Keywords

1 Introduction

The world media environment, which has been centered on traditional TV, is changing rapidly to internet video services based on the competitiveness of major internet video services such as Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube. In addition to having provided PC and laptop-based internet video services, service providers began to launch their video services on mobile phones thanks to the evolution of mobile technologies. Even if the PC and laptop remain the most used device for viewing video contents over the Internet, viewing online video on a mobile phone is growing dramatically [1].

As the number of people who select mobile phones for viewing TV or video contents is rapidly growing, domestic IT companies are also providing mobile video services competitively. There are many types of mobile video services in Korea, which include mobile internet protocol television (IPTV) services provided by mobile service providers, TVing offered by a cable TV broadcaster, pooq provided by joint terrestrial broadcasters, the Web TVs of large portals, and Africa TV focused on real-time broadcasts. In addition, mobile TV service which generally refers to the digital video broadcasting-handheld (DVB-H) and digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) may be one of the mobile video services. However, in this paper, mobile TV service is excluded from the mobile video services because mobile TV service is different from mobile video services in terms of services, contents, user access, and charges. Most of mobile video services have paid subscribers paying a monthly fee. Paid subscribers of mobile IPTV are estimated to total 10.6 million people and the total paid subscribers of mobile video services exceed 11 million people when TVing and pooq are also taken into consideration [2]. Considering TVing, mobile IPTV and pooq launched in 2010, 2011 and 2012, respectively, the figure of 11 million paid subscribers indicates that domestic markets are still being formed mainly around mobile video services provided free of charge even if the number of people who select mobile phones for viewing TV or video contents is rapidly growing. Because the need for the activation of mobile video services by mobile video service providers has been raised, research for the activation of mobile video services is very useful. However, many researchers have sought to understand user acceptance of mainly mobile TV. Few research results of studies that sought to examine consumer acceptance of mobile video services have been reported to date. Therefore, there is a need to investigate usage and attitude for mobile video services.

This study aims to analyze the current usage and attitude for mobile video services. In this paper, the actual usage behaviors of mobile video service are examined. We investigate usage situation, factors affecting to behavioral intention, mainly used content, and willingness to pay (WTP) amount under paid subscriptions for premium content.

2 Background

Studies on mobile media use have mostly focused on mobile TV. Zhou [3] noted that perceived ease of use, access speed and content quality of mobile TV positively affected flow experience, which further affected perceived usefulness and usage intention. Jung et al. [4] examined that flow experience and content had a significant role on users’ acceptance of mobile TV. However, price value was reported to be insignificant with behavioral intention. Kaasinen et al. [5] studied user acceptance of mobile TV services through field trial of commercially available mobile TV services. Thus far, although previous studies on user acceptance of mobile TV have led to a range of findings, the study of mobile video services has not yet been fully addressed.

Survey results revealing the increasing trends of video viewing through mobile phone have been released continuously [1, 6]. From these results, experts judge that mobile video services can attract a considerable portion of demand from consumers who have enjoyed terrestrial DMB broadcasts since mobile video services provide the feature of high-definition (HD) and extract a WTP from subscribers who are interested in live broadcasts such as sports and news since mobile video services support a variety of functions, including replays [7]. However, as mentioned above, the figure of 11 million paid subscribers of mobile video services implies that the acceptance rate is not at the diffusion stage, considering service launching year. In addition, because of the lack of agreement over the contents pricing terms between terrestrial broadcasters and mobile video service providers supplying the broadcasting contents, if the paid subscribers are not be able to utilize the terrestrial broadcasting contents in mobile video services, the market situation of paid subscribers is expected to worsen [8]. Therefore, studies are necessary to analyze the actual usage and attitude of mobile video services because there are limits in identifying reasons for not diffusing rapidly.

3 Analysis

The data for this study were obtained from online survey methods with 500 people using LTE smartphone in Korea. The target population consisted of men and women between the ages of 19 and 49. It should be noted that age group of 19–49 was selected in this study because we assumed that this group is very likely to use the mobile video services and core target group for the mobile service market as economically active population and mobile power user. Sampling was conducted for 1 month during August 2016. For the main sampling conditions, the significant allocation was made first according to mobile service brand’s market share in Korea, after which the proportional allocation was applied taking into account the population distribution by age. All the analyses of this study were done using SPSS 23.0 version. The demographic information of respondents by mobile service brand is described in Table 1.

