| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 運籌管理系企業管理碩士班 === 104 === The purpose of this study is to test of the antecedents and consequences of consumer confusion in the context of the mobile phone service industry in Taiwan using structural equation modelling (SEM). In recent years, telecommunications liberalization policy in Taiwan has generated competition mechanism successfully. However, in the rapid growth and excessive competition between the mobile phone service companies, consumers are liable to be confused when faced with products and services of greater similarity, such as a variety of rate plans and value-added services, and store environment. Moreover, consumers exposed to too much information that is often very misleading, ambiguous and makes confusion more serious. Researching the cause, stimuli dominated by marketer and consumers lack of proper product and service knowledge are potential factors for consumer confusion. As a result, confusion causes consumers difficult to seek for the best choice among the varied the mobile phone services companies. Hence, this paper also investigates the effect of consumer confusion on inertia and postponing purchase. This research made use of the convenience sampling method and a total of 400 questionnaires were distributed to consumers of telecommunication services in Taiwan, out of which 338 returned copies were suitable for further analysis.
This study has some findings as follows: First, stimuli provoked by the mobile phone services companies does result in consumers’ similarity confusion, overload confusion, and ambiguity confusion, which in turn only similarity confusion slightly and positively affects consumers’ inertia behavior. Consumers’ confusion has no impact on postponing purchase, however. Second, product and service knowledge significantly and negatively affects similarity confusion, overload confusion, and ambiguity confusion, indicating the mobile phone services companies should increase large quantities of product-related knowledge to lessen consumers’ confusion and ultimately leads to better decision making.
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