The impact of online forums on business new product development - a case study of A mobile phone

• Main Authors: Ciao-Jyun Guo, 郭巧君
• Other Authors: Ching-Chia Hsieh
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/15686353371425007893

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 資訊管理學研究所 === 94 === The growth rate of mobile phone market in Taiwan has slowed down, and the amount of mobile phone brands is numerous. These factors make mobile phones become changeful and short-lived consumer products. The market share of Taiwan mobile phone brands is quite low. The main reason may be that the domestic brands lack the ability of marketing research. Therefore, to catch on the preferences of consumers and provide the mobile phones accordingly are the most important issues to Taiwan mobile companies. However, it often cost firms a lot to know the customers, but the effect was often undesirable in the past. As the emergence of Internet, there is a new channel for consumers to share product information. And these online opinions are more and more valued due to the increasing Internet penetration. Nevertheless, most researches focus on the “consumer” aspect nowadays; there are rare researches highlighting how these opinions affect the “business” side. The purpose of this article is to investigate how the online comments affect domestic mobile phone company when developing new products. Through content analysis and interviewing the employee of A company, the result shows that online opinions indeed offer companies some valuable information about new product development, and they can also reflect the effect of most refined attributes. In addition, this study also generalizes the rules and consideration factors that A company use to sift these online opinions. Finally, this article summarizes the characteristics, strength and limits of the utilization of online opinions, and addresses some practical suggestions.