An Analysis of Anger Responses within the Context of Virtualized Consumption of Hatsune Miku

Does anger reflect deep meaning of attachment and integration? In an effort to explicate the above notion and to capture the rapidly evolving consumer behaviour in the digital virtual terrain, the paper investigates the responses of fans to a break-out phenomenal from Japan, the virtual celebrity Hatsune Miku (HM) to a controversial report from CBS news (see Johnson, 2012). The meteoric rise to fame of HM, a Crypton Media-produced Vocaloid character which resembles a 16-year girl, is demonstrated by the sales of total HM brand goods reaching 10 billion yen (approximately $104 million USD), and by more than 350,000 vocaloid videos on YouTube and 92,600 such videos on Niconico douga - a Japanese YouTube-like site (Wikia, 2012; Santos 2011). On one side, the responses from fans to inaccurate claims by CBS news are replete with furious, cynical, and sarcastic comments that not only defend the credibility of HM, but also brutally criticize the validity of the proposed “fake-ness” of HM. Such comments even go beyond attacking the author of the article, and retaliate with attacks on America as a nation in response to a perceived attack on Japan within the article itself. On the other side, the responses unveil the deep adoration and love of fans to HM and the meaning, the aestheticism, and the values that HM gives to these fans and co-creators globally. With the ignited deep anger from HM fans due to the CBS report opening an unprecedented view of the “inner thoughts” of HM from “her” fans, this paper contributes to the domains of virtualized consumption and consumer emotion by exploring HM fans’ responses, extracting a number of key concepts and themes, and examining the link between them, including her real-ness and desired experiential rewards that the fans claim to truly enjoy

Willingness to Pay for Digital Contents in Japan

We estimate a mixed logit demand model for the Japanese digital content market and measure willingness to pay for service attributes. We find that the willingness to pay for an extra unit of service quality ranges from 62 Yen to 83 Yen per month. Meanwhile, the switching cost, a measure of disutility from switching to other service providers is estimated as 340 Yen ($3) per month, which is approximately the same as the current monthly subscription fee.Willingness to Pay, Digital Contents

端末の買換え行動が携帯電話利用に及ぼす影響に関する実証的研究

制度:新 ; 文部省報告番号:甲2278号 ; 学位の種類:博士(国際情報通信学) ; 授与年月日:2006/7/26 ; 早大学位記番号:新431

The Six Immutable Laws of Mobile Business

The book highlights japan’s incredible effort to offer consumers complex, higt-tech devices with enriched service that are nonetheless elegant and easy to use, a quest that the authors assert that “simplexity” will be what truly empowers individual users through their mobile devices. Filled with case studies exploring all aspects of the Japanese mobile industry, this unique publication points carriers and cotent and service providers toward succesfull business models and practices for the present and future mobile internet. This book serve as the beginning of the conversation of “The Six Immutable Laws Of Mobile Business”, which is regulary being updated and expanded upon at the web site: www.siximmutablelaws.co

Waste vs. Challenge! Consumer Insights and Strategic Implications of Unused Technology Product Capabilities and Features

In an effort to provide guidance to designers and product developers globally to minimize and ultimately eliminate product-level waste, and thus slow the rapidly rising levels of eWaste, this paper explores the concept of “waste” from the perspective of consumers and their interactions with technology-related products. The ZMET qualitative research method was applied, through which three distinct categories for the cognitive constructs that respondents held towards the interplay between the “challenge” to optimize utility versus the “waste” of 1) never accessing, 2) understanding or 3) applying this utility were identified. From these findings, three “Key Design Challenges” are proposed and practical examples and guidance are offered for future design innovation. While building on the work of many thought leaders in the field of innovation, manufacturing, design and product marketing, this is the first paper to categorize the consumer experience of product-level “waste”, and offer a strategic framework for its elimination

Differences in consumer loyalty and willingness to pay for service attributes across digital channels: A study of the Japanese digital content market

In this paper, the impact that the Internet access device has on consumer loyalty behaviors relative to Internet content was explored. To do so, a mixed logit demand function for mobile and PC subscribers to digital content was estimated and consumers' willingness to pay for attributes related to specific content providers and their levels of service quality were measured. It was found that significant differences in loyalty and willingness to pay for service quality factors existed between mobile and PC Internet content subscribers, suggesting that while content may be developed as device independent, consumers interact differently with similar Internet content accessed through different devices. Specifically, the willingness to pay for more robust and more frequently updated content was on average higher in the mobile segment than in the PC segment. In addition, the overall switching costs consumers attributed to specific content providers via the mobile channel were far higher than through the PC channel. These results suggest that more robust content management systems must be developed to accommodate for such differences in consumer behavior.Device independence Switching costs Consumer loyalty Mobile and PC contents Hierarchical Bayesian model A mixed logit model