Beyond the technology adoption: Technology readiness effects on post-adoption behavior

Technology readiness (TR) refers to people's propensity to embrace and use new technologies. Nowadays, the proliferation of technology-based products and services brings consumers not only benefits but also frustration over ineffective use of products and services. A key factor, therefore, in the diffusion and success of these products and services is how well-prepared consumers are for new technologies. Although some studies examine the relationships between TR and technology adoption, the long-term survival and substantial success of firms rely on the continued use of such technology rather than first use. This study focuses on post-adoption behavior and investigates how TR affects the continued use intention of new technology. Specifically, the study classifies usage behavior into the usage rate of basic functions, the usage rate of innovative functions, and the variety of use of innovative functions. The article then, examines how each dimension (optimism, innovativeness, discomfort and insecurity) of TR influences consumer usage patterns, and how usage patterns affect repurchase intention through consumer satisfaction. The empirical results from IPTV users in Korea show that each dimension of TR has a significantly different influence on usage patterns. The findings show that usage patterns, particularly the use of innovative functions, have a significantly positive impact on consumer satisfaction and repurchase intention. Finally, the article suggests several managerial implications and directions for further studies.     

Customer behavioural intentions towards mobile money services adoption in Ghana

This study examined the determinants of mobile money service usage intentions and assessed the effect of social influence (SI) on mobile money services adoption and behavioural intentions (BIs). The sample of the study comprised 300 mobile money service users in Ghana. Guided by the conceptual framework and two theories identified to have an effect on technology adoption and consumer behaviour, eight hypotheses were developed and tested using Structural Equation Modelling Techniques. It is discovered that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived trust and perceived cost of use have a strong influence on mobile money service usage. The study found SI to have a significant effect on the adoption and BI. Providers ensure that their mobile application services are simple to operate, fulfil specific consumers’ needs, protect consumers’ accounts to ensure trust and are affordable, hence positively influencing consumers’ adoption of services.     

Revisiting food delivery apps during COVID-19 pandemic? Investigating the role of emotions

Food delivery apps (FDAs) have transformed the way consumers order and consume food, especially during the mobility limitations of the COVID-19 pandemic. The hospitality industry, especially restaurants are heavily reliant on mobile technology during the pandemic to strengthen essential online to offline food delivery, helping large number of consumers. This study investigates the role of app aesthetics in evoking emotions which predict continued usage intentions for FDAs using the theoretical lens of the pleasure arousal dominance (PAD) framework. Data was collected from 341 consumers during the pandemic. Findings indicate that app aesthetics generate pleasure, arousal, and dominance emotions among consumers during pandemic where pleasure is the most significant predictor of continued usage intentions followed by dominance. Findings also confirm the mediating effect of arousal on pleasure and pleasure on continued usage intentions. The study has implications for academicians, food delivery companies, app designers and other app-based businesses as it proves the significance of an aesthetic app design in evoking positive PAD emotions in consumers during a crisis and strengthens the explanation of continued usage intentions.     

The role of self selection, usage uncertainty and learning in the demand for local telephone service

Telephone services are often characterized by the presence of ‘fixed’ plans, involving only a fixed monthly fee, as well as ‘measured’ plans, with both fixed fees and per-unit charges for usage. Consumers are faced with the decisions of which plan to choose and how much to use the phone and these decisions are not, in general, independent. Due to the presence of a time lag between plan choice and usage decisions, consumers are uncertain about usage at the plan-choice stage. We develop a structural discrete/continuous model of plan choice and usage decisions of consumers that accounts for such uncertainty. Prior research has also found that consumers switch less often from fixed plans to measured plans to gain from potential savings than vice versa. Consumer uncertainty regarding their mean usage levels and different rates of learning by consumers in the two plans is a potential explanation for this phenomenon. We extend our discrete/continuous model to account for consumer learning about their mean usage and estimate different rates of learning for the two types of plans. We estimate our model using data from the 1986 Kentucky local telephone tariff experiment. Even in the absence of any price variation over time, we are able to measure the price elasticities both of usage and of choice of plan. Using our parameter estimates, we simulate the effects of the introduction of a metered plan in a market with only a fixed plan and vice versa, on both firm revenues and consumer surplus. We also find that consumers learn very rapidly if they are on the measured plan but learn very slowly when they are on the fixed plan. We investigate an alternative assumption on the nature of the learning process in which only consumers in the measured plan have an opportunity to learn. We find that our empirical results are robust to this change of specification. We conduct counterfactual simulations to simulate enhanced calling plans from the firm and consumer points of view. Additional simulations to measure the value of information in this category are also carried out. We compute the value of both complete information, where the entire uncertainty about future usage is resolved, as well as that of limited information, where the consumer's uncertainty about mean usage is resolved, but the uncertainty about specific month-to-month usage remains. We find that the value of information is modest. We also find that a large proportion of the value of information is that about the mean usage, with the value of the information about a specific month's usage being relatively small.

