An Empirical Investigation of V LIVE's Service Quality and Users

International Journal of Interactive Communication Systems and Technologies Volume 9 • Issue 2 • July-December 2019

An Empirical Investigation of V LIVE’s Service Quality and Users’ Acceptance

Johanna M. Askeridis, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany Aylin Ilhan, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

ABSTRACT

V LIVE, a Korean real-time mobile broadcasting app, is the focus of this investigation. As research on this service is scarce, the paper concentrates on the evaluation of the service quality and users’ acceptance to serve as a first step and basis for following investigations. Data is collected by developing and distributing (non-probabilistic) a survey. The survey aspects derive from the Information Service Evaluation model. Additionally, a qualitative analysis of the objective service quality is done as well. All in all, V LIVE is not only well accepted but highly satisfactory as well. Especially, usefulness and fun are proved as satisfying.

Keywords Impact, ISE Model, K-Pop, Mobile App, Satisfaction, Survey, System Quality

INTRODUCTION

V LIVE1 is a South Korean “real-time mobile broadcasting app” (Park, 2015) by NAVER Corporation, an ICT company providing amongst others the largest domestic search engine NAVER and the messenger LINE with over 200 million users (NAVER Corp., n.d.). V LIVE was launched in August 2015 with the goal of creating a global platform for overseas fans to connect with Korean idols. The currently biggest channel2 is owned by boyband Bangtan Sonyeondan (방탄소년단), abbreviated as BTS, with more than ten million followers. BTS who debuted in 2013 are known for their recent success overseas and their immense social media engagement, enabling them to ace out pop sensations like Justin Bieber and score the Top Social Artist Award, an online fan-voted category, at Billboard Music Awards two times in a row (Cirisano, 2018). At this point, research on V LIVE is scarce, even if its biggest channel is followed by more than ten million users and K-pop is a field known for massive online fan engagement. As a real-time broadcasting and live streaming app, this makes V LIVE an interesting research subject. Aisyah and Jin (2017) regarded V LIVE with respect to its unique fansubbing system while Lee (2016) took into account transnationality due to the app aiming to cater for global audiences. MiaoJing, Shin, and Park (2018) concentrated on V LIVE’s effect on the music market and on the factors affecting the number of live music viewers. In addition to the perspectives provided by these studies, V LIVE

DOI: 10.4018/IJICST.2019070102

16 International Journal of Interactive Communication Systems and Technologies Volume 9 • Issue 2 • July-December 2019 can be described as a complex information service, such as Twitter and Facebook (Schumann & Stock, 2014). But which factors are leading to users accepting those complex information services? Especially, V LIVE having over 200 million users worldwide gave rise to the assumption that there must be predictable success factors. According to Davis (1989), positively perceived usefulness and ease of use are support the use of information services and systems. But as there are only a few studies on V LIVE, this assumption is unanswered yet. To evaluate information services, researchers may choose between many evaluation models (e.g., TAM, MATH, UTAUT). The Information Service Evaluation (ISE) model by Schumann and Stock (2014) includes all conventional models and merges different aspects, such as the perceived information system quality and information acceptance. Thus, in this paper, V LIVE shall be analyzed by means of the ISE model to investigate in a first step its service quality and users’ acceptance to provide a better understanding of its success, especially considering the high amount of users. First, an introduction to the V LIVE mobile app shall be given, before the terminology of broadcasting, webcasting and live streaming as well as the relationship between K-pop and social media in general shall be addressed to classify which terminology is actually appropriate to describe V LIVE. Next, the ISE model and the survey conducted to obtain the data the evaluation bases on shall be explained. The results shall be brought forward and discussed in order to obtain insights about the quality of V LIVE as a service.

THE V LIVE MOBILE APP

V LIVE has a mobile and a web app, but only the mobile app is regarded in this paper. Features shall be explained as of August 6, 2018. V LIVE’s main feature is celebrities broadcasting videos and live streams for fans to watch. While fans can follow their stars, “only verified entertainment companies, artists and broadcasting networks” are allowed to own channels where they can broadcast videos or live streams (Marchand, 2017, p. 58). There are also several channels owned by V LIVE itself, like V PICK! which broadcasts short highlight videos of certain live streams. For their third anniversary, V LIVE (2018) published statistical data as of July 19, 2018, stating that there are around 850 channels on V LIVE which accumulated view counts around 3.5 billion. Users stem from 227 countries and follow on average 4.7 channels. The video content available to them encompasses more than 25.000 hours. As V LIVE aims to cater for global audiences, features are completely available in English and the wide range of entertainment videos, including, for example, music videos, full concerts, variety shows or award shows, can “be streamed on the app with real-time English subtitles” (Marchand, 2017, p. 58). After the end of each live broadcast, the content is stored on the app and becomes available as videos-on-demand for users to watch at any time (Marchand, 2017). Fans are also able to use a real-time chatroom and a board to communicate with one another. Celebrities may also enter the chatroom and communicate with their fans. As the navigation bar in the bottom in Figure 1 shows, V LIVE has four main navigation sections. The first one is the Discover section which is accessible via the compass icon (1). In the upper navigation bar, the calendar (2) shows scheduled upcoming broadcasts and the user can search for videos, channels or tags using the magnifying glass (3). Beneath is a section for news banners (4). The main part of the Discover section is made up of recent broadcasts (5). In Figure 1, the most recent broadcast is by girlgroup EXID, having started two hours ago. As the Live banner in the bottom right corner of the thumbnail shows, the broadcast is still live and ongoing. Below that, the number of plays, comments and likes is displayed. The broadcast is accessible by tapping on the thumbnail. Via the shopping bag icon in the main navigation bar, users are able to access the Store section where they can buy three different kinds of pay content using the V LIVE currency V Coin. The smallest unit of V Coins up for purchase is 50, costing roughly $1. Purchasable content includes VLIVE+, CHANNEL+ and stickers. VLIVE+ content are videos that are sold either individually or

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