Mobile Internet Services from Consumers' Perspectives

Abstract

Elaborating on the rapid evolution of mobile internet services in Korea, this article investigates consumers' perceptions and attitudes toward mobile Internet services through person-to-person questionnaires. The study tried to find out “how” consumers perceived different mobile services from the consumers perspectives: expectation, satisfaction, and fulfillment of that expectation. A new construct of perceived fulfillment of expectation was suggested in the study and used to explain consumers' attitudes toward the mobile Internet services in 2004 and in 2006. After examining what the consumers actually said, it was found that consumers' expectation was fulfilled differently for different service categories. The expectation was more fulfilled in system attributes, that is, network-wise, for personalization and information services, and in contents attributes for entertainment services. It was also observed that consumers of different age groups showed different patterns of fulfillment of expectation with the same services. Even though most of the past studies on mobile telephony concentrated on attitudes and behaviors of teenagers toward the mobile telephone services, the result of this study indicates that the consumers in their 20s and 30s can provide more insight for future directions of mobile Internet services. The newly defined construct could well explain the differences among the various consumer groups' perceptions and attitudes.

This research was supported in part by the MIC, Korea under ITRC IITA-2006-(C1090-0603-0046). I express a deep appreciation to my graduate students, Sang Hyuk Hong, Jong Gon Kim, and Kyohyun Song, for their efforts to collect and analyze the survey data for this article. I am grateful to Dr. Michael Smith for this opportunity and for his continued encouragement and support. The final thanks go to Dr. Pascale Carayon, the editor of the volume, and the anonymous reviewers who awakened me with their helpful and insightful comments.