Innovation patterns and policy implications of ADSL penetration in Korea: A case study

Korea has been leading the world in broadband Internet access services since 1999. Based on an in-depth case analysis of the penetration of asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) in Korea, the present study explores the patterns of decision making and interactions among key innovation actors, such as the government, Internet service providers, equipment providers, and content providers, using a conceptual framework wherein models of innovation systems and decision making under uncertainty are combined. The results revealed that the Korean government played a pivotal role in the creation of the ADSL-based Internet service market by providing a strong vision for this emerging service, building a coalition among various key actors, and stimulating initial market needs and supply of necessary equipment during the early period of higher uncertainty. As the level of uncertainty decreased with market evolution, however, the role of industrial actors and their market competition became more important to the rapid growth of the ADSL market. Based on these findings, policy and managerial implications are proposed.     

Assessing new cell phone text and video services

The cell phone is a social medium developing into a multimedia digital platform that provides, obtains, and shares personal and social information. Thus, digital divide, social support, and privacy issues familiar to students of the Internet are here applied to understanding why people may be more or less interested in new text and video cell phone services. The first part of this study develops a basic model of demographic, social, and prior technology use influences on interest in three categories of cell phone text and video services derived from uses and gratifications studies of traditional and new media services—surveillance, entertainment, and instrumental. Hypotheses from this model were tested using data from an April 2007 US national random-digit dialing telephone survey. The by-now familiar digital divide demographics had both indirect and direct influences on assessments of these sets of services, although primarily for entertainment services (which were also negatively influenced by concerns about privacy threats). Surveillance services—here, providing location of family, friends and self to each other—were more positively assessed when family and friends lived closer, and with less prior communication technology use. Instrumental services—such as directions when lost and health emergency information—were more positively assessed by those with greater social support and a stronger belief in privacy rights. Thus, while overall only the entertainment services were even moderately explained, there were understandable differences in influences among the three sets of services, with demographic factors predominating.     

Evolution of the internet gender gaps in Spain and effects of the Covid-19 pandemic

There is a widely accepted belief in new technologies that the digital divide in using a service will disappear as the service reaches an advanced level of maturity. The work presented here shows that this idea is debatable. Data from Spain, a country where daily internet users are 75.9 percent of the population, prove that the gender gap still exists. The paper explores if this gap can be entirely explained by the socioeconomic differences between men and women. We build a micro panel model and incorporate a set of socioeconomic variables (age, education, income, employment status, digital skills, and resident population) that allow us to isolate the effects of gender on the decision to become a daily Internet user. The results conclude that the Internet gap is a phenomenon with a specific gender component. Other things being equal a woman negatively affects the probability of using the Internet. Applying a similar model to 15 Internet services, we obtain that gender is always significant to explain the likelihood of being a user of each service. However, in some services (7 out of 15), the effect is favorable to women, and for other services (8), the gender effect favors men. The work concludes by analyzing the impact of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic on the use of Internet services, paying particular attention to its possible implications for the gender gap.     

What will be the possible barriers to consumers’ adoption of smart home services?

Recently, smart home services have come to the forefront as part of the growing market for the “Internet of Things.” Since these smart home services were introduced, they have been expected to grow rapidly. However, contrary to optimistic expectations for future market growth, the smart home market has appeared to hit a roadblock and remains at an early market stage. This study attempts to identify the possible barriers that consumers perceive when they are introduced to smart home services. Based on the resistance theory and perceived risk model, we investigate the relationship between perceived risk and resistance to smart home services, using technological uncertainty and service intangibility as the antecedents of perceived risk. Dividing perceived risk into four dimensions—performance risk, financial risk, privacy risk, and psychological risk—the empirical results show that these four risk types are affected by technology uncertainty and service intangibility, and the perceived risks, except for financial risk, have positive effects on the resistance to smart home services. When the survey respondents are divided into two types, postponers and rejecters, the result of postponers is similar with that of total sample, except that privacy risk is unimportant to postponers, and the result of rejecter cannot satisfy the recommended model fit.     

Evaluation of mobile services and substantial adoption factors with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)

Emergence of new technological innovations in networks, platforms, and applications has enabled service providers to gain back their massive investment in their infrastructures. However, due to lagging adoption, many service innovations have failed to generate profit. The adoption of different mobile service categories depends on several factors. The current explorative study aims to use Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to identify the most relevant mobile services for consumers and the factors driving the adoption. The results of the AHP analyses indicate that functionality of services is of utmost important for the majority of respondents. The results reveal that basic mobile communication services are the most preferred ones, although several services within different categories are available. The results have important implications for mobile network operators, service and application providers on how to develop and implement specific mobile services. The current study also offers new insights for researchers by showing that AHP is applicable to analyze consumers' preferences.     

