A socio-technical analysis of factors affecting the adoption of smart TV in Korea

Smart TV has been highlighted as a new platform of broadcasting, powered for the last five years by its own application store as well as by internet-based contents. However, recently, smart TV's performance in the pay-TV market has been below expectations. In the socio-technical view, this paper investigates three aspects surrounding smart TV: bundling as a market competition strategy; services using technological features represented by N-screen; and consumer attributes, including personal innovativeness and demographics. The results show that the bundles with IPTV have a lock-in effect, while other pay-TV services do not, indicating that bundling by communications service providers is a more effective strategy to keep market share away from new entrants. Policy makers only consider competition among incumbents, neglecting the entrance of new service providers, like over-the-top service providers. Therefore, bundling should be evaluated in terms of an entry barrier. Smart TV doesn't work as a platform because the adoption of smart TV has no influence on the watching of N-screen broadcasting services on TV. There are implications that the new technology alone cannot encourage lean-forward activity on TV. Managers should focus on what consumers expect from 'smartness', and develop contents for the smart TV as a home appliance.