As the smart phone market grows rapidly, the importance of the application is becoming bigger. The number of the smart phone users is increasing significantly, since the customer can do the internet easily and use various apps with the smart phone, and accordingly the application market is rapidly growing. The application market has grown to reach 17 billion won as of 2012, and if it continues to grow such fast until 2020, it is expected that the market will grow as big as the internet market.
Studies on applications can be very important as the application market grows, and this goes for the fashion field as well. However, most of the previous studies on fashion applications merely have focused on classifying the apps and the studies on the fashion application users are insufficient. This seems to be undesirable in a situation where the smart phone is popularized and the application market is becoming bigger. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine attitudes toward and intention to adopt fashion information application among smart phone users.
Specific research objectives are on follow. First is to analyze the demographic characteristic of the smart phone users and their attitude toward the smart phones. Second is to classify respondents by the technological innovativeness and clothing involvement. Third is to examine the differences of each group in lifestyles, fashion information application benefit pursuit, and the intention to use of the fashion information application.
The research method was to implement the survey from February 9 to March 8 in 2013 with the smart phone users in their 10s to 30s. A total of 300 pieces were collected and a total of 292 data were analyzed after the 8 were eliminated. The descriptive analysis, reliability test, factor analysis, K-group analysis and ANOVA test were performed using PASW Version 18.0.
The findings of this study were as follows.
Regarding the demographic characteristics of the smart phone users, males were slightly larger in number than females, and the number in their age of 30s were the largest. By the education level, the college graduates were the largest number and as for monthly income, those with an income under 1 million won were a biggest number.
According to the K-group analysis by the technological innovativeness and the clothing involvement, three groups were identified. The first group showed the lowest value of the technological innovativeness and clothing involvement, so was called as ''passive group''. The second group showed the highest value of the technological innovativeness, so was called as ''innovative group''. The third group showed the low value of the technological innovativeness and the highest value of clothing involvement, so was called as ''clothing involvement group''. Regarding the demographic characteristics, there were significant differences among the groups in gender, age, marital status, education level, and monthly income. With respect to lifestyles, innovative group and clothing involvement group showed higher mean scores than passive group in rational purchase, personal relationship, and pursuit of personality factors. However, the innovative group and the clothing involvement group showed difference in brand pursuit factor.
The benefits of fashion information app were generated into two factors, information pursuit and enjoyment pursuit. The innovative group and clothing involvement group showed the higher values than the passive group in these two factors. Finally, Innovative group showed the highest value among three groups in the intention to use fashion app.
This study has intended to contribute to identify the market segments according to the technological innovativeness and clothing involvement. By examining the reasons of and willingness to use the fashion information applications, this study attempts to contribute to understanding the fashion application market.
This study has several limitation in that the survey objects were mainly focused on the people in their 10s to 30s and thus the result can not be over-interpreted. Also, unequalized distribution in gender and ages are another limitations. It will be better to conduct future study if the subjects'' age and gender are arranged to be unit and survey area is enlarged.