Critical review of the e-loyalty literature: a purchase-centred framework

Over the last few years, the concept of online loyalty has been examined extensively in the literature, and it remains a topic of constant inquiry for both academics and marketing managers. The tremendous development of the Internet for both marketing and e-commerce settings, in conjunction with the growing desire of consumers to purchase online, has promoted two main outcomes: (a) increasing numbers of Business-to-Customer companies running businesses online and (b) the development of a variety of different e-loyalty research models. However, current research lacks a systematic review of the literature that provides a general conceptual framework on e-loyalty, which would help managers to understand their customers better, to take advantage of industry-related factors, and to improve their service quality. The present study is an attempt to critically synthesize results from multiple empirical studies on e-loyalty. Our findings illustrate that 62 instruments for measuring e-loyalty are currently in use, influenced predominantly by Zeithaml et al. (J Marketing. 1996;60(2):31-46) and Oliver (1997; Satisfaction: a behavioral perspective on the consumer. New York: McGraw Hill). Additionally, we propose a new general conceptual framework, which leads to antecedents dividing e-loyalty on the basis of the action of purchase into pre-purchase, during-purchase and after-purchase factors. To conclude, a number of managerial implementations are suggested in order to help marketing managers increase their customers’ e-loyalty by making crucial changes in each purchase stage

Determinants of Continuance Intention to Use Mobile Money Transfer: An Integrated Model

Mobile Money Transfer (MMT) technology had become essential daily transactions in several developing countries. The unbanked population and those from low and middle-income classes mainly adopt this technology. In Somalia, two major telecommunication companies had introduced this technology especially in south-central regions in the country. Through MMT technology, citizens can send money to and receive from family members and friends, pay bills and other transactions and do shopping, selling, and buying from most of small and medium businesses. The present study examines the factors influencing users’ continuous intention to use MMT technology by employing an integrated model. Using self-administered questionnaire, the study’s data have been collected from a total of 398 consumers in all seventeen districts of Banadir region, Somalia. Structural Equation Modeling approach using SmartPLS 3 software was employed to test the hypothesized integrated model. The results suggested that perceived usefulness, trust, subjective norms and satisfaction have significantly contributed to MMT consumers’ continuous intention. In addition, this study addressed the antecedent factors for the major predictors, which were seldom explored in prior research. The results have presented practical and theoretical implications

Fitness First or Safety First? Examining Adverse Consequences of Privacy Seals in the Event of a Data Breach.

Data breaches are increasing, and fitness trackers have proven to be an ideal target, as they collect highly sensitive personal health data and are not governed by strict security guidelines. Nevertheless, companies encourage their customers to share data with the fitness tracker using privacy seals, gaining their trust without ensuring security. Since companies cannot guarantee security, the question arises on how privacy seals work after not keeping the security promise. This study examines the possibilities to mitigate the consequences of data breaches in advance to maintain the continuance intention. Expectation-confirmation theory (ECT) and privacy assurance statements as a shaping of privacy seals are used to influence customer expectations regarding the data security of fitness trackers in the run-up to a data breach. Results show that the use of privacy assurance statements leads to high-security expectations, and failure to meet these has a negative impact on satisfaction and thus continuance intention

Antecedents of Trust in the Ridesharing Service: The Moderating Effect of User Experience

Trust has been recognized as a significant factor in the sharing economy. However, there is still a lack of research that empirically examines the critical antecedents of trust in the ridesharing service, especially in China. Drawing upon Zucker (1986)’s trust building framework, this study develops a theoretical model to examine four antecedents, regarding structural assurance, government support, platform reputation and disposition to trust, on users’ trust beliefs and continuance intention of ridesharing. 307 valid data was collected in one of the largest ridesharing platforms in China, and structural equation modelling method was used to examine the research model. Empirical results suggest that platform reputation is the most significant antecedent of trust, followed by government support, structural assurance and disposition to trust. Specifically, user experience positively moderates the impact of structural assurance on trust, while negatively moderates the influences of government support and platform reputation on trust. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in the final section

