Constructing consumer analysis and industrial strategy for development of emerging industries

Abstract

This dissertation aims to facilitate comprehensive understanding of emerging smart car industry, and is composed of two papers. First paper focuses on the key services of smart car and keystone players of the smart car industry. The second paper focuses on the autonomous driving technology that was derived as one of the key services of smart car from the first paper. The second paper especially explores the antecedent factors influencing the use intention of autonomous driving technology and the optimal configurations of these factors that lead to the outcome, use intention. The first study explores the killer services that are expected to be highly demanded by consumers and the keystone players in the emerging smart car market. This study identifies the promising services from a consumer’s perspective using the analytic hierarchy process analysis and examines the experts’ views on which industries and firms, as keystone players, are expected to provide the competitive killer services in the market. The results show that the service that consumers find the most crucial is driving assistance, followed by infotainment and Internet of Things (IoT) hubs. Furthermore, the experts rank the importance of industrial player as in the order of IT device manufacturers, followed by platform providers, automobile manufacturers, and network providers

on the company level, the rank is in the order of Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, Naver, and SKT, respectively. These findings show that the consumers regard smart cars as futuristic vehicles, yet still emphasizing its conventional value as a means of transport while the experts expect that IT companies are most likely to actualize the concept of smart car among the industrial players. The second study tries to shed light on how to secure marketability of the emerging autonomous driving technology. In particular, this paper aims to explore antecedent factors influencing potential users’ intention to use the autonomous driving technology and the optimal configurations of these factors that evoke the use intention. This paper analyzes the survey data through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). The result of SEM shows that perceived automation, perceived reliability, performance expectancy, social influence, innovativeness, and attitude toward using the autonomous driving technology are the antecedent factors that impact the use intention. In addition, the result of the fsQCA reinforces the result of the SEM, and at the same time, reveals several configurations of the conditions that lead to the outcome. Furthermore, some practical implications and understandings of the potential customers are discussed. The findings of this dissertation will enable foundational understanding of emerging smart car industry. Investigating consumer perspective toward key services of smart car and backgrounds for the use intention of the major key service will provide guidelines to future studies and to industrial players preparing for the next automotive paradigm. The main contribution of this dissertation is that it conducts initial study investigating emerging smart car industry in social science studies from consumer perspectives, along with practical and academic implications for the associated fields of academics and industries.