Consumer response to the Internet: an exploratory tracking study of on-line home users

摘要

This exploratory descriptive research examines consumer behavior for the Internet over time. We focus on Internet use by consumers at home in the initial phases of the introduction of this technology into US households. The key research questions to be examined in this study are the following: Who are the early adopters of Internet services? How is Internet consumer behavior changing over time? How are awareness, preference, and choice of Internet services evolving over time? We present an exploratory empirical examination of these questions using a consumer-tracking panel to examine household Internet behavior. The significance of this research is that it tracks Internet consumer behavior for a technological innovation, viz. the Internet, over time. It tracks awareness, preference, and purchase of Internet services by household consumers over time. The study uses a longitudinal panel of consumers to examine Internet behavior in different segments of consumers over time. It explores consumers' preference in terms of their willingness to pay and actual amount spent for Internet services over time. This study allows us to see how the initial adoption of the Internet took place in homes by examining preferences for specific services and features of the Internet. We explore how consumer Internet preference is related to explanatory demographic and psychographic variables. We present a set of propositions related to consumer Internet behavior over time. We also discuss methodological issues in tracking consumer behavior for home technologies over time, present managerial implications, and suggest directions for future research.