Video Businesses and Video Platforms

Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), the convergence services of television and Internet, is being rapidly developed around the world. Many digital media telecommunications service providers around the world are moving towards triple play offerings by combining voice, video and high speed data services. IP-based technology is being used by the majority of service providers to support such video services, commonly known as IPTV services. Diffusion of new technologies results from a series of individual decisions to start using the new technology, which is often the result of a comparison between the uncertain benefits of it and the uncertain cost of adopting it.

Understanding the factors affecting the choice of users is essential both for researchers studying the diffusion factors and for the players of this newborn industry. In this paper, we defined some metrics that find out the reasons.

Hammervold & Solberg (2009) by asking questions from women and men separately about different sports and their willingness to subscribe, realized that that soccer fans were more motivated to pay for watching TV sports than were fans of other sports. This pattern was confirmed by frequency tables as well as by logistic regression analysis. They showed that the difference particularly applied to those who were extremely interested. Sixty percent of men who considered themselves extremely interested in soccer were willing to pay.

Chae & Chang (2010) analyzed “preference for specific TV content” and “satisfaction in previous media use” and realized that the higher the viewers’ preference for a specific type of TV programs and showed that viewers who perceive high importance for TV entertainment programs, kids-oriented TV programs or TV education programs, are showing high willingness to subscribe to the IPTV that offers bundle service of that particular type of TV programs, but Viewers who perceive high importance for TV cultural programs are not showing high willingness to subscribe to the IPTV service of TV cultural programs.

They also showed that the higher the viewers’ use intent for the IPTV entertainment, kids-oriented, cultural or education program bundle service, the higher will be the price they estimate for their own IPTV programs package. On the other hand, viewers who have low satisfaction in TV entertainment, kids-oriented, education or cultural programs offered by their service providers are showing low willingness to subscribe to the IPTV that offers service of specific TV programs.

Dover and Murthi (2006) by analyzing “billing frequency” and “usage” realized that as the customer pays a higher initial price per month, the hazard of leaving decreases. They explained this result by the fact that customers who value the service more are more willing to pay a higher price. This result also is consistent with past research of Reichheld (1993) which has shown that customers paying full price tend to be more loyal than are customers buying at discounted prices.

Lin & Shu-Chuan (2006) said that once there are more members in the family, the possibility of subscribing to IPTV will be higher and when the consumers are older, the possibility of subscribing to IPTV is also higher. They suggested that the “life style” has a remarkably positive effect in terms of “subscribing to IPTV services”, and its effect is much more important than “education” or “income” based on the statistical results. Furthermore, those people who frequently use the Internet will prefer to subscribe to IPTV as well.

Liu, Li-Ting (2006) found in her study that the main reason why people subscribe to IPTV is that it is “easy to subscribe to”, while the reason why they do not subscribe is that they “do not understand IPTV”. This paper not only examines the user behavior of the IPTV subscribers but also looks at the effect of time displacement on other TV platforms.

Kim & Sugai (2008) by investigating variables like pricing, Switching Contents robustness, Contents update found that while content may be developed as device independent, consumers interact differently with similar Internet content accessed through different devices. Specifically, the willingness to pay for more robust and more frequently updated content was on average higher in the mobile segment than in the PC segment. They believed that quality level and pricing has been predominately the decisive factor for purchasing decisions.

Ha, Yoo, Choi, Jong, Kim, Chin (2009) by analyzing Attitude, Perceived usefulness, Perceived ease of use, Perceived cost saving and Perceived affective gratifications realized that the entertainment value is more influential than the knowledge and information value. As they believed, in South Korea, drama contents of TV are the most popular type of program. They suggest that the potential operators of IPTV should pay attention to which content obtains high affective gratification from viewers. In other words, contents should be more enjoyable and entertaining, rather than informative. Secondly, IPTV allows users to enjoy video content and broadcasting real-time by using a high-speed Internet network, but they still use a traditional television device with a remote control. Customers may want a convenient EPG (Electronic program guide) service on TV screen and a simple remote control to easily access more information. They also found that consumers evaluated the quality of an IPTV service by considering the total cost of purchasing as the most important determinant factors and suggest that IPTV providers should try to differentiate their services in terms of price and content of IPTV.