혁신제품의 가치적합성이 관계품질과 수용의도에 미치는 영향 - 얼리어답터 성향에 의한 조절효과를 중심으로 -

Abstract

Faced with the dynamic market environments, in which consumer needs increasingly become diverse and advanced, technological changes gain more and more acceleration, and product life cycles become increasingly shorter, companies are forced to constantly develop fresh innovative products that meet consumer needs and launch them before their competitors. The Theory of Social Identification argues that consumers tend to remember well and prefer products whose values are similar to their values, which are closely related to their experiences(Howard, 1977). High in uncertainty and information overload, innovative products should decrease in them and be able to encourage consumers to understand and apply the complex product knowledge, which calls for a premise of value congruence between innovative products and consumers. If innovative products, which require widely different usage or lifestyle from the old products, are to make an early success, the companies should identify a consumer group that has a favorable attitude toward innovation and an open tendency and reinforce intensive marketing activities targeting the group. One good example of such a consumer group is 'early adopters.' Thus this study set out to analyze the effects of value congruence between consumers and innovative products on consumers' intention to accept innovative products and search for ways to increase their intention to accept innovative products. It examined value congruence between consumers and innovative products, relationship quality between consumers and innovative products, and causal relations with acceptance intention and analyzed if the tendency of consumers as early adopters' would systematically change their relationships. The investigator developed a path model from the theoretical background, set hypotheses, and conducted empirical analysis through a survey. The results of empirical analysis can be summarized as follows: First, value congruence between consumers and innovative products was divided into orientation of value congruence and importance of value congruence, which implies that value congruence for organizational behavior targeting internal customers and for service organizations targeting external customers can be applied to innovative products, as well. Second, relationship quality between consumers and innovative products consisted of their trust, commitment and satisfaction for innovative products, which means that relationship quality in the service field can be applied to relationships between innovative and consumes. Third, orientation of value congruence between consumers and innovative products had positive(+) impacts on consumers' satisfaction with innovative products, and importance of value congruence between consumers and innovative products had positive(+) impacts on their trust, commitment and satisfaction with innovative products and the biggest influence on trust, commitment, and satisfaction in the order. If the values pursued by innovative products are similar to those by consumers, they will exhibit a positive attitude toward the innovative products, increase in trust, commitment and satisfaction with them, and form favorable relationships with the seller. Marketers thus need to creative and maintain values for their innovative products that match those of consumers and make efficient use of resources by doing intensive marketing activities around consumers who have similar values to their innovative products with a value scale. Fourth, consumers' trust in innovative products had positive(+) influences on their commitment and satisfaction with them and the biggest influences on commitment, which calls for a systematic approach towards the components of relationship quality as causal relationships are formed among the components of relationship quality in innovative products, which are material goods, like in the service field. Fifth, relationship quality between consumers and innovative products had positive(+) effects on their intention to accept them and the biggest effects on their satisfaction with them, which was followed by commitment and trust in the order. Those results suggest that the companies need to maintain cooperative relationships between their innovative products and consumers in order to increase their intention to accept innovative products. Finally, the positive(+) influences that value congruence between consumers and innovative products had on their intention accept them turned out to have partially significant mediating effects by their tendency as early adopters. To be specific, the positive(+) influences by the tendency of early adopters had mediating effects in the relationships between orientation of value congruence between consumers and innovative products and consumers' satisfaction with innovative products, the relationships between importance of value congruence between consumers and innovative products and consumers' satisfaction with innovative products, the relationships between consumers trust in innovative products and their commitment with them, and in the relationships between importance of value congruence between consumers and innovative products and consumers' intention to accept innovative products. These findings mean the degree of value congruence between consumers and innovative products is perceived differently according to their tendency as early adopters, which requires companies that manufacture innovative products to come up with diverse ways to find congruency between the values pursued by consumers and those by their innovative products, as well as to segment the market according to the tendencies of early adopters, explore values pursued by each of the segmented sectors, and reflect them to the values pursued by their innovative products.