A Research on Continuous Using Intention of the Q&A Community Platform: Evidence from “Zhihu.Com”

We set “zhihu.com” as an example and integrate a new model to study the user\u27s intention to continuously using the network Q & A community platform based on traditional S-O-R model, Information System (IS) success model, the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model and Error Correction Model (ECM). In the social dimension, technological dimension, service quality dimension, we carried out an empirical research on the important factors affecting the user\u27s continually using the network Q & A community platform. Finally, we put forward suggestions and Countermeasures on how to manage the network innovation community and encourage users to participate it effectively

Understanding the Role of Commitments in Explaining P2P Lending Investing Willingness: Antecedents and Consequences

As a relatively new e-commerce phenomenon, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending has the potential to thoroughly change the structure of the loan segment in the financial industry. And the success of P2P lending heavily depend on users’ continuous use. However, this topic has not been fully studied in IS research. The high practical significance and lack of research indicate the importance of the present study. This study aims to apply Meyer and Allen’s three-component model of commitment to construct a research model, which incorporates context-specific antecedents. To test the model, we use a survey of 216 actual lenders of the P2P lending platform in China. Results derived from data indicated that lenders’ continuous investments were jointly determined by continuous commitment and affective commitment. Further, platform assurance, trust on third-party, economic feasibility and quality of alternatives performed well as antecedents of continuous commitment. And perceived critical mass and platform assurance were significantly associated with affective commitment. The results of this research provided theoretical implications for future research and practical implications for the success of P2P lending platforms

SERVICE QUALITY, SATISFACTION, CONTINUOUS USAGE INTENTION, AND PURCHASE INTENTION TOWARD FREEMIUM APPLICATIONS: THE MODERATING EFFECT OF PERCEIVED VALUE

This study aimed to analyze factors that could influence continuous usage intention on freemium applications and purchase intention of premium services among students. Non-probability purposive sampling was used to determine the respondent. The criteria for the sample for this study were students who used freemium applications. Data were analyzed using Partial Least Square. The results confirmed that only reliability and responsiveness positively impacted customer satisfaction among the service quality dimensions, while assurance and empathy showed no effect. Only assurance and responsiveness were found to affect continuous usage intention positively, while empathy and reliability were found to have no effect. There was no evidence of the effect of the dimensions of service quality on purchase intention. Perceived value failed to moderate the effect of service quality on customer satisfaction. While there was a significant positive impact of customer satisfaction towards continuous usage intention, no effect has been found towards purchase intention. Continuous usage intention was confirmed to have a positive impact on purchase intention.JEL: O32, M31, L11ABSTRAKTujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menganalisis faktor-faktor yang dapat mempengaruhi continuous usage intention dan purchase intention pada aplikasi yang memiliki layanan premium pada mahasiswa. Non-probability purposive sampling digunakan untuk menentukan jenis responden. Kriteria sampel pada penelitian ini adalah mahasiswa yang menggunakan aplikasi freemium. Data dianalisa menggunakan Partial Least Square. Hasil menunjukkan bahwa diantara dimensi service quality, hanya reliability dan responsiveness yang berpengaruh positif terhadap customer satisfaction sedangkan assurance dan empathy tidak berpengaruh. Hanya assurance dan responsiveness yang ditemukan berpengaruh positif terhadap continuous usage intention sedangkan empathy dan reliability ditemukan tidak berpengaruh. Seluruh dimensi service quality ditemukan tidak berpengaruh terhadap purchase intention. Perceived value tidak mampu memoderasi pengaruh service quality terhadap customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction ditemukan berpengaruh positif terhadap continuous usage intention tetapi tidak terhadap purchase intention. Continuous usage intention ditemukan berpengaruh positif terhadap purchase intention.Kata Kunci: kualitas layanan, persepsi nilai, kepuasan, niata