Location decisions of inward FDI in sub-national regions of a host country: Service versus manufacturing industries

Built on the differences between services and manufacturing sectors, this study examines the general proposition that service and manufacturing multinational enterprises (MNEs) have different responsiveness to location-specific characteristics when conducting foreign direct investment (FDI), and that these differences influence their final locations in the sub-national regions of a host country. Using a full population of 1,212 and 6,199 inward FDI projects conducted by MNEs in manufacturing and services sectors, respectively, across 234 sub-national regions in Korea between 2000 and 2004, it finds that the location decisions made by service MNEs are more likely to be driven by demand-side considerations, whereas those made by manufacturing MNEs are more likely to be influenced by supply-side characteristics of sub-national regions. In addition, it shows that sub-national location decisions made by both high-tech and low-tech manufacturing MNEs consider the availability of local strategic assets within a focal region more importantly than that from its neighboring regions, suggesting the importance of intra-regional effects. Sub-national location decisions made by location-bound service MNEs exhibit the same intra-regional effects for local market potential; however, those by non-location-bound service MNEs consider the local market potential from neighboring regions more importantly than that within a focal region, suggesting the existence of inter-regional effects.     

Reducing the level of switching costs in mobile communications: The case of Mobile Number Portability

Switching costs are one of the most important economic forces that affect market competition in mobile communications. Both theoretical and empirical studies have shown that switching costs reduce market competition leading to higher prices, lower product and service quality, and lower customer welfare. Given their negative consequences, national regulatory authorities have designed policies aimed at reducing switching costs and fostering competition. One of the most important of these, in the mobile communications industry, is mobile number portability (MNP). The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of MNP on switching costs in mobile phone services. First, a hierarchical Bayes model is proposed to measure switching costs at the customer level and to investigate the impact of MNP on them. Second, this study examines the drivers of MNP adoption by customers using a binary logit specification. The results reveal that this regulatory policy has significantly reduced the cost of switching and that MNP adoption partially depends on customer-related variables.     

Competitive relationships between traditional and contemporary telecommunication services in Taiwan

This study sets out to examine the competitive relationships that exist within the telecommunications market using the niche theory on the personal gratifications and system gratifications dimensions. The findings from the analysis of 363 survey responses indicate that traditional and contemporary telecommunication services offer different specializations to satisfy their consumers. Overall, mobile telecommunication services partially replace wired services, on personal gratifications dimensions in particular. The system gratifications dimensions of the wired telecommunication services facilitate the existence of wired services. New telecommunication services (3G and VoIP) partially replace old telecommunication services (home landline and 2G) in providing greater satisfaction in entertainment. The results also demonstrate that VoIP does not impose competitive displacement effects on home landline, 2G, and 3G services. Limitation and suggestions are discussed.     

Assessment of the value of videophones in home healthcare

The authors introduced a videophone system of full-color motion pictures using ISDN into home healthcare services and evaluated its effects. Twenty households housing the disabled elderly were enrolled into the project for a three-month period. Communication and social cognition independence after the trial, as measured by the Functional Independent Measure, were statistically significantly improved as compared with those before the trial. The videophone also improved activity of daily living (ADL), instrumental ADL, family health and accessibility to medical consultations. The advantages of a wider application of this telecommunications technology to home healthcare services are discussed.     

生产服务型企业差异化服务能力对竞争优势的影响：以钢铁行业为例

随着市场复杂性和竞争强度的日益加剧,传统的工业贸易企业逐渐向生产服务型企业转型,从而使得原来以产品传递为特点的运作,变成了以与客户互动为基础的集成服务运作。然而,以往的研究对与不同客户需求之间的互动如何影响生产服务型企业战略分析较少。文章以中国钢铁行业的调研数据和资料为基础,运用实证方法。分析了生产型服务企业的服务能力,即资源供应、需求管理以及客户战略匹配等三种形态。研究发现对不同的下游客户,差异化的服务能力对竞争优势的形成产生了不同的影响,对于大型企业,资源的供应能力和战略匹配是决定生产服务型企业竞争力的主要来源,而对于中小型企业,资源供应能力和需求管理是形成竞争力的源泉。     

