A qualitative study in consumer behavior of Skype internet phone

Various Internet applications have mushroomed for years in many different fields, but only few of them survive in the market. One of them is the Internet phone service which has been available since 1995. Recently, this market has shown fast development in terms of many new value-added services offered and an impressive increase in the number of users all over the world. This paper aims to investigate why certain products subsist while varied substitutes exist in the same field. A qualitative approach was used to explore the consumer behaviors of Skype Internet phone and compare the schema changes of Skype users and non-skype users in the same periods. Concluding from the result of qualitative study, the findings indicate the social influences are the most important factors that affect customer behaviors of Skype Internet phone. The model of this paper is not only suitable for Internet applications but also can be extended to survey diverse products in different areas.