The Impacts of Perceived Usefulness, Ease of Use, Reputation, and Usage Fee of the Internet Entertainment Service on the Use of the Service

인터넷 오락 서비스의 유용성, 용이성, 명성, 그리고 유료화가 그 서비스 사용에 미치는 영향

Recently, firms which have offered a "free Internet service" to their customers, are considering a "charged Internet service" for increasing a company's profit. But they have doubts about the results, because consumers may fly away from their web-site easily and may discontinue using their services. The purpose of this study is to investigate which factors make consumers use the charged Internet services. To do this, the factors, which are ease of using the service, usefulness of the service, the reputation of the service provider, service cost, and the intention to use the service as a mediator, are analyzed. To achieve this research objective, a structural equation model was constructed and a field study method was used. The findings are summarized as follows: First, ease of using the service, usefulness of the service, and service cost have significant impacts on the charged Internet service usage through the intention to use. Especially, although service cost influences on the service usage largely, the usefulness of the service has a bigger impact on the charged Internet service usage than service cost. Second, the reputation of the service provider does not have any impact on the service usage. Third, consumers using only the free Internet service tend to hesitate about using the "charged Internet service" because they doubt its ease of use and usefulness in spite of the service cost.