New Industrial Financial Services: What Distinguishes the Winners

Robert Cooper and Ulricke de Brentani report the results of their study of firms participating in the industrial financial services industry. Using a self-administered questionnaire, they obtained data on 56 successful and 50 failed products and found that success and failure are strongly associated with eleven important dimensions: synergy, product/market fit, quality of execution of the launch, unique/superior product, quality of execution of marketing activities, market growth and size, service expertise, quality of execution of technical activities, quality of service delivery, quality of execution of pre-development activities, and the presence of tangible elements of the service offering. They report some surprises, including their observation that while new to the firm, products entail more risk than "close to home" ones, the resulting level of success is not sharply reduced.     

eHealth in Egypt: The demand-side perspective of implementing electronic health records

The present study sheds light on the expected factors that would impact the adoption of the Electronic Health Records (EHR) service in Egypt from the demand-side perspective, i.e. the healthcare consumer's standpoint. This empirical study is motivated by the use of EHR in many countries as a method of promoting healthcare services. Another incentive for the present study is to look at EHR as a top layer in the Next Generation of Information Infrastructure (NII). EHR is considered an efficiency-enhancing and cost-effective technology. Moreover, the issue of developing the healthcare sector in Egypt has the attention of government policymakers, who have a comprehensive healthcare and social insurance law that will be discussed in the Egyptian Parliament, in the near future. The study highlights the socio-technical approach used in analyzing the EHR as an eHealth application in Egypt. The underlying theoretical framework of this study implicates the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology in the Consumer Context (UTAUT2) model. It also applies an integrated framework of multifaceted perceptions used to explain the expected adoption or behavior of the Egyptian consumer vis-à-vis EHR. The study relies on primary data collected after surveying 559 respondents. Results reveal that determinants of EHR include demographics such as place and gender, but more importantly constructs such as price value, effort expectancy and facilitating conditions are key factors that play a part in the decision made by the Egyptian consumer to adopt EHR technology. Finally, additional insight and recommendations are offered to the policymakers.     

The digital divide problem: An economic interpretation of the Japanese experience

This study presents an economic analysis of Japan's attempt to address the geographical digital divide problem for broadband and mobile telephone services. To receive broadband service local inhabitants make voluntary contributions, which are matched by a municipal subsidy. The approach is effective in terms of economic efficiency and equity. Importantly, as fixed broadband service is provided locally the benefits are limited to local inhabitants. By contrast, mobile service is provided via a spectrum user fee system. That is, for mobile telecommunication services, no universal service fund exists. The underlying rationale is that subscribers are beneficiaries and commercial decision-making should be left to mobile operators.     

Servitization,digitization and supply chain interdependency

This study draws on literature at the intersection of servitization, digital business models and supply chain management. Work empirically explores how digital disruption has affected Business-to-Business (B2B) interdependencies. Dematerialization of physical products is transforming the way firms are positioned in the supply chain due to a reduction in production and transport costs and the different ways business engage with customers. Specifically, we propose that these new market conditions can empower downstream firms. We further propose that upstream firms can still capture additional value through digital service if their servitized offer includes difficult to imitate elements. The context of the analysis is the publishing industry. The Payment Card method employed is used to test UK and US consumer's perceptions of digital formats (eBooks) and assess their willingness to pay in relation to printed formats. The method undertaken enables us to elicit aggregated consumer demand for eBooks which in turn identifies optimal pricing strategies for the digital services. Analysis demonstrates that during digital servitization upstream firms should seek to deploy unique resources to ensure their strategic position in the supply chain is not diminished.     

An empirical analysis of multiple services and choices of consumer in the Swedish telecommunications market

Received analyses state that firms can use a multiple services offering strategy to retain customers and capture new customers. Factors that determine the multiple services strategy include product discount, service provider and customer characteristics. Consequently, this study addresses the fundamental question: what are the key determining factors that explain the probability that a consumer buys multiple services? A generalized Poisson regression model is employed to examine whether the product discount, service provider, socio-economic variables and geographical location impact consumer decisions. Data from a national survey in 2009 commissioned by Post-och Telestyrelsen, the Swedish telecommunications regulator, are analyzed. The results clearly show that the discount, service provider and income of the consumer affect the consumer׳s buying decision. A consumer who receives a discount or has a high income is more likely to buy multiple services or select more services from the current service provider into his basket than a consumer who does not receive discount or has lower income. Service providers, cable TV operators and telecommunications carriers can also lock-in their consumer and expand their market position from one particular service to another using bundling service. Thus, this may be the time for the telecommunications regulator to consider the market definition.     