Determinants of user continuance intention towards mobile money services : the case of M-pesa in Kenya

Includes bibliographical referencesThe turn of the millennium witnessed the uptake and proliferation of mobile technology in developing regions. This occurrence has provided a medium for mobile telecommunication vendors within the region to create and offer services that are now accessible across socio-economic classes. A notable case of a widely adopted mobile technology-enabled service in the developing world is a mobile money service in Kenya called M-pesa. Since its inception, M-pesa has witnessed a mass adoption which has generally been attributed to prior lack of access by majority of individuals' in the country to affordable regulated financial services. M-pesa's presence has now been anticipated to afford a larger population the initial opportunity to harness economic benefits such as: increase money circulation, increase employment opportunities, facilitate social capital accumulation, facilitate savings, and promote financial autonomy, amongst others. Also, M-pesa based transactions in Kenya are reported to exceed those of western union globally. Whilst M-pesa presently vaunts large user adoption numbers, it is the first of its kind in the region to amass such achievement. Further, historically: products and services of similar nature to M-pesa have been unsustainable. A case of M-pesa's demise would have dire implication for the Kenyan economy and 30% of the households in the country that rely on it for remittances. To understand this phenomenon, extant studies have examined the drivers of adoption of this service but have slacked in subsequent investigations to understand user continuance with the service. As such, the information systems literature cautions that initial adoption of technology, although crucial, does not guarantee sustained use. Therefore it is imperative to investigate drivers of continuance. In general, extant research has not focused on investigations of user continuance intention in Africa. In response, this thesis presents an African based study on the determinants of user continuance intention towards M-pesa. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to i) identify and discuss factors from the literature that are most likely to influence user continuance intention towards M-pesa, (ii) develop a research model that is grounded in theory, (iii) test the model within the sample context to identify the antecedents and determinants of user continuance intention towards M-pesa in Kenya. A broad, critical review of the relevant literature provided basis for hypothesized relationships between the identified factors. A formal survey of users of M-pesa in Kenya comprised the phase of data collection and resulted in a usable data set of (n=434). The data collected from the respondents within Kenya was relied upon to test the hypotheses. The survey instrument used to measure the study's constructs was developed via a process of literature review, expert pre-testing, pilot testing, and statistical validation. Partial Least Square and Artificial Neural Network analyses were used to examine the study's measurement and structural model comprising variables of : behavioural beliefs (post-usage usefulness, confirmation, satisfaction), control-beliefs (utilization and flow), object-based beliefs (perceived task-technology fit, system quality, information quality, and service quality), and attitudinal belief (trust). Collectively, the afore-listed ten independent variables and one dependent variable (continuance intention) comprised the study's model. Four of the independent variables (utilization, satisfaction, flow, and trust) were hypothesized to directly determine continuance intention. Of these four, all emerged as determinants of continuance intention. However, trust emerged as the strongest determinant, subsequently, utilization, flow, and satisfaction respectively. The result was unexpected, as satisfaction (a behavioural belief) has been presented in the extant literature as the dominant determinant of continuance intention but does not hold a consistent predictive strength in a developing world. Its predictive power was diluted by trust, utilization, and flow amongst the Kenyan sample. The study's model revealed an R² of 0.334. The analyses demonstrated that user continuance intention is determined by factors across object, control, attitudinal, and behavioural beliefs. The unexpected finding of the rankings of predictive strength of the factors turns a new leaf and introduces areas of further inquiry in future studies. The study concludes with realized contributions to theory and important guidelines for current and future technology-enabled service vendors in developing regions

