Title: Evaluation of the objective and subjective features of technological products: evidences from Turkish tablet PC market

Authors: Abdullah Okumuş; Hilal Özen; Gökmen Kara

Addresses: School of Business, Department of Marketing, Avcilar Campus, İstanbul University, Avcılar, Istanbul, Turkey ' School of Business, Department of Marketing, Avcilar Campus, İstanbul University, Avcılar, Istanbul, Turkey ' Boyteks Kayseri Fabrika Organize Sanayi Bölgesi 8, Cadde No: 60 38070, Kayseri, Turkey

Abstract: Today, technological products have a number of features. These features are mostly evaluated by the consumers before deciding to purchase the product. For this reason, many companies manage their marketing activities on different features to advance their products. Hence, focusing on the product features has always been a research topic for marketing managers. The subjective features affect consumers' intentions of purchase as well as the objective features. This paper describes a study carried out to find out the effects of subjective and objective features of a tablet PC on consumers' intentions of purchase. This study firstly generates measures for objective and subjective features of tablet PC. Then, it examines the effects of objective and subjective features of tablet PC on purchase intentions of consumers by considering the roles of product involvement and knowledge level. The results show that subjective features of tablet PC have positive and significant effects on purchase intention. Innovative dimension has been defined as the most important feature among the subjective features. On the other hand, the objective features of tablet PC have direct effect on subjective feature, while they have no effect on purchase intention. Implications and suggestions for future research are also provided.

Keywords: subjective features; objective features; purchase intention; tablet PCs; structural equation modelling; SEM; technological products; Turkey; tablets; product features; consumer behaviour; marketing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJITM.2016.076414

International Journal of Information Technology and Management, 2016 Vol.15 No.2, pp.99 - 117

Received: 30 May 2014
Accepted: 24 Jun 2015
Published online: 06 May 2016 *

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