Innovation: A data-driven approach

A newly introduced product or service becomes an innovation after it has been proven in the market. No one likes the fact that market failures of products and services are much more common than commercial successes. A data-driven approach to innovation is proposed. It is a natural extension of the system of customer requirements in terms of their number and type and the ways of collecting and processing them. The ideas introduced in this paper are applicable to the evaluation of the innovativeness of planned introductions of design changes and design of new products and services. In fact, blends of products and services could be the most promising way of bringing innovations to the market. The most important toll gates of innovation are the generation of new ideas and their evaluation. People have limited ability to generate and evaluate a large number of potential innovation alternatives. The proposed approach is intended to evaluate many alternatives from a market perspective.     

Estimating consumer surplus in the mobile telecommunications market: The case of Korea

This paper estimates consumer surplus in the Korean mobile telephone services (MTS) market. The Korean mobile telecommunications market has grown rapidly since 1997 when competition was introduced and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology was commercialized. Because consumer surplus is relevant to the controversy over establishing an appropriate price level between consumers and service providers, the need for a robust measurement of benefit from MTS is increasing. The measured net consumer surplus estimated by means of elasticities of demand reached about US$48.8 billion in the period 1996–2004 and the changes amounted to about US$8.8 billion during the same period. In particular, after competition was introduced into the market with an accompanying price decrease and increase in the number of subscribers, consumers have benefited greatly. Therefore, it can be inferred that a facility-based competition policy and the reduction in price of access such as handset subsidies all played a positive role in the early diffusion of MTS in Korea. The estimated consumer surplus in this paper does not include network externality (option externality); if this were considered, the total social welfare of the consumer would be larger.     

Services, products, and the institutional structure of production

This paper revisits the product-service distinction from an institutional perspective. Much of the literature in marketing and management has focused on the intrinsic characteristics of services with a view to derive implications for the management of service-based firms. Our key argument is that the quest for foundational differences between products and services is misguided. What counts as a product or a service is dependent on the nature of producer-user interactions and the institutional structure of production rather than on any essentialist feature of products or services. Furthermore, we develop the argument that services play an increasingly important role in manufacturing firms and we explore the reasons that underpin this trend.     

Accelerating the development of Latin American digital ecosystem and implications for broadband policy

In the past ten years the Latin American and Caribbean region has been advancing in terms of various digitization metrics, such as the deployment of broadband infrastructure, and the adoption of the Internet and social media. However, despite the significant progress in terms of digitization of consumption,¹ the region faces still some important development challenges of its digital economy. This paper attempts to identify what the future challenges are for Latin America and the Caribbean, which raises a number of research and policy questions: (1) How close is consumer digitization in Latin America and the Caribbean to the levels observed in industrialized countries? (2) How should Latin America and the Caribbean address the broadband and Internet demand gap of the non-adopting population? (3) Are current digitization trends homogeneous across countries in the region or do we observe a divergence across countries, indicating some advanced nations approaching industrialized country performance, while others lagging? (4) If infrastructure and consumer adoption of certain digital products and services is evolving at a fast pace, what are the upcoming digitization challenges? (5) If broadband is a critical lever for the development of digitization, what are the policies to be implemented by Latin American and Caribbean governments to maximize investment for deployment of last generation technologies and promote adoption? To answer these questions the authors have developed, with support of CAF Latin American Development Bank, a comprehensive digitization index. This new index is used to assess the development of Latin America and the Caribbean region vis-à-vis industrialized countries. On this basis, an econometric model is developed to measure the economic development impact of digitization. Zeroing in on broadband as a critical lever for the development of the digital economy, a set of infrastructure investment and adoption goals is defined for different countries in the region. Finally, public policies are recommended to achieving the established goals.     

A bell system view of videotex

Within the last few years videotex has attracted considerable attention. Unfortunately, but as frequently is the case with novel services that are still evolving, a precise definition of videotex is somewhat difficult to obtain. To some people the term videotex applies to a wide variety of time-shared computer services for the home and business market, while to others, the term videotex is very specific perhaps best exemplified by the UK Prestel service. In its most narrow and specific meaning, videotex is a subset of online, time-shared computer services. It utilizes the home TV set for display to access a large, central database of frames of general information in colour with graphics. The database is organized in a tree fashion, and the main target is the home market.