Trust and risk in consumer acceptance of e-services

Thesis (Ph.D. (Information Systems))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law & Management, School of Economic and Business Sciences, 2015Electronic services (or e-services) are defined as any service whose delivery is based on Internet, IT and communications technology, and which incorporates a large self-service component. They offer consumers the promise of increased convenience, lower-cost of transacting, greater choice and accessibility by eliminating space and time constraints to their interactions with service providers. Benefits of e-services cannot however materialize without consumer acceptance. Unfortunately, uncertainty and fears of opportunism still characterize the online context and varying degrees of consumer acceptance and engagement in use of e-services has thus been observed. The extant literature considers consumer perceptions of risk and their trust beliefs amongst the most important psychological states influencing their online behavior. However, despite the number of empirical studies that have explored the effects of trust and risk perceptions on consumer acceptance of e-services, the field remains fragmented and the posited research models are contradictory. For example, the trust-risk relationship has been modeled differently in past studies and the causal relationship between trust and risk perceptions has not been clarified. In addition, research into the antecedents of trust has not been integrated to provide an answer as to which are the most significant antecedents. Furthermore, past research has paid more attention to initial trust or risk perceptions and has not adequately examined whether these perceptions change over time or how they come to influence later stage acceptance of e-services. To address these gaps in our understanding of trust and risk in consumer acceptance of e-services, this thesis adopted three research designs, namely meta-analytic approaches, cross-sectional surveys and longitudinal designs. First, a meta-analytic study1 was used to aggregate empirical findings from across prior studies in e-service. This allowed the nature of the relationship between trust, perceived risk, and acceptance of e-services to be synthesized and for competing nomological models of the trust-risk-acceptance relationship to be compared. 52 studies were examined and it was found that trust is most important to form consumer positive attitude for acceptance. By comparing competing models, it found that trust and risk are significantly related and trust may influence risk in consumer acceptance of e-services. 1 Presented at 34th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2013), Milano, Italy. iv Moderator analysis within the meta-analysis was also carried out to determine if different types of consumer cultures (e.g., Western versus Eastern), different types of e-services (e.g., commercial versus non-commercial), or different objects of trust (e.g., trust in vendor versus trust in website technology) influence the relationships between trust, risk and acceptance of e-services. Furthermore, the antecedents of trust as suggested by past research were examined via a second meta-analysis of 59 prior studies2. The antecedents of trust were classified as vendor and institution-based antecedents, technological-based antecedents, knowledge-based antecedents, and consumer characteristics-based antecedents. Technological-based antecedents were found the most significant antecedents of trust. For all antecedents, studies classified as having been carried out in Eastern cultures reported on average stronger effect sizes than those carried out in Western cultures. In addition to the meta-analytical studies, this thesis also carried out cross-sectional and longitudinal investigations to study trust and risk in an understudied context of e-services, namely consumer acceptance of online health information services. The motivation to adopt this context is because previous studies of e-services were mostly focused on commercial (e.g., e-commerce, e-shopping and e-banking, etc) and mostly on non-commercial context such as e-government. However, e-health services are relatively under-explored. Moreover, the Web has become an important health information dissemination channel. People are increasingly searching for health information online and engaging in the self-management of their health. Trust and risk are considered important to the online health context, and it therefore served as an appropriate e-service context for empirical analysis. Two cross-sectional studies3,4 were carried out to explain user acceptance of online health information services. This cross-sectional work was underpinned by multiple theoretical perspectives namely Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Health Belief Model (HBM) and Extended Valence Framework (EVF). Findings showed that multiple dimensions of trust (trust in provider, trust in website and trust in institutional structures) have both direct and indirect effects, via perceived usefulness, on consumer acceptance. 2 Presented at 18th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2014), Chengdu, China. 3 Forthcoming at 35th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2014), Auckland, New Zealand. 