A behavioural model of the adoption and use of new telecommunications media: the effects of communication scenarios and media product/service attributes

Recent years have seen the dramatic growth of new modes of communication. Above and beyond using land line and mobile phone for voice real-time communication, people spend increasing amounts of time receiving and sending messages through social networks (e.g. Myspace or Facebook) and also through real-time communication software (e.g. Skype or MSN). As indicated by the significant decline on the amount of call volumes of land line and mobile phone during the period from 2000 to 2006 in UK and in Taiwan, we conjecture that consumers are transferring to these new forms of communication in order to satisfy their communication needs, diminishing the demand for established channels. The purpose of this research is to develop a behavioural model to analyse the perceived value and weight of the specific media attributes that drive people to adopt or use these new communication channels. Seven telecommunications media available in 2010 have been categorised in this research included land-line, mobile phone, short message service (SMS), E-mail, Internet telephony, instant messaging and social networking. Various media product/service attributes such as synchronicity, multi-tasking, price, quality, mobility, privacy and video which might affect the media choice of consumers were first identified. Importantly, this research has designed six types of communication scenarios in the online survey with 894 valid responses to clarify the effects of different communication aims, distinguish consumers' intended behaviours toward these telecommunications media.