以社會傳染理論與電子商務成功模式探討使用者對Apps之持續使用意圖─以通訊Apps 為例

Abstract

With the rapid growth of smart phones and the progress of wireless networks, smart phones have gradually become one of the most indispensable mobile devices for practical everyday use. Derived mobile applications are growing rampantly and are experiencing heavy use. Seeing a viable business opportunity, mobile service providers have published a wide variety of Apps for consumers to download. However, Consumers Apps don’t really contribute to lowering switching costs by creating user-dependent behavior. Therefore, determining a method by which to capture consumers and makethem willing to use the same App over and over again has become an important issue. The impact of social contagion on people is that individuals will change their view of things as a result. The difference between this study and previous ones on this topic is that this study attempts to explore App continuance intention through the concept of social networks. The social network concept of contagion effects includescohesion and structural equivalence. Cohesion is diffused through direct interaction, whereas structural equivalence is diffused by network position similarity. Therefore, people’s use of Apps will be influenced by people they have close interaction with as well as by those who compare similar social network positions with them. Therefore, using mobile instant messagingapps as examples for empirical research, this study applied Social Contagion Theory and Wang’s (2008) e-commerce success model to explore App satisfaction and continuance intention and toconstruct an appropriate mode for Apps. By applying a structural equation modeling technique to investigate the proposed model in this study, the hypotheses were empirically validated based on internet survey data of 471 mobile instant messaging Apps users. The results indicated that the measurement mode of the model hadgood reliability and validity, information quality, system quality and service quality and that it also hada positive influence with regard toimproving users’ perceived value and satisfaction. Furthermore, although “structural equivalence” among Apps users was not found to have a positive influence on App satisfaction, it was found to positively influence perceived value. “Cohesion” among Apps users was shown to have apositive influence on user’s satisfaction and perceived value. This study not only is an important reference for future studies, but it also provides insightful managerial implications for Apps service providers.