Research On Consumer Demand Of Smart Home Services Market

Internet of Things has become one of national strategic emergingindustries and been widely applied in smart home. Under the trend ofurbanization, communalization and intellectualization, Internet ofThings-based smart home possesses great market potential. However, due tothe lack of active purchasing power in smart home market at the present stage,how to covert the potential demand of smart home market into actual demandhas become an important issue which needs to be studied and resolvedurgently at present. After reading many scholars' researches for reference, it issummarized that researches on smart home mainly focus on its definition,products and functions, development situation, existing problems as well asdevelopment mode and trend, while there are few systematic or thoroughquantitative analysis; what's more, no systematic or special researches havebeen performed to the consumption demand for Internet of Things-based smarthome. This research subject is put forward under such circumstance so as toobtain the key factors influencing the potential demand of consumers, to findthe breakthrough for conversion of consumers' potential demand into actualdemand and to get instructive and referential research results for governmentand relevant enterprises engaged in Internet of Things-based smart home.In this paper, Internet of Things-based smart home is taken as theresearch object; the theoretical basis is composed of Market Demand theory,Perceived Value theory, TAM model and Consumer Behavior theory; data usedin this paper were obtained through questionnaire survey. Quantitativeanalysis is carried out to the influencing factors of consumption demand inInterne of Things-based smart home service industry and the consumptionmarket segmentation therein. Government policies and enterprise policies forthe promotion of demand for Interne of Things-based smart home services arediscussed from such three aspects as: key factors that influence the demandfor Interne of Things-based smart home, elimination of barriers to demand inThings-based smart home market and market segments of variouscharacteristics. Conclusions are drawn as follows:1) The model fitting resultsof influence on potential demand in Internet of Things market show that consumers'potential demand for Internet of Things services depends on theirdemand willingness and affordability; further, consumers'demand willingnesstowards Internet of Things services depends on their perceived usefulness andperceived value, and consumers'perceived value towards Internet of Thingsservices depends on their perceived usefulness, perceived ease of usefulnessand perceived value.2) The decomposition results of structure effects showthat factors influence the potential demand are demand willingness, perceivedusefulness, affordability, perceived value, perceived ease-of-use andperceived value ordered as per total influence effects (from the highest to thelowest) on potential demand.3) The results of evaluation on the mean value ofeach factor indicate that the barriers to consumers'demand include their lowaffordability, low perceived ease-of-use, low perceived value, low demandwillingness, low perceived price and high perceived risks.4) The results ofeconometric model-based analysis on difference of consumers' personalcharacteristic influence on potential demand for Internet of Things-basedsmart home show that consumers'income and education influence theirpotential demand.5) Based on the combination of potential demand,affordability and demand willingness, the cluster analysis on the four factorsinfluencing consumers'perceived value show that the consumers in differenttype of segment markets have different consumption characteristics, and thereexist different demand problems.6) in order to promote the consumptiondemand of Internet of Things service market, on the hand, usefulness and easeof use of Internet of Things services shall be increased to generate demand forthese services; and on the other hand, the prices of these services shall bereduced to improve consumers' affordability and further to meet theirdemands for these services.Perceived risk-related hypothesizes are not verified in this paper, and forfurther improvement, the survey scope and sample size shall be enlarged. Thispaper can be developed in the following two directions: one is to take politicalenvironment as an influencing factor of consumers'demand and expand it topotential demand model; and the other one is to discuss the supply of Internetof Things-based smart home service market.