رفتار اجتماعی و اخلاص نام تجاری در میان نوآوران آیفون

Convergence of communication technologies and innovative product features are expanding the markets for technological products and services. Prior literature on technology acceptance and use has focused on utilitarian belief factors as predictors of rational adoption decisions and subsequent user behavior. This presupposes that consumers’ intentions to use technology are based on functional or utilitarian needs. Using netnographic evidence on iPhone usage, this study suggests that innovative consumers adopt and use new technology for not just utilitarian but also for experiential outcomes. The study presents an interpretive analysis of the consumption behavior of very early iPhone users. Apple introduced iPhone as a revolutionary mobile handset offering integrated features and converged services—a handheld computer-cum-phone with a touch-screen web browser, a music player, an organizer, a note-taker, and a camera. This revolutionary product opened up new possibilities to meld functional tasks, hedonism, and social signaling. The study suggests that even utilitarian users have hedonic and social factors present in their consumption patterns.

In terms of technology adoption and usage, consumers consider both hedonic and utilitarian product attributes. Interactions of these attributes not only provide functional benefits but may also enhance enjoyment, and often provide ways to signal social status (Katz & Sugiyama, 2006). As Katz and Sugiyama (2006) conclude from their studies of mobile technology in USA and Japan, such technologies are increasingly serving multiple functions, ranging from enhancing individual functional utility to making fashion statements to relevant social groups. Designers of innovative technological products, such as the iPhone, are well aware of the multiple benefits their products could provide to various user segments. For example, some of the design elements may be performance enhancing, resulting in greater productivity, increased profitability, rising sales turnover, and lower production costs for the users; while other design elements may reduce support and service costs, offer a higher degree of customer satisfaction, and create loyal customers (Gemser, Jacobs, & Cate, 2006). An important and emergent design factor – very evident in iPhone and the imitative products that followed it – pertains to haptic information, or information gained through touch by hands. Consumers use their hands to explore and evaluate products in terms of material properties before ultimately making a purchase (Peck & Childers, 2003). The haptic aspects of the iPhone were promoted heavily – in seductive and hedonic terms – in the American television commercials preceding the launch of the iPhone. As an innovative technological product, the iPhone utilized all these factors to trigger consumer frenzy in the launch period—with long lines snaking outside the stores through the night prior to the launch date. In the very early phase, the iPhone reached two general kinds of consumers: (1) devoted consumers (the Apple acolytes), whose loyalty to the brand is so intense that it survives poor product performance, scandal, bad publicity, high prices, and absence of promotional efforts (Pimentel & Reynolds, 2004) and (2) social users who use mobile technologies as tools to create relationships among technology, body, and social roles (Katz & Sugiyama, 2006) and engage in rhetoric and “meaning-making” that occur via social interaction among innovative early users (as well as late users and non-users). In the case of iPhone, integration of utilitarian and hedonic factors facilitated the seamless delivery of convergent services in ways that had not been possible in the pre-iPhone era. Heath and Soll (1996) found that when a given expense could be assigned to multiple categories, people might have some leeway for assignment of some of their expenditures to hedonic categories. This permits consumption of such items in ways that satisfies short-term hedonic interests and skirts the budget constraints that would generally apply to major purchases. Using the context of Apple's iPhone, this paper focuses on the influence of hedonic versus utilitarian attributes on consumer's choices and brand justification. There are three sections that follow this introduction. First, the method used in this study is described briefly. Next, the ten key themes are extracted from qualitative interpretation of the netnographic data and are presented to explain consumer devotion towards the iPhone and social aspects of iPhone usage. The paper ends with Section 4 on the relevance of social factors in the marketing of technologically innovative, multifunctional, and symbolically powerful products.

Prior literature on technology acceptance and use has focused on utilitarian belief factors to predict rational user behavior. Using some netnographic evidence on iPhone usage, this article suggests that innovative consumers adopt and use new technology for not just utilitarian but also for experiential outcomes. Consumer choice involve factors unrelated to functional outcomes, such as enjoyment, social acceptance, social status and playfulness. As shown in this study, this hedonic use of technology is salient in the iPhone context. The users cited the device's features and services, such as internet access, synchronization (SYNC), fames, Google maps, digital camera, and MP3, emphasizing convergence and hedonic usage. The key features made salient in acquiring an iPhone are the device's design, display, and multi-touch interface (an innovative feature introduced at the launch of the product) (Thompson, Hamilton, and Rust, 2005). Although Apple primarily marketed the iPhone as a mobile phone, this study shows some netnographic evidence that consumers may perceived it as a different device. This has managerial implication as Firat and Dholakia (1998) note that consumers take an active role in appropriating usage and meanings to brand/product. Consumers are more concerned with enjoyment experience than with the existent communication features. Some consumers complain about dropped calls or failed coverage, but still have no dissatisfaction. The hedonic orientation of consumption represents a powerful motivation for using technology. With regard to new product development, the different nature of hedonic versus utilitarian consumption of technology has two implications for favorable technology use: (1) quantity of integrations have to be preferential to hedonic features (Okada, 2005), as consumers will likely exhibit more positive attitudes towards a product when the hedonic features are more salient; (2) an emphasis to converged services in new products may create innovative devotion from loyal consumers. As this study is confined to website postings of consumers’ experience of a really new product (RNP) during the launch period, further research is needed to explore social or hedonic technology use. RNPs undergo several iterations and developments; thus, another area to explore would be the adoption and usage of the modified product by innovative consumers. The utilitarianism as a social factor would also be important to measure to examine technological users that have high hedonic and social status needs or “techno-social behavior.” Consumers who belong to the innovative user group are constantly looking for new launches and are indifferent to the brand as long as they have the newest technologies in order to be the first in the market. These consumers are likely to prefer hedonic consumption if the situation allows them to justify it. The next group of consumers, the techno-social users, has high devotion for the brand and high hedonism. These consumers own other Apple products (such as iPods and Macs) and now have seamlessly compatible mobile phone (i.e. iPhone). Because most innovative products are expensive, they have to be justified based on brand and utility as well as social or hedonic utility. These users also could have a high utilitarianism tendency but not enough to justify their use. Ideally, techno-social users would turn as Apple Acolyte converts because of Apple's significant brand equity and thus, high preference for the brand's closely related products and designs. The Apple Acolytes, the consumers who are devoted to the Apple brand, justify their iPhone usage by highlighting only the features that worked well in the iPhone, which are not necessarily hedonistic values.