【摘要】 随着科技的飞速发展,产品的知识和技术含量日益提升,在给顾客带来新的产品利益的同时,也增加了他们的认知障碍和学习成本。顾客教育作为有效的互动式传播手段,在高技术产品营销中发挥着重要作用。本文对顾客教育的相关研究进行了归纳和总结,并以高技术消费品为研究背景,利用中国联通的"3G手机课堂"开展现场实验,对顾客教育的实际效果和作用机理进行研究。研究结果表明,有效的顾客教育可以提升顾客的产品知识与使用技能,进而提高顾客对产品的感知价值、降低感知风险,并对顾客的购买或使用意愿产生积极的影响。从实践的角度来说,企业有必要在顾客教育方面投入更多的营销资源;顾客教育应将产品知识的讲解和使用技能的训练相结合;高技术消费品的营销人员有必要对顾客的感知价值和感知风险进行深入分析,并据此来设计顾客教育的内容,以获得最佳的沟通效果。更多还原

【Abstract】 With the rapid development of science and technology,the knowledge and technical content of new products increase rapidly.These high-tech products bring new benefits to the customer while increase their cognitive barriers and learning costs.As a systematic communication method,customer education is an effective supplement to traditional marketing methods. The term customer education refers to any purposeful,sustained and organized learning activity that is designed to impart attitudes,knowledge or skills to customers or potential customers.It can range from self-instructional material for a particular product to a formal course related to a product or service.Customer education plays a positive role in all stages of purchase decision-making process. In recent years,more and more consumer goods companies show growing interest for customer education(for instance: Apple,Nikon,Lego,Sony et al).However,academic research on customer education remains relatively lacking.Most existing researches are exploratory and qualitative,the effect of the customer education lack clear evidence,the mechanism how customer education influences customer behaviors has not yet been fully discovered. This research aims to define the concept of customer education and to understand and measure the impact of customer education on customer purchase intention.To achieve this goal,a literature review was conducted and a conceptual framework was presented to describe the relationships among customer education,usage-related product knowledge and skills,customer perceived value,customer perceived risk and their purchase intention. A field experimental procedure was performed to collect data and verify the proposed theoretical model and research hypotheses.The experimental fieldwork was conducted in partnership with China Unicom on a sample of 280 customers.Then the reliability and validity of relevant scales were tested,ANOVA and structural equation model(SEM) were used to test the hypotheses. The study further tested the mediating effect of product knowledge,usage-related skills,customer perceived value and perceived risk.The research results show these variables can mediate the relationship between customer education and customer purchase intention.The moderating role of demographic variables,such as gender,age,income,education level were also investigated,MANOVA was employed to test the moderation effect of these demographic variables.Results show that the effect of customer education is stronger for customer who is younger and has higher income and higher education level. This study provides clear evidence that customer education has positively impacts on customer purchase intention,which reminds marketing manager of high-tech enterprise to invest more resources in the customer education to communicate with consumers in addition to advertising,sales promotion,public relations and personal selling.From a practical point of view,marketers of high-tech consumer goods need to analyze the customer’s perceived value and perceived risk deeply and design the customer education content accurately to gain the best communication effect.The development of information and communication technologies allows companies to contact and interact with their customers directly.Thus,e-learning has become a true opportunity to implement large-scale customer education,which will help companies to introduce high-tech consumer goods on market faster and gain first-strike competitive advantage.更多还原