcher reviewed the previous literatures and executed an empirical study. The researcher established study model and research question based on data gotten through the literature review. And then the researcher verified study model, confirmed research question and analyzed the result using the questionnaire data.
The findings of this study yeilded several suggestions in the researching of innovative consumer characteristics and to establish a marketing communication strategy for Internet shopping malls.
First, consumer innovativeness and market mavenism are distinct constructs. This means that consumer's innovation is distinguished between innovativeness of product and innovativeness of market. Future studies should further explore various characteristics of market mavens to provide a positive understanding of them.
Second, consumer innovativeness and market mavenism are positively related to consumer attitudes on Internet shopping malls. It means that innovative consumers have a favorable attitudes toward Internet shopping, as suggested in TAM. Moreover, a favorable attitude is positively related to intention and loyalty toward Internet shopping, and shows that the uni-dimensional view of attitude is applied.
Third, the effect of innovative consumer characteristics to consumer attitudes toward Internet shopping malls are different by age and sex. Therefore, segmenting marketing strategy by target customer is advised.
Fourth, because of the tendency of consumer communications by blog, there are different effects of innovative consumer characteristics. In the case of a blog isolated group, they don't opinion leading and opinion seeking on blog, the higher market mavenism, more favorable attitude and higher evaluation of core service quality on Internet Shopping Mall. In the blog opinion seeker group, they have a high tendency to seek others' opinions using the blog, their market mavenism has a positive effect on the evaluation of core service quality, and their consumer innovativeness has a positive effect on the evaluation of recovery service quality. In the blog opinion leader group, they are able to think as professional blog users, their market mavenism is positively related to a favorable attitude and the evaluation of recovery service quality on Internet shopping malls.
Consequently, an Internet shopping mall manager should establish a marketing communication strategy that understands opinion leading and seeking of consumers using blog as online communication media. Moreover, if they use the blog to satisfy consumer needs about the market information, they achieve a effect of word-of-mouth communication.
In the Internet market where competition is keen in the growth and development of Internet shopping malls, understanding consumers may have to precede improvement of a company's competitive power. Besides, if the concept of face-to-face communication is applied to online communication, using a blog creates word-of-mouth communication.
Consequently, if enterprises which is based on an Internet shopping mall understand the innovative characteristics of consumers and applies the effects of blog communication, then they would win the favorable attitude of consumers and a positive evaluation of service quality.