Consumer acceptance of the mobile Internet

Technological innovations are often designed to help consumers save time. However, some consumers refuse to use innovations and downgrade their usability with increasing usage time. The purpose of this research is to find out how consumers?? personality in younger (vs. older) men (vs. women) affects behavioral choices of the mobile Internet, as an example of new technology, and how usage time affects perceived ease of use of innovative (vs. established) media. The study shows that innovativeness, low desire for social contact, and technology optimism, in interaction with demographics, determine whether consumers choose mobile Internet services over substitutes. Job-related dependency on technology and gender directly affect choice behavior. The study reveals that ease of use is downgraded as more time is spent using the mobile Internet, whereas there is no such relation for established media. The results help explain overoptimistic forecasts that were made in the field of technology acceptance.     

Exploring factors which motivate older consumers’ self-service technologies (SSTs) adoption

Although the proportion of the older population is growing, the majority of research on technology adoption behaviour, such as the adoption of self-service technologies (SSTs), tends to focus on younger consumers. To fill this gap, this study is designed to explore factors which motivate older consumers’ adoption of SSTs by applying Gatignon and Robertson’s diffusion process model. Responses were collected from 104 respondents who were aged 55 or over and who had used self-checkouts in the past. The data were analysed using partial least squares path modelling with SmartPLS 3.0 software. The results indicate that perceptions of SST characteristics, including usefulness, enjoyment, and control, are indirect antecedents of older consumers’ SST adoption through service quality and/or perceived risk. Another key predictor of older consumers’ adoption of SST is prior usage experience with SSTs, which strongly influences usefulness and compatibility. Findings from this study contribute to the literature because little research has explored what drives older consumers to use SSTs.     

An empirical study on anthropomorphism and engagement with disembodied AIs and consumers' re‐use behavior

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into the human race has gradually become a norm. AI entails technology assemblages such as machine learning, natural language processing, and reasoning. The influence of AI systems has intensified in consumers' daily lives. Many consumers have interacted with the notions of AI through advertisements or having personal experiences. Many consumers are curious about the use of AI. This paper reports three studies conducted to determine whether anthropomorphism (ANTH) and engagement play a role in consumers' intention to re‐use a voice assistant (VA; a machine‐learning AI). The second study will determine if ANTH and engagement play a role when consumers are using the VAs for different activities (task completion vs. information gathering). In addition, in Study 2, actual re‐use behavior was also tested in the model, which encouraged a stronger overall model fit. The results show that in general effort expectation (EE) has a strong positive impact on consumers' usage experience of the VA. However, between the two types of activities, EE has a stronger impact on consumers' usage experience for information‐gathering activities, whereas performance expectation has a stronger impact on usage experience when consumers use the VA for task‐completion purposes. The third study used internet usage experience as a moderating variable to determine the boundaries of the mediating effects in the study. The results show that the mediators yield results similar to prior studies.     

Main-format dominance in consumers’ FMCG cross-format shopping patterns

Although cross-format patronage has become a common phenomenon in markets for Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), research on consumers’ specific cross-format combinations is limited. We study such shopping patterns by focusing on retail format utilization. A qualitative pre-study demonstrates consumers’ patronizing combinations of typical retail formats in FMCG with main-format usage and provides underlying differences in consumers’ perceived shopping utility for cross-format selection, which results from their utilized main-format. Our quantitative study reveals three clusters with main-format dominance, that is, mainly supermarket, discount store, and hypermarket shoppers complementarily utilizing fill-in formats to a much lesser extent. Whereas we found high inter-format loyalty in each consumer group, intra-format loyalty significantly varies between clusters. ANOVA and post hoc-tests concerning perceived shopping utility dimensions show that consumers’ perceived acquisition utility rather than perceived transaction costs significantly differs between consumer groups.     

