The consumer acceptance of biofeedback technology in sports

Abstract

Project Background This graduation project is related to the EU-funded research project Light.Touch.Matters, or Project LTM for short. This is a consortium of comprising design practitioners, design researchers and materials scientists. Project LTM has as its main goals to develop new smart materials and, in parallel, discover and design applications of those materials that showcase their potential to revolutionize product interface design. Also, its third goal is also to develop a method for doing design-driven materials innovation. Project description Project LTM has been started under the assumption that making products flexible can make products more intuitive and attractive to use. However, this assumption has never been formally put to the test. This is where this graduation project comes in: its aim is to study how making products flexible affects the acceptance of wearable electronic products, validate (or falsify) Project LTM’s basic premise, and find details that add depth to the issue of flexible products. How will flexible product influence the consumer acceptance of products? And how do consumers accept products in general and how does making product flexible influence this process? Technology acceptance model In order to understand the process of consumer acceptance, a technology model has been developed. This model describes the process of the user towards the purchase. The acceptance of a product is a process with awareness and knowledge as the first step, liking and preference as the second step and the conviction and purchase as the final step. This model makes the consumer acceptance measurable and can be used to compare flexible with non-flexible products. Research Question The most important aspect of this project is finding the answer on the main question about flexible products. The main research question is: Does making products flexible increase the acceptance of biofeedback technology in sports? In order to answer this question, the main question is divided into two sub questions: 1. What are the main factors in the technology acceptance model of consumers? 2. How does making products flexible influence the consumer acceptance of biofeedback products? Research method The research was held by means of a questionnaire, which was filled in by participants of the target group. These participants will be divided in 3 groups. Each group has the exact same questions, but a different product: the benchmark product, the product with a curved screen and the product with a flexible screen. The benchmark product has a traditional small flat screen and was redesigned with a flexible screen in order to compare these products. All other aspects, such as the functionality, were not changed. An inflexible curved OLED screen can be seen as the middle way between a flat screen and a flexible screen. The results will be compared with the results of graduate student Jill Lin, who performs the same research within the health sector. Results sub question one ‘What are the main factors in the technology acceptance model of consumers?’ The results of the individual research show that symbolic value influences other aspects the most. The symbolic value influences the using intention, the relative advantage and the compatibility positively. This is confirmed with the combined results, where the symbolic value influences using intention, the relative advantage and the compatibility as well. In addition, the social value also influences the observability positively, looking at the combined results. Another important aspect is the aesthetic value. The individual results show that the aesthetic value influences the relative advantage, the compatibility, and the social knowledge. Combined results show that the aesthetic value also has a positive influence on testability. Other aspects it the individual results show that influence the using intention are the relative advantage, the compatibility, the testability, the social knowledge, the affective motivation, the risk prevention, the considerations, the symbolic value, the familiarity, the word of mouth and the innovation acceptance. Results sub question two ‘How does making products flexible influence the consumer acceptance of biofeedback products?’ Results show that making products flexible increases the consumer acceptance positively. Individual results show a positive influence on two important aspects in sports: the social value and the aesthetic value compared to the benchmark product. The combined results confirm the positive influence on the aesthetic and symbolic value and discovers new influences as well. Flexible products also influence the compatibility and complexity positively. The aesthetic and symbolic values are aspects of the awareness and knowledge phase. The compatibility and complexity are aspects of the liking and preference phase. So, making products flexible does increase the consumer acceptance and also the value of the awareness and knowledge phase, as well as the liking and preference phase. The main conclusion ‘Does making products flexible increase the acceptance of biofeedback technology in sports?’ Yes, making products flexible increases the acceptance of biofeedback technology in sports. Not only in sports, but also in other market segments! Both the individual as the combined results prove that making products flexible has positive influence on the consumer acceptance. The social value and aesthetic value increased significantly by adding making products flexible. Besides, when looking at the correlation results within the TAM model, the social and aesthetic value are the most important factors of towards using intention and consumer acceptance. This combined gives strong proof that adding making products flexible, without adding other features, stimulates the consumer to purchase a product. Conclusions for the LTM project Flexible products are better accepted by the consumer than non-flexible products. This is good news for the LTM project. Within the LTM project the assumption is often made that the flexible products are the future, but the acceptance of consumers was never proven. Now it is! This means that the development of flexible materials and products has a stronger foundation to build on. Besides, the TAM model shows how the consumer accepts the new developed products and which items have the biggest influence on the consumer acceptance, such as the social and aesthetic value, the relative advantage and the compatibility. When this is taken into account when developing and presenting the new products and technology, the success of this product or technology can only increase!