R ESEARCH P ROBLEM

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technologies. Start-up business means that new services in a market that is already served by existing services. New services for the market presently served is that new service offerings to existing customers of an organization. These three kinds of new services are called radical innovations, which are defined as

“highly new” innovations. Service line extension means augmentations of the existing service line like adding new menu items. Service improvements are changes in features of services that currently are being offered. Style changes are modest forms of visible changes that have an impact on customer perceptions, emotions, and attitudes, with style changes that do not change the service fundamentally, only its appearance. These three kinds of new services are called incremental innovations, which are defined as “not so new” innovations. In this study, we focus on the major innovation, start-up business and new services for the market presently served because they have high potentials of success but the probability for them to become a successful service in the real world is unknown.

We want to predict the probability and analyze the reason to create a chance that can help these new services adjusting themselves to the best condition and becoming widely accepted by the customers. In the later chapters and sections, when we mention new service, it means the radical innovations.

1.2 Research Problem

From the above discussion, we can say the core problem is what causes the customers decide to or not to take a new service. We argue there are two reasons that may make a new service be failed.

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(a) The features of the new service can’t fulfill the users’ needs

One possible reason is that the new service doesn’t fit the users’ needs. Normally a new service is built from improving the defects of the current service to reach a better quality. The major innovation and start-up business service innovation include some brand-new features or functions. From the point of view of Kano theory (Kano et al., 1984), which is a theory of product development that classifies customer preferences into five categories: attractive, one-dimensional, must-be, indifferent and reverse, these brand-new features or functions should have attractive qualities that are surprised or delightful to increase the customer satisfaction. Also, these service innovations should remain the must-be quality to avoid the decrease of customer satisfaction. However, the businesses sometimes focus on the wrong features of the current service and view them as the main defects. After making a lot of efforts to advance the performance of these features, they propose a new service. Nevertheless, regardless of the higher quality of these features, the total benefit is not increased because the real problem is not solved.

For example, Microsoft released Windows 8 and claimed it will bring a new and huge change of using tablets and personal computers. They brought up the concept called “All-in-ones” and it means using the same operating system in tablets and personal computers so pc users can use pc in an easy way like using tablets. However, old personal computers don’t have touchscreen, the new functions and convenience provided by Windows 8 suddenly become redundant and inconvenient. If users want to enjoy these new features, they need to pay extra money and effort, but they doubt that it is worthy and most of the users decide to use old operating systems. This example demonstrates that Microsoft did provide some brand-new features such as combining the user interface of

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tablet and personal computer. However, these features are not seemingly attractive, and they might be one-dimensional attributes because most of the users still have to purchase touchscreens. The change of user interface might also sacrifice some must-be attributes such like a clear button to turn off the computer.

To target which kind of people would think the features of the new service can’t fulfill their needs, we need to know the ways people think. People are motivated to fulfill a variety of basic needs for their living within both physical and social environments. In view of such needs, previous researches (Molden et al., 2008) have frequently differentiated those concerned with advancement from those concerned with security. Some people focus on prevention concerns related to the presence and absence of losses and the others focus on promotion concerns related to the presence and absence of gains (Crowe et al., 1997;

Brockner et al., 2001, 2004; Molden et al., 2008). What the people focus on prevention concerns pursue for good-end state is to strive toward the absence of negative outcomes, or we can call it non-gains, such as avoiding salary reduction or avoiding being blamed. So when considering the alternatives, their decision making strategies are narrowing in on what seems most certain and secure and their thresholds for accepting potentially beneficial options are higher (Molden et al., 2008). For example, when there is a chance to earn salary increase with paying fees and time to get the chance, the prevention-focused people may set a higher amount of salary increase as his threshold the take the chance than the promotion-focused people do.

As a result, people with prevention concerns may more likely maintain the status quo and reject to change for accepting new things like using new products or services than the others. In our research, we argue that the prevention-focused

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people may usually think the value of the service doesn’t fulfill their needs because of the chronic high threshold of accepting new things.

(b) Unconscious of the need of a new service

Several previous researches (Crowe et al., 1997) showed that, compared to those with chronic or induced prevention concerns, those with chronic or induced promotion concerns are able to solve more insight problems, generate a higher quantity and quality of innovative uses for common, daily objects. The promotion focus inclination is to avoid errors of omission, whereas the prevention focus inclination is to insure correct rejections and avoid errors of commission (Crowe et al., 1997; Levine et al., 2000). For example, there are two students in an upper-level college course and they both are highly motivated to earn an “A”. One of them focuses on promotion concerns and views this as an opportunity to improve his class rank. The other one focuses on prevention concerns and views this as a necessity for protecting his good standing in the pre-medical program.

As a result, people with promotion concerns usually set a low threshold to accept new things; in other words, it is easy to make them accept a new service.

So, we argue that if they don’t take a new service, they may be unconscious of the need of it. Once the awareness of the service is raised, they may change their decision to accept the new service.