Market adoption barriers of multi-stakeholder technology: Smart homes for the aging population

Abstract

For more than a decade, the Smart Home has promised to offer a better quality of life by connecting in-house devices and monitoring their usage. Such platform-based configurational technology has demonstrated the potential to improve comfort, healthcare, safety and security, and energy conservation — both at home and in the office. Moreover, since these technologies foster users' independence, Smart Homes can be both an answer to an aging workforce and a large market for an aging customer base. Nonetheless, so far market adoption has mostly been limited to the luxury segment and the more basic stand-alone technologies. Therefore, the main question driving this study is why Smart Home technology is so scarcely implemented despite its benefits to an aging population. From the literature we derive key market barriers in Smart Home value networks. We expand on these findings by means of a value network analysis of a Dutch smart home implementation case. In addition, we conducted 14 interviews that provide more insight into the value network of specific Smart Home services. Based on our case findings we develop a generic value network for Smart Homes and propose opportunities to improve market adoption of Smart Home technologies