(A) study on the convergence and conflicts of ICT industry and other industries

Abstract

As the information and communications technologies (ICT) are developed, the industrial boundaries between ICT industry and other industries have become blurred and these industries have tended to converge. Even though this ICT convergence expected to create the new market values and opportunities for growth, various problems are arising in the process of industry convergence. This research figures out these problem and their causes and discuss how to solve them from the consumer’s point of view. The first study focuses on the conflicts between the traditional players and new players in the media market. This study attempts to estimate the value of the news content on the portal using the case of the relationship between the Naver portal site and newspaper companies in Korea. Since there is no direct way to estimate the value of news content, this study utilizes an indirect way based on consumer’s intention to visit portal site. An analytic hierarchy process based on consumer surveys is employed in this paper to estimate the relative importance of news content on a main page and a search service. On the basis of this relative importance, this study estimates the portal’s operating income which is generated by the contribution of news content, using accounting data from Naver. The second study focuses on the consumer’s resistance to the new services and products arising from ICT convergence. This study attempts to identify the possible barriers that consumers perceive when they are introduced to smart home services. Based on the resistance theory and perceived risk model, this study investigate the influence of perceived risk on resistance to smart home services, using technological uncertainty and service intangibility as the antecedents of perceived risk. Dividing perceived risk into four dimensions—performance risk, financial risk, privacy risk, and psychological risk—the empirical results show that these four risk types are affected by technology uncertainty and service intangibility, and the perceived risks, except for financial risk, have positive effects on the resistance to smart home services. This research explores the negative aspects of ICT convergence in depth and tried to find their causes and solutions. It can give some insights to the market players in ICT convergence industries and contribute to the development of ICT convergence industries, suggesting the empirical and academic backgrounds to solve the problems in ICT convergence industries.