ABSTRACT

With the introduction of digital broadcasting inside and outside of the country, T-commerce has become the center of attention these days. T-commerce, which is the abbreviated word for Television commerce, is defined as the convergence of e-commerce technologies and interactive television. If E-commerce has brought a refreshing change to the established commercial transaction in which lead the marketing trend for the past 5 years, then T-commerce has been recognized as the new commerce model, which has been popularizing the electronic commercial transactions and the flow of information. Ever since the United States of America has started the digital telecommunications satellite in 1994 and England has started digital broadcasting in 1998, the development of T-commerce service has been rapidly increasing in the US and Europe. In Korea, the digital telecommunications satellite was introduced last March, which has been discussed and viewed as a profitable model. Lots of broadcasting, home shopping, and Internet shopping associates are examining the possible profitability of T-commerce. However, the preparation stage is only at its beginning The profit model is not clearly designed due to its lack of information such as marketing analysis or the lack of infrastructures. This thesis focuses on the media and the customer's characteristics of T-commerce and compares it with the characteristics of E-commerce. Specifically, this thesis will examine the TV viewers, who are the future target of the T-commerce, in greater details from the main consumer's point of view and try to analyze their interest and concern on T-commerce in an attempt to understand the marketing trowth possibility of T-commerce in Korea.

According to the research studies, the characteristics of the customers of E-commerce and T-commerce differs from their base usage of mass media. Internet usage, which is the foundation of E-commerce, is most prominent for people less than 32 years of age and decreases substantially as the age increases. However, TV viewing, which is the foundation of T-commerce, become the standard of living for all ages. The existence of TV viewers is the main reason why TV home shopping became popular nowadays. By using this valid information, T-commerce approaches people who were incapable of accessing information on E-commerce due to their lack of knowledge of computer based technologies. The main targets of T-commerce are housewives, or people in their middle age, since most of them spend majority of their time at home watching TV. If we reinforce the effective transmission of information on merchandise, which is considered as the strong point of TV home shopping, and successfully transmit the contents on merchandises and purchasing information to the users with a simple interface, then it is likely that most TV home shoppers will become the buyer of T-commerce are limited to housewives or people in their middle age. If T-commerce becomes capable of providing interactivity or search options such as the conveniences of the Internet through simple operations on the remote control, the users who have been using E-commerce on a regular basis will definitely be interested in switching to this type of service.

Thus, T-commerce has strong points such as two-way communications and the freedom of electronic commercial transactions via the Internet. If we add the characteristics of the TV, such as the familiarity to public, simple usage methods, and effective information transmission, to the aforementioned strong points, the intention of using the T-commerce by people of all age can be enhanced substantially. However, differences in the usage of T-commerce existed between generations. The younger generation showed more interested in interactive advertisements based on entertainment elements, while the older generation, who has not used the E-commerce frequently, was more attracted to simple services such as E-mail.

On the other hand, if T-commerce is a viewer of digital TV, conscientiously or unconscientiously, one will get pulled into the orbit of T-commerce by watching its programs of advertisements. Compared to the E-commerce, where obvious differences among generations or groups are present, T-commerce has a larger advantage of attracting attention from people of all kinds.

Although people responded that the functions of services concerned with T-commerce would be convenient conceptually, transferring this conceptual convenience to practical convenience will require a great amount of time and effort. In addition. issues such as quality of the contents, reliance and recognition of the consumer, replenishment of digital equipment, and improvement of market efficiency based on standardization will needed to be solved

It is predicted that T-commerce using the digital satellite broadcasting will be introduced in Korea starting the year of 2003. It is forecasted that Digital broadcasting will become an international competition within the near future. In order for us to stay within the competition, we should start spreading the T-commerce within the country and activate and expand the electronic commercial transactions with the combination of T-commerce and E-commerce

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