Interactive television (IPTV) leads to noteworthy changes in marketing and advertising. As an innovative technology, IPTV provides advanced, customized, and personalized television services, with interactivity assumed to be the major difference from traditional media. The purpose of this study is to identify clusters of users based on motivations for using IPTV and to examine the relationships among the motivations, actual interactions, perceived interactivity, and attitude toward the technology. The study contributes to the body of knowledge of consumer behavior in high-tech services by identifying motivations for using IPTV and clarifying the relationships between those motivations and the interactivity.
Interactive television, known as IPTV (Internet Protocol TV), generates important changes in marketing and advertising. As Cauberghe and De Pelsmacker (2008) discuss, interactivity is the major difference between IPTV and traditional media. Users control their viewing experience by remote interaction with the television content. IPTV as hyper-multimedia not only changes the way viewers watch television, but also can have implications for the way content and advertisements are perceived and processed. Although research exists on interactivity in the Internet context (Kim and McMillan, 2008 and Klein, 1998), only a few studies discuss interactivity in the IPTV context.
A number of studies address motivations for using media including studies on TV (e.g., Rubin, 1983), the Internet (e.g., Eighmey and McCord, 1998, Hoffman and Novak, 1996 and Stafford and Stafford, 1996), and mobile technology (e.g., Leung and Wei, 2000 and Peters and Ben Allouch, 2005). The motivations for using IPTV are also worth identifying, in view of the limited research conducted on the topic so far. The purpose here is not only to identify the motivations but also to examine the relationships among IPTV user clusters by motivations, actual interaction, and perceived interactivity, based on the theoretical interactivity frameworks.
Recently, IPTV use grows rapidly in South Korea, which is the top-ranked digital-opportunity country in the world, according to the Digital Opportunity Index (ITU, 2007). The number of Korean households using IPTV is 649,705 in 2009 and reaches 8 million by 2012 (Korea Digital Media Industry Association, 2009). Thus, this study sets out to investigate IPTV users' motivations, interactions, and perceived interactivity in South Korea.
This study examines the relationships among motivations, actual interactions, and perceived interactivity, as well as those between perceived interactivity and attitude toward IPTV. The study classifies users into four clusters – Passionates, Pastimers, Pragmatics, and Phobics – based on the motivations for using IPTV. The findings are noteworthy because the clusters provide an appropriate way to segment and target the IPTV market according to motivations for use, offering implications for marketing practitioners and strategists. The study shows that the motivation clusters differ as to their uses and real actions in IPTV. The findings offer insights for consumer behavior on IPTV services as well as implications for practitioners. The study indicates different perceived interactivity and attitude toward IPTV among the motivation clusters, with Passionates showing the highest perceived interactivity and the strongest positive attitude. This study supports differences in the relationship between motivations for using IPTV and perceived interactivity and differences in the relationship between perceived interactivity and attitude toward IPTV among different motivation clusters. Perceived interactivity has positive effects on attitude toward IPTV among Passionates, Pragmatics and Phobics, but not Pastimers.
From the theoretical perspective, this research supports an application of uses and gratification theory to the IPTV. The findings indicate IPTV uses and gratifications by assessing the causal relationships among motivations for using the IPTV (i.e., antecedents), interactivity (i.e., mediators), and attitude toward IPTV (i.e., consequences). Offering implications for researchers, the findings support the U&G theory except for the Pastimers cluster, whose members care only about time rather than caring about interactivity. The findings suggest practical implications for IPTV advertising agencies. Segmentation and targeting by consumers' motivations are helpful to develop advertising strategies. For example, information and social status oriented message strategies may be more effective for Passionates in the advertisements. The value of information and fun lifestyle may be more useful for the Pragmatics segment to induce stronger perceived interactivity and more favorable attitude for the medium. For IPTV content providers, the findings also suggest implications. By assessing the motivation clusters, user-oriented IPTV scheduling may increase perceived interactivity and favorable attitude. Fashion/status and entertainment appear to become more dominant motivations over time (Peters & Ben Allouch, 2005). Future research could examine motivations for using IPTV over time to see whether and how such changes in the results, thereby verifying the findings and offering more specific recommendations to enhance strategies based on motivation.