Brand preference in the face of control loss and service failure: The role of the sound of brands

This research shows that consumers compensate for a loss of perceived control inherent to service failure by extracting sensory information from brand names, and specifically from plosive consonants. Across three experimental studies, we show that in contexts of reduced control, which characterizes service failure, consumers prefer brand names containing plosives (versus fricatives) as a way of reasserting personal control because plosive sounds elicit a disposition to act. In doing so, we highlight the use of brand name innovation to anticipate low control state, and thus, the psychological discomfort experienced by customers following service failure.     

How the burdens of ownership promote consumer usage of access-based services

Services that let customers access goods, such as car-sharing, are gaining increasing relevance as an alternative to ownership. These access-based services allow consumers to avoid the “burdens of ownership”, i.e., risks and responsibilities that come with owning a good. However, the interplay between consumers’ risk perception of ownership, access-based service usage, and the subsequent decision to reduce or forgo ownership has not been sufficiently investigated. Based on risk perception theory, we hypothesize the effects of different risk dimensions (financial, performance, social) on the intensity of access-based service usage, as well as the latter’s influence on ownership reduction. Using a unique dataset that links survey and actual usage data of car-sharing users, we test four corresponding hypotheses. The results reveal that access-based service usage is positively influenced by all three ownership risk perceptions. Moreover, a higher usage of an access-based service increases the likelihood that consumers subsequently reduce ownership.     

Do you want to talk about it? When word of mouth alleviates the psychological discomfort of self‐threat

When consumers experience a self‐threat due to receiving negative information that calls the positivity of their self‐concept into question, psychological discomfort ensues, motivating consumers to seek a resolution. This research examines how consumers use word of mouth to overcome this discomfort and cope with a self‐threat. The psychological discomfort associated with a self‐threat generally influences consumers to refrain from spreading word of mouth in order to avoid the potential for further negative evaluations. However, a self‐threat can encourage the spread of word of mouth if consumers perceive a brand as possessing attributes positively associated with the threatened aspect of the self, signaling sufficiency in the threat domain. Furthermore, this research demonstrates that spreading word of mouth about a brand that signals sufficiency in the threat domain is an effective coping tactic that alleviates the psychological discomfort caused by the self‐threat. Overall, the present research deepens the current understanding of the relationships among self‐threat, symbolic brands, and word of mouth by revealing that a brand's symbolic associations shape the effect of the self‐threat on word of mouth.     

Emotional prototypes,emotional memory usages,and customer satisfaction

In this study, we investigated the positive and negative emotion concepts in the prototype perspective and then tested them on customer satisfaction. By studying 612 customers in luxury restaurants, we found that two levels of customer emotions (i.e. positive and negative emotions) as a super-ordinate level, 4 positive emotions (i.e. contentment, happiness, love, and pride) and 5 negative emotions (i.e. anger, fear, sadness, shame, and disgust) as a basic level, and 49 specific emotions as a subordinate level are significantly related to customer satisfaction. We also examined the moderating role of emotional memory (EM) usage in the relationship between consumers’ emotions and their satisfaction. We found that product (food and beverage)-related EM strengthens and service-related EM usage weakens the relationship between customers’ negative emotions and their satisfaction. Interestingly, we found that positive and negative emotions are significantly related to customer satisfaction regardless of experience and store-related EM usage.     

Credit card behavior,financial styles,and heuristics

The paper makes four contributions. First, the paper provides new data and findings about credit card usage segmentation in respect to spending and borrowing behavior. Second, it sets the new findings against the backdrop of the newly emerging literature on financial literacy. A great variability occurs in financial literacy across American consumers. Third, the paper describes fast and frugal heuristics aimed to help consumers make effective, and in some cases better, budgeting decisions when they use credit cards. Fourth, the paper describes the introduction of a new set of online financial tools, offered by a large credit card company, which consumers are now using to make decisions about their spending and borrowing, and links these tools to the heuristics under discussion. Fast and frugal heuristics are likely to be especially valuable to consumers with low confidence in their online skills. Notably, 25% of credit cardholders report that they have low confidence using online technology to manage their finances, with the corresponding figure being 44% for those most at risk.     

Developing personas & use cases with user survey data: A study on the millennials’ media usage

The aim of the study is to investigate the characteristics of millennials on the usage of media (music, photo/video) and media-related devices. An online survey was conducted on 360 millennials. Based on the results, we developed representative use cases to be used in experience design projects based on the actual media usage data collected. We also classified the millennials into four specific groups by applying statistical cluster analysis techniques. The characteristics of each group were further identified. The results of this study will help designers to develop products and services that meets the needs of their target consumers.     

