뉴미디어 환경에서 소비자의 역할인식 변화에 관한 심층연구: 이동통신 사용시 새로운 소비가치 발현자로서의 10대 소비자

Abstract

The recent technology boon has created a digital age. With new technologies for communication tools such as the Internet, mobile phones etc., companies have found exciting new ways to interact with each customer and to create products or services tailored to individual customers. Accordingly, consumers can find new ways of communication and lifestyles. Nowadays consumers can build their own information network, and participate in producing and selling products or services. They are changing their role perceptions from buyers to participants,producers (i.e., prosumers), or sellers (i.e., salesumers) with respect to company-customer relationship. These changes of consumers’ role perceptions can be found easily under mobile phone consumption situations. Mobile phones are becoming ubiquitous and in line with this trend,while children’s use of mobile phones has increased to the point where mobile phones are becoming commodities for them. Many managers have mentioned that teens are ahead of managers in finding new ways to use functions and in creating new consumption values with mobile phones. Thus company managers started observing their consumption styles more carefully to get some idea for developing new functions or new features. Recognizing these phenomena, this study collected in-depth data about teen usage experiences with mobile phones. We employed qualitative research methodology to describe new usages and values discovered by teens. We have conducted in-depth interviews(i.e.,ethnographic interviews) with nine participants(purpose sampling: maximum variation with respect to age and school enrollment) for four to five weeks, with an intermittent week. When necessary, we also employed participant observations at each interview. Analyses of the collected data led us to describe the teens’ unique consumption experiences and usage patterns with mobile phones. The teens regarded the mobile phone as their own space, a device to express themselves, an essential partner with them, a link to their friends and a tool for killing time. For example, children who send or receive mobile messages (mobile e-mail or SMS) more frequently, tend to feel stronger about their mobile phone as an essential tool in their life. We also found that mobile e-mail/SMS is more familiar to children than voice calls, and there is a high possibility that the network externality effect is particularly strong for mobile e-mail/SMS use. Children think of mobile phones as “information gadgets” for communicating, particularly by mobile e-mail/SMS. Furthermore, we found that teens are finding new values in the message function and forming their own group norms in sending, receiving and responding to messages. We have provided in-depth descriptions about these results from our participants’ perspectives. This study also conducted surveys(respondents: 1,000 teens, sampling: quarter sampling method by sex, years, area, and contact method: individual interview). We asked the degree to which teens agreed to the survey items describing newly perceived values about mobile phones. We confirmed that those new usages or values are perceived by most respondents. The survey results also indicated a change in the perception of mobile phones as tools for work-based communications into commodities used for day-to-day communication. The pheno-toon of mobile phone use on a day-to-day basis, oot only for bustioss, is not new, but their use by children is thought to be proof that this shift has come about. Furthermore the survey results confirmed that mobile e-mail/SMS plays a more important role in their lives than voice calling. The frequency of using mobile e-mail/SMS was higher than that of voice calling and the increase in mobile e-mail/SMS usage is also greater than that of voice calling. Summarizing the results from qualitative and quantitative research approaches, we suggest that it is important to view consumers as participants, performers or players, not merely passive buyers. Playing tends to take on a more per formative and reciprocal style in which participants use their experiences to entertain each other. What is distinctive about our view of performer is that it deals with the emotional attachment of the consumer and it suggests that performance or play is not always caught up in a pre-established boundary, but may instead imaginatively create its own set of styles and its own context. Because of this nature, participants further changed their role from performers to producers(i.e.,producing their own consumption cultures). For example, the teen’s interactions with each other through mobile phone usage showed the very dynamics of a ritual invention. Finally,we summarized managerial implications, and discussed the limitations and future research directions.