The use of mobile applications has been increasingly vitalized as smart phones rapidly come into wide use in Korea. The number of smart phone supplies exceeded 14 million as of June 2011, and within the end of the year, the number is estimated to reac...
The use of mobile applications has been increasingly vitalized as smart phones rapidly come into wide use in Korea. The number of smart phone supplies exceeded 14 million as of June 2011, and within the end of the year, the number is estimated to reach up to 22 million. The popularization of smart phones may have arisen from purchasing habits influenced by both hardware characteristics like ubiquitous Internet access and software characteristics like use of applications including social media. Smart phone, not only as an informational equipment but also through social media, seems to play a role of accelerator which creates sensations in various areas of society, such as politics, economics, and culture.
The paradigm of IT business is quickly transforming from PC-based to mobile-based in accordance with huge increase in the number of smart phone users. Companies are faced with overall need to set directions and take measures against fundamental transitions in consumer behavior patterns, corporate business process, and business models. The so-called 'smart Big Bang' will bring about many differences regarding company management styles, such as internal process revolution, marketing and service types for clients, and business models.
With smart phone applications, consumers are now able to enjoy playing games or gain product information without having to visit stores to see actual product. Companies are spurring development of applications for various contents including brand or product information. The success of a company's application no longer depends on the app production itself, but on the concise and entertaining features that make it appealing.
The emergence of new technology is changing the concept of marketing. In the age of mass production and sales, mass media was considered as absolute marketing tool and 4Ps(Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) as popular strategic elements for marketing, which turned into 4Cs(Contents, Cost to customer, Community, and Communication) with the advent of Internet age added with customer experience and interactivity. However, the spread of smart phones and the appearance of applications inaugurated a new change in the field of marketing. App marketing, with its peculiar 4R characteristics(Reflex, Reality, Real Place, and Real Communication), is being capitalized on the entire business management field, and more and more companies are launching brand apps. in order to actively approach their customers.
This doctoral dissertation aims to build appropriate marketing strategy for applications by analyzing users' intention and usage pattern. To achieve this purpose, I selected Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as a research model and surveyed 358 mobile application users at home and abroad.
There are many researches in the field which focus on smartphone's technological characteristics, individual services such as online game, eLearning and mobile banking, and market place for applications. However, there is no such study on how inherent characteristics of application affect user's intention. Consequently, there is a lack of study on the effect of price and design - the most important factor in marketing - in mobile industry. Therefore, this research tries to analyze the interaction between traditional marketing factors and leading factors in application marketing such as utility, multimedia contents and entertainment.
The outcome shows that mobile applications with great entertainment, reasonable price and attractive design let consumers have positive attitude towards those applications and influence their future usage. Along with mobility and everlasting connectivity of smartphone, entertainment factor of applications becomes more important which influences not only on accessibility, but also on general attitude towards applications. Thus, for an effective application marketing, it is essential to develop useful multimedia contents.
This doctoral dissertation approaches toward one generalized application market, although there are many distinctive application types and usage methods vary in many different ways for each kind of smart phone equipments or Operating Systems. However, further studies would require reaching target market and customers with segmented approaches that are specified for each different smart phone equipments or Operating Systems. Although Korea might have been taking rather slow actions in terms of adapting to changes in the mobile world created by smart phones, through various studies, Korea will be expected to take the initiative in the mobile area by taking active measures towards vitalization of the mobile application market.