Getting in touch with your thinking style: How touchscreens influence purchase

Touchscreen technology has rapidly penetrated the consumer market and embedded itself into our daily lives. Given the pervasiveness of this new phenomenon, we know surprisingly little about its effect on consumers. This research updates academic theory by investigating how newly evolved touchscreen technology affects consumer behavior. Across three lab experiments with university students, we found purchase intentions differ across device and product nature. In particular, this research demonstrates that purchase intention differs between touchscreens and desktop computers. Further, situation-specific thinking style is revealed as an underlying mechanism that contributes to such differences, such that touchscreens evoke a stronger experiential thinking style, while desktops evoke a stronger rational thinking style. Moreover, the findings suggest that greater experiential thinking enhances a consumer’s preference towards hedonic products, while greater rational thinking endorses utilitarian products. Together, this pattern leads touchscreen users to prefer hedonic products over utilitarian products. Given the growing usage of touchscreen devices, this research has important implications for consumers, marketers, and policy makers.     

The effects of acquisition and transaction shopping value perceptions on retail format usage intentions: an illustration from discount stores

Although it becomes increasingly important for food retailers to understand what motivates consumers to use one retail format rather than another, research on retail format choice is sparse compared to store choice. This study examines the extent to which perceived acquisition value of shopping at a retail format and perceived transaction value of shopping at one particular retail format outlet in a specific situation have an impact on retail format usage intentions. In addition, we study the influence of different situation-specific factors on perceived transaction value of shopping at one particular retail format outlet. Taking discount stores as an example, the developed conceptual model is empirically tested using a structural equation approach. The results show that perceived acquisition value of shopping at the retail format plays a dominant role in explaining retail format usage intentions, while perceived transaction value of shopping at one particular retail format outlet, which depends on certain situation-specific factors, is of lesser importance.     

Frontline employees׳ attitudes towards self-service technologies: Threats or opportunity for job performance?

Increasing diffusion of self-service technologies (SSTs) on the points of sale impacts on traditional retailing from several perspectives. For instance, SSTs have direct effect on front-line employees. Indeed, they may cause a potential reduction in personal contacts with clients, reduction of workers, modifying the job conditions and so on. To date, the effect of SSTs on the points of sale has been mainly investigated from a consumers׳ perspective, by mainly focusing on consumers׳ acceptance and usage of these systems. The aim of this paper is to make employees׳ point of view clearly emerge, through a qualitative approach focusing on the investigation of employees׳ perception of the consequences of these technologies on job performance. The content analysis based on exploratory in-depth interviews involves 250 frontline employees. Authors examine the success of technology from employee׳s standpoint by evaluating their attitude and considering the impact on their job performance perception. In this way, the analysis allows defining new variables which are not previously investigated, such as the perception of speed for task completion, which emerged as the most important factor for employees׳ self-evaluation. Hence, this study offers support for evaluating job performance considering the specific case of SSTs in the frontline employees as initial insights rather than definitive understandings.     

The games people play: How the entertainment value of online ads helps or harms persuasion

This research examines consumer reactions to online ads varying in levels of entertainment value. Results show that more favorable brand attitudes and more positive purchase intentions are formed when consumers are exposed to an ad that generates a high (game ad), rather than a low (banner ad) level of entertainment value. However, such effects are qualified by consumers' shopping goals. When consumers have access to their goals to seek specific product information, affect transfer is impaired, such that the advantage of entertaining ads dissipates. This research also documents moderating roles of individual differences in need for cognitive closure and Internet usage versatility. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Is the shopper always the king/queen? Study of omnichannel retail technology use and shopping orientations

Technology is transforming how retail services are delivered and the experience lived by consumers. Online and offline channels are converging to deliver a seamless omnichannel shopping experience. However, despite retailers’ significant technology investments, shoppers do not always adopt omnichannel usage. Understanding omnichannel retail technology (ORT) usage and how it interacts with shopping orientations is thus an important research challenge.The model is tested through a field study that targets real users of a 3D virtual reality application.The results first show that omnichannel use positively influences performance and effort expectancy perceptions. Second, the effect of ORT use on decision quality depends on task orientation. Third, task orientation moderates the effect of omnichannel use on performance expectancy. Fourth, recreational orientation positively influences shoppers’ perceived experience. Fifth, perceived value is an important predictor of retail patronage intentions.