Allocations of innovation adoption and diffusion theory to demand estimation for communications and media converging digitial multimedia broadcasting services

This study examines market acceptance for DMB service, one of the touted new business models in Korea's next-generation mobile communications service market, using adoption and diffusion of innovation as the theoretical framework. Market acceptance for DMB service was assessed by predicting the demand for the service using the Bass model, and the demand variability over time was then analyzed by integrating the innovation adoption model proposed by Rogers. In our estimation of the Bass model, we derived the coefficient of innovation and coefficient of imitation, using actual diffusion data from the mobile telephone service market. The maximum of subscribers was estimated based on the result of a survey on satellite DMB service. Furthermore, to test the difference in diffusion pattern between mobile phone service and satellite DMB service, we reorganized the demand data along the diffusion timeline according to Rogers' innovation adoption model, using the responses by survey subjects concerning their respective projected time of adoption. The comparison of the two demand prediction models revealed that diffusion for both took place forming a classical S-curve. Concerning variability in demand for DMB service, our findings, much in agreement with Rogers' view, indicated that demand was highly variable over time and depending on the adopter group. In distinguishing adopters into different groups by time of adoption of innovation, we found that income and lifestyle (opinion leadership, novelty seeking tendency and independent decision-making) were variables with measurable impact. Among the managerial variables, price of reception device, contents type, subscription fees were the variables resulting in statistically significant differences. This study, as an attempt to measure the market acceptance for satellite DMB service, a leading next-generation mobile communications service product, stands out from related studies in that it estimates the nature and level of acceptance for specific customer categories, using theories of innovation adoption and diffusion and based on the result of a survey conducted through one-to-one interviews. The authors of this paper believe that the theoretical framework elaborated in this study and its findings can be fruitfully reused in future attempts to predict demand for new mobile communications service products.