Table 1. Demographic information of respondents by mobile service brand
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A survey results on when mobile video service users use mobile video services are shown in Table 2. This survey was conducted only for mobile video service users (414 persons). Similar to earlier study [5], the main usage situations took place when commuting and at home. Especially, for usage situation at home, we classified two situations including mobile video service use before sleeping at home. It was found that women group uses the services at home the most frequently. We used Chi-square test to examine the difference by gender and age. A significant difference was shown in both gender and age groups.

Table 2. Usage situation of mobile video services
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Factors affecting to behavioral intention of mobile video services are shown in Table 3. The most influential factor was diverse channels and the second influential factor was charging scheme. Table 3 also shows that Wi-Fi installation, additional charges, and data volume were considered in use of the services. These factors are related to charges and the total percentage for charges is higher than the percentage for diverse channels. Therefore, the findings indicate that charges are a meaningful consideration factor in mobile video services use. These results are consistent with the previous study results [9,10,11].

Table 3. Factors affecting to behavioral intention of mobile video services
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Our finding that diverse channels have a significant role in consumers’ behavioral intention of mobile video services may be consistent with the findings in consumer adoption of mobile TV [3,4,5] because diverse channels imply contents. The study analyzed the presence of a difference in factors affecting to behavioral intention of mobile video services depending on gender and age, but no statistically significant difference was observed.

Next, we investigated mainly used contents by mobile video service users, as shown in Table 4. The results show that the mainly used contents in the area of broadcasting are different from the mainly used contents in the area of VOD. However, the top three contents mainly used by mobile video service users were broadcasting contents. This shows that broadcasting channels provide the users of mobile video services the immediacy of content and the users appreciate easy and continuous access to TV contents [5]. Chi-square test was conducted to identify the difference in mainly used contents used depending on gender and age difference. A statistically significant difference was observed between men and women and among different age groups.

Table 4. Mainly used contents by mobile service users (B:Broadcasting, V:VOD)
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We investigated the monthly WTP amount of the existing mobile video service users for premium services if released paid premium content channels in the near future. The WTP amount for premium services is analyzed in Table 5. The WTP amounts in Table 5 imply the monthly WTP amount for those using the mobile video services free of charge and the additional month WTP amount for those already using paid mobile video services. From the results, more than half of the mobile video service users expressed no WTP. These results are similar to the survey results found by Venturini et al. on the WTP amount for YouTube premium services [1]. That is, the existing mobile video service users are reluctant to pay additional charges even for the premium services. The monthly average WTP amount was 2,230 KRW. From the results of conducted for the monthly average WTP amount using t-test for gender groups and one-way ANOVA for age groups, no statistically significant differences were observed between the two genders or among any of the age groups.

Table 5. Monthly WTP amount by mobile video services
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4 Conclusion

In this paper, we analyzed the current usage and attitude of mobile video services. We first analyzed when mobile video service users use the services most often, which factor is affecting to behavioral intention, and which content they use mainly. We also examined monthly WTP amount for premium mobile video services when the existing services would be release paid premium content channels. The major results are as follows.

First, the mobile video service users utilized the services most commonly in “pure mobile” situations such as commuting. In immobile situations, men used the services at school or workplace most frequently while women used the services at home most frequently, showing that smartphones are used for viewing outside, but act as secondary devices to the TV at home. For factors affecting to behavioral intention of mobile video services, the availability of diverse channels was the highest factor for the use of the services, followed by charging scheme. However, considering other factors related to charges, charges are a meaningful consideration factor in mobile video services use.

Second, the results show that sports broadcasting was the most frequently used content, followed by dramas and entertainment broadcasting. These results show that consumers perceive mobile video services as a handheld TV. In addition, some differences were observed in the most frequently used content depending on gender and age. From the results of the survey investigating the monthly WTP amount when premium mobile video services are launched on a paid subscription basis, the respondents desired average WTP of less than 3,000 KRW, which is lower than the paid scheme currently operating domestically. The respondents who were not even willing to pay the charges, at 63.8%, accounted for the highest proportion. This result demonstrates that the mobile video service users are reluctant to pay the additional charges and that the charges are confirmed as a key factor affecting the use of mobile video services.

Although this paper conducted a usage and attitude analysis of mobile video service users, there is a limitation regarding the general applicability of results. As mobile video services are used worldwide, the survey needs to be conducted throughout various international user groups with consideration of cultural differences. For this purpose, a cross-country comparison is a potential direction for future research.