4 Forthcoming at 25th Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS 2014), Auckland, New Zealand. v One-dimensional risk was not found to have a significant influence on consumer acceptance. However, multi-dimensional risk (performance risk, psychological risk and time risk) did combine with health belief variables such as perceived susceptibility and severity to influence consumer acceptance. Because cross-sectional data is limited in its ability to address causal connections amongst phenomena, two longitudinal investigations were also carried out. These investigations were used to explain whether trust beliefs and risk perceptions change over time in consumer acceptance of e-services, how early stage trust and risk perceptions influence later stage acceptance and usage behaviors, and whether there is reciprocal causality between trust and risk perceptions. This work was underpinned by TRA and Expectation-Confirmation Theory (ECT), and employed both path modeling and cross-lagged structural equation modeling techniques. The results showed that trust, risk perceptions and perceived usefulness are important to the prediction of consumer acceptance of online health services at both the early and later usage phases5. Furthermore, trust in provider and trust in website have reciprocal relations and empirical data supported the influence of risk perceptions on trust. Through the meta-analytic design, cross-sectional approaches and longitudinal designs, this thesis contributes to research on e-services in a number of ways. First, meta-analytic approaches integrated the available evidence from prior studies, which resulted in the generation of a dataset which was larger in scope and scale than could feasibly be achieved in any single research study. This dataset could then be used to compare competing nomological models found in the literature. In so doing, results have improved our understanding of how trust and risk are related, how they combine to influence consumer acceptance, as well as identifying the most important antecedents of trust. Results provide a benchmark against which future studies can compare their effect sizes. Moreover, by examining the heterogeneity of effect sizes, the meta-analysis has also identified moderators that can account for observed inconsistencies in the effect sizes reported by prior studies. Together, the findings have extended our understanding of how trust and risk relate to e-service acceptance in different e-service contexts, across 5 Presented at 18th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2014), Chengdu, China. vi different consumer cultures, and whether trust in the vendor or technology platform has relatively greater importance to consumers. Second, this thesis also integrated trust into HBM to examine online health information seeking as both a health behavior and online consumer behavior. Results help us better understand this specific case of e-service acceptance. Third, this study is also the first to develop and validate a dynamic trust and risk model in consumer acceptance of online health information services. The longitudinal design integrates trust into the theoretical framework of TRA and ECT to develop the dynamic research model. Tests of the model have made a key contribution to the development of a theory that explains the dynamic nature of e-service acceptance. Furthermore, the cross-lagged longitudinal design contributed to our understanding of the casual relationship between consumers’ trust and risk perceptions in the context of online health information services. Taken together this thesis illustrates how meta-analysis and structural equation modeling can be integrated together to approach the fragmented and contradictory nature of the field. Moreover, this thesis addresses the lack of longitudinal studies on acceptance, and presents a novel method, cross-lagged structural equation modeling, to examine controversial causal relationships within the field of Information Systems. This thesis also has important practical implications. It provides insights into the relative importance of trust and risk perceptions necessary to inform practitioners on risk reduction and trust-building mechanisms. The investigation into the antecedents of trust reveals especially important factors which are within the control of e-service providers. With this understanding, practitioners can be better positioned to establish their online service offerings. Website designers can also benefit from understanding the extent to which particular antecedents of trust (e.g., ease of use and system quality) are important for e-service acceptance. By studying the online health information services context, this thesis has also shed light on the general perceptions and attitudes of consumers towards this high-potential area of e-service

Intention to use Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Lending: The Roles of Perceived Structural Assurance and Perceived Critical Mass

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending platform has enormous potential to improve financial inclusion for people in emerging countries. In this regard, the present study examined the predictors of continuance intention to borrow from P2P lending, especially as a Multi-Sided Platform (MSP) that relied heavily on critical mass to succeed. This research was among the first that analyzed the behavioral intention of P2P lending from the borrower’s perspective by expanding on the technology acceptance model (TAM) with two fundamental latent constructs for MSPs, namely perceived structural assurance and perceived critical mass. This quantitative study used Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). Online questionnaires were spread to P2P lending borrowers (n =174) from all over Indonesia to measure the latent constructs. The result revealed that all the exogenous constructs did not have direct relationships with continuance intention to borrow. However, perceived structural assurance and perceived ease of borrowing indirectly affected the endogenous construct through perceived usefulness as the mediating variable. This study also offers some managerial implications for the P2P lending industry