Research On The Consumer Behaviors Of Mobile Booking Adoption From The Perspectives Of Social Influence

Mobile booking refers to consumers order life services such as food, entertainment, tourism products and taxi service via the mobile APPs or websites with mobile devices. Smartphones are the major tools for mobile booking by the consumers. Mobile payment, which also provides an entrance to mobile booking, is an essential step for mobile booking. Mobile group buying is a typical type of mobile booking. Mobile taxi booking represents an emerging application of mobile booking. Aiming at the characteristics of mobile booking and the competitive and managerial problems faced by the related enterprises, this dissertation analyzes the adoption behaviors of mobile booking by consumers using the methodologies of modeling and empirical research. The purpose of the dissertation is to reveal the internal mechanism and behavioral pattern of the mobile bookers and to provide management insights for the enterprises. The dissertation finds the research gaps and opportunities of the previous literature after extensive literature analysis. From the perspectives of social influence theory, this dissertation takes the social influence factors including face, social influence, reference group and social support as the antecedents for mobile booking, and examines their effects on smartphone adoption before mobile booking, mobile payment adoption during the mobile booking, mobile group buying adoption and mobile taxi booking, respectively.The dissertation includes four sub-projects listed as follows.The first sub-project focuses attention on face and smartphone adoption. It puts forward the concept and its dimensions of lining based on the theory of face. Face is devided into two dimensions, namely, desire to gain face and fear of losing face. Lining is operationally devided as ubiquity and perceived cost. It constructs a conceptual model which describes the impacts of face and lining on the adoption of smartphones. Taking the colleage students as an example, it empirically investigates how face influences the smartphone adoption in the Chinese market where the smartphones are widely spread. It shows that both fear of losing face and perceived cost positively affect desire to gain face. Desire to gain face, perceived cost and ubiquity positively affect the smartphone adoption. The smartphone adopters pay more attention to lining more than face. It reveals the different effects of the two dimensions of face and develops the new construct of lining. It also provides a theoretical basis in both student management for colleges and marketing activities for the smartphone related firms.The second sub-project focuses on the mobile payment adoption based on the UTAUT model which lightens the effect of social influence. With the view of a dialectical analysis for the drivers and barriers faced by the mobile payment adopters, it develops a new model based on the UTAUT model and two additional prohibitors, namely, cost and perceived risk. By revising the hypothesized model based on the data analysis by SPSS and AMOS, it is tested empirically that for the adopters of mobile payment, social influence and performance expectancy are the drivers, whereas perceived risks and cost are the barriers. The findings are sure to make theoretical contributions as well as provide managerial insights for the mobile payment service providers.The third sub-project sheds lights on the reference effects on mobile group buying. According to reference price, number of purchase and the review information on the order page of mobile group buying, it puts forward a new model of dual reference effects of reference price and reference group on mobile group buying. By a qustionaire survey and data analysis, it shows that during the consumers'product decision-making, both the reference price and reference group have a positive effect on perceived value and trust, and then they deliver the effects to mobile group buying. The dual reference effects of the reference price and reference group are confirmed. As a social influence factor, the reference group has a significant impact on the mobile group buying. It reveals the the transition mechanism of the reference group and extends the theory of reference effect. The results provide managerial insights not only for the platforms of mobile group buying, but also for the vendors involved in the mobile group selling.The last but not the least sub-project concerns social support and mobile taxi booking. With reference to the functions and marketing strategies of the mobile booking platforms, social support, which is a specific extension of social influence, is innovatively introduced into the mobile booking research. It constructs an innovative model for social support, customer delight and the behavioral intention of mobile taxi booking. The empirical research shows that the three dimensions of social support, including financial support, informational support and emotional support, simultaneously impact on the customer delight and customer satisfaction, further, have indirect effects on the adoption of mobile taxi booking. It extends the domain of social support and discovers the new antecedents of customer delight. It illuminates a new academic explanation of the marketing policies and suggests new strategies for the mobile booking providers.