Wearables’ Technology Innovation – The Smartwatch and The Role of Attention toward Personal Health and Wellbeing

Abstract

The continuous development of communication technologies has made available new objects useful for the improvement of people's daily life. Wearable Technology is one among the recent technology trends adopted by individuals to achieve optimized productivity and to acquire better control on health, fitness and wellbeing related aspects. Going more into detail, up until a few years ago, smartwatches were regarded as gadgets and fashion products. Nowadays, they are rapidly growing in popularity and offer the potential for generating valuable health data and, in this way, engage citizens to participate in their own personal care.

The aim of this thesis is to understand how and if health concerns influence the adoption intention of these devices. The work starts with an introduction and an initial literature review about technology; more in detail, it analyzes the different types of innovation and the frameworks developed by theorists to analyze the acceptance of technological products and/or services. Progressively, the focus moves towards the theoretical exposition of the development of new and innovative products. Subsequently, wearable technologies will be illustrated and an overview of the global smartwatch market will be presented. Later on, the research question and research model, the conceptual framework, methodology and the analysis of the results will be given. Finally, in the last chapter conclusions will be drawn.