| With the rapid development of technology, self-service based on technology has become a hot topic in both theoretical research and practical application. Self-service technology (Self-Service Technology, SST), also known as self-service technical support type (Technology-Based self-Service, TBSS),First proposed by Dabholkar (1994), who thought self-service technology is the service provider’s activities or interests based on any technology hardware (Hard Technology), so that customers can complete their part of the overall service or services. Self-service technology (SST) has been considered as an important tool to break the space constraints of traditional face-to-face interactivity and optimize service to gain efficiency. Because of its convenience and low cost, enterprises increase their investment on self-service equipments and customers show a soaring interest in self-service application. Nowadays, self-service has penetrated into a broad range of our daily life, millions of consumers get services directly from self-service terminals and online interactive (Meuter et al.2005; Zhu et al.2007). Offline self-service terminals such as self-service ticket machines, vending machines and automatic teller machines and online self-service platforms like internet banks and palm banks has been proved to be indispensable in present life. Therefore, self-service technology was named as one of the10innovations that have greatly changed the world by Time magazine (Time,2008).Considering so many superiorities of SST, what impacts on customers’ overall evaluation and their loyalty is an interesting issue that worthy of studying. Hence, this paper focuses on exploring factors that affect customers’ sustained use of SST.Firstly, we found the theoretical breakthrough and foothold by reviewing related literatures in and abroad. Literature review of SST revealed that most of present studies concentrated on the research of driving factors of SST adoption. These studies based on technology acceptance model (TAM) were usually conducted from two aspects, one is taking the SST features as independent variables, such as perceived ease of use, perceived risk, offline channels density and access to SST (Xue,2011; Wang YongGui et al.,2011), the other is taking customer characteristics into consideration, such as customer personality, self-efficacy, demand for interactivity and change, customer readiness, social network influence, customer efficiency and technology anxiety (Meuter et al.2000; Dabholkar.2002;Xue,2011;Zeng ChengDe et al.,2011; Lees,2004)However, compared to customer development, customer sustainment is considered as a more