Dynamic Impacts of Aspects of Appearance and Technology on Consumer Satisfaction: Empirical Evidence from the Smartphone

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Dynamic Impacts of Aspects of Appearance and Technology on Consumer Satisfaction: Empirical Evidence from the Smartphone Market Seungjin Kim1   · Sotaro Katsumata1   · Atsushi Akiike2  Received: 22 May 2020 / Accepted: 26 August 2020 © Springer Japan KK, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract This study examines changes in the importance of product attributes on consumer satisfaction in the smartphone market. Based on a literature review, hypotheses are formulated regarding the relationship between the importance of aspects of consumer assessment and market maturity. We especially consider the diverse dimensions of product design and attempt to identify the dynamically changing effects in product design. This study’s empirical analysis focuses on consumer reviews of smartphones over a 10-year period, and the final dataset contains 18,463 reviews for 332 brands of 32 manufacturers. We estimate the relationship employing a hierarchical Bayes model; consequently, we find that the importance of appearance aspects declines, while that of technology aspects increases with market maturity. Based on these findings, we propose the application of practical market strategies. Keywords  Product design management · Consumer satisfaction · Product appearance · Online consumer review

* Seungjin Kim [email protected] Sotaro Katsumata [email protected]‑u.ac.jp Atsushi Akiike [email protected]‑gakuin.ac.jp 1

Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University, 1‑7 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka, Japan

2

Faculty of Business Administration, Tohoku Gakuin University, 1‑3‑1 Tsuchitoi, Aoba‑ku, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan



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The Review of Socionetwork Strategies

1 Introduction Product strategy for what products to offer in a market is a fundamental strategic activity for any firm, which determines its success or failure [39, p. 5]. A firm’s efforts to best meet consumer needs lead to product design, and responses from the market are applied to further steps of product design [39, p. 329]. As consumer responses act interactively with a firm’s activities, the marketing strategy in this process becomes an important key to bridging consumers and the firm in product design. The concept of production design includes technical features (engineering designs), that is, what will function and what benefits consumers will have, and the appearance of products (industrial designs), such as aesthetic and ergonomics, relating to consumer experience [59, p. 3, p. 92, p. 211]. Product appearance is employed by researchers as product forms and consists of a variety of concepts and roles [10, 18]. [10] argued that consumers respond to product appearance mainly in two ways: cognitive responses and emotional responses. The role of product appearance as a rational trigger has a connection with technical features as a communication route. For example, consumers face risk and complexity from high levels of technological change [64]. In addition, changing technological levels create a paradigm shift in the market structure of an indus