DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2020.339
title: Key factors influencing customers’ purchasing decision for smart home devices

description: Technology plays an important role in instituting changes to human’s life and surroundings such as society, government, economy, and even politics. Rapid technological changes produce far-reaching effects on the economy, the manufacturing and service sectors, as well as people’s quality of life. The evolution of technology transforms our present-day society into a digitalized world. With the idea of being able to communicate with one another without limits and more promptly, the concept of connecting everywhere was born. The Internet of Things (IoTs) is based upon the idea that everything in the world can be connected to a network. Smart Home system is a combination between smartphone technology, which allows users to install applications, and the communication feature of the IoT technology, which enables sensors or small devices to transmit information via the Internet by using low power from long-lasting batteries. This research is aimed at identifying important factors that influence the customers’ decision in purchasing smart home devices. In addition, key recommendations and buying channels will also be provided. The analysis and the conclusion will be grounded upon the new technology acceptance model with the following purposes in mind. The purposes of this research are to identify purchasing factors, preferred purchasing channel, and barriers that hinder purchasing decision. The research duration was 11 weeks starting from January 9th, 2021 to Mar 28th, 2021.The literature review from credible sources covered the background and analysis on smart home device. The primary approach consisted of 10 in-dept interview and 250 surveys on current smart home users and non-users. The gathered data were analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) and Excel.Main findings from the research indicate that better efficiency and easy to use impact on repurchasing trend of current users positively. Meanwhile, easy to understand, recommendation from friend, and social acceptance have a negative impact on it. All these factors are significantly correlated to the trend. Current users can be separated into 2 groups following their preferred channel. First, who preferred a purchasing experience in online channel and second group are persons who preferred flagship store. Both channels have the different outstanding points. The respondents purchase smart home device through online channel because of the price, promotion, convenience and review from the users. On the other hand, the flagship store is more preferable when it comes to recommendation from staff, product variety, product demonstration, product returns and shop reliability. In contrast, main barriers were identified from 125 non-users and found that no needs to use, expensive price, their concern more expenses, difficult to use, and the old one still being in good condition are top 5 barriers that they decided to not purchasing. One non-user always has many barriers, and these obstacles hinder a purchasing decision.This study will enable smart home seller to better understand the factors influencing on purchasing decision, reasons on selecting purchasing channel and barriers that hinder a purchasing.