China's Consumption Environment Prospective New Product Launch Strategy For Consumers To Replace Will Impact Study

Companies introduce successive generations of upgraded products for a short time to meet consumer’s demand and to remain competitive. This kind of next-generation product is not a completely innovative product, but by the existing products to do varying degrees of improvement. The upgrade decision of Consumers who already own an existing product and consider upgrading to a next-generation product differs from companies’market strategy, including changes of product features, the interval between the old and the new generation of products, and prices.As technology advances, companies keep introducing upgraded products. However, some upgraded products are successfully accepted by consumers, but some do not. In reality, accepting new product does not necessarily means equivalent to rejecting old product. Multiple products ownership in one category is possible. This study proposes that new product adoption and old product disposition should be served as two separate constructs. Based on the theory of "readiness", this study considers that there exist two kinds of comsumer readiness:readiness to accept and readiness to reject, which is composed of comsumer’s motivation and ability, as the mediators to affect consumer’s behavioral intention. Today the number of smartphone users in China is the second largest in the world. Therefore, this study selects Smartphone as a target product, to discuss how launch strategy of upgraded product affects consumers’willingness to replace existing products.