청소년 소비자의 이동통신 계약관련 지식 및 소비자문제 연구

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine how much contract knowledge for mobile phone services young people and their parents have, to investigate what kind of problems they experience due to the absence of the knowledge, and to explore what kind of knowledge they want to know before their buying and using mobile phone services. Based on results of our survey study, we try to suggest policy direction and necessary education for young consumers and their parents in mobile phone service. Because parents play usually important roles for the reduction of young consumers’ problem in using mobile phone service, they also were included in the survey. Data were athered through the internet survey and total 699 samples from 350 parents and 349 young people were analyzed. The results are as following. First, the young people and parents’ knowledge level of mobile phone service contract is low(the rate of right answer: young consumers 50.5%; parents 54.9%) and in particular, their contract-related knowledge level at the time of first purchasing is even lower. When we consider the questionnaire survey is consisted of basic and important items in purchasing and using mobile phone services, the cognitive problem should be treated as very serious. Second, the difference of contract knowledge level by the social demographic variables is a little. Mothers’ knowledge level about the purchasing and using mobile phone service is slightly higher than that of the fathers. Regardless of social demographic variables consumers’ contract knowledge level about that is low generally, because mobile phone service must be new, professional and rapidly changing service. Third, the contract knowledge level of young consumers(the rate of right answer: 37.1%) is lower than the parents’ at the time his/her first purchasing. They seem to increase knowledge through experiencing problems. Fourth, Owing to the lack of knowledge, consumers have paid an excessive charge for the mobile phone service. The important knowledge of the mobile phone service is the charging system. Consumers did not know the charging system at the time of contracting or using the service, and they were getting more knowledge through trial and error. Fifth, Consumers did not gain knowledge from the explaining of salesperson or searching the information about the mobile phone service for himself, but they were getting more knowledge through the bitter experience. So they have paid expensive education costs for the knowledge. Sixth, the basic contract-related knowledge’s young consumers and parents want to know before signing up are start-up fee, discount rate, special charge for young people, billing system such as internet acces harge and game(music) download charge, additional services, distinction of charged service and free service, the presence of blocking services such as wireless internet service, a parent alert service, billing terminologies, and comparable price information about the phone deves. According to the result of this research, we propose the consumer education and policy about the mobile phone service as follows. First, Consumers need to receive information about the purchase and the use of mobile phone services. Second, it needs to introduce the legal duty of confirming who uses it actually. In case a young consumer in fact uses a mobile phone service, we need to review an introduction of mandatory contract as the name of the user. Third, we also should improve the charging system about the wireless internet service and the system to inform of it consumers. Fourth, it should be reviewed the introduction of the system, that the operator obligates to provide the important information for him/her, before a young consumer or his/her parent makes a contract of mobile phone service. We hope to reduce their problems, as young consumers get the important information at the time of the contract of mobile phone service.