한국형 얼리어답터 특성에 관한 탐색적 연구

목차 (Table of Contents)

• The notion of "an early adopter" is a person who embraces a new production or innovation before most other people do and influences other potential adopters to try the new items or services. Early adopters are enjoying higher status and are over privileged in terms of education compared to other community members. Moreover they hold within the community as leaders of opinion. As a result, they influences very importantly for other community member and their society. The existing researches focused on characteristics of early adopters in a specified innovation, particularly those that have some unique and innovative feature set. However, early adopters in Korea have some different characteristics because of advanced the technology of IT/Internet, as compared with the early adopter discussed by the diffusion theory.
• In order to identify some distinguished characteristics of Korean early adopters, a structured questionnaire was conducted. The results suggest that traditional early adopters accept quickly the new innovations(products/services) as discussed the diffusion theory. However Korean early adopters write down the review about products even though they do not get any rewards. They also resell some products which are still new products to other people. It means that Korean early adopters have a great influence on diffusion.
• In addition, traditional early adopters are relatively young and have a high income but most Korean early adopters are older than traditional early adopters and have lower income. Besides they are more positive at the categories of innovation, some of personality values.
• The categories of valuables contribution to classify between traditional and Korean early adopters are the using network. The traditional early adopters are using mostly a cell-phone and interpersonal communication and Korean early adopters make use mainly information paper, and Internet. The self-display drive factors are related positively to Korean early adopters. Also, Korean early adopters are the higher in the Internet/PC self-efficacy than traditional early adopters about all question.
• To examine the main effect of classified three groups(non-early/traditional /Korean early adopters), the Discriminant Analysis was conducted. First, Korean early adopters are influenced by seeking information of new products, empathy, self-display drive, the number of products purchased, non-fatalism. Second, traditional and non early adopters are also seeking the information but they do not buy products as much as Korean early adopters. It means they are more carefully and afraid of the risk than Korean early adopters.
• In conclusion, though Korean early adopters’ household economy were not high as much as the group of traditional early adopters, they resold some products through media like Internet or some of information paper and then buy new products. Korean early adopters, therefore, could experience various new ideas/products/services. Thus, they could make full use of Internet or computer technique. It helped them that they could effectively write the review and report about some products to resell. Finally, this paper presented that Korean early adopters have some different characteristics by the development of Internet/IT in comparison with traditional early adopters. Future research should continue to explore further study and specifically redefine a concept of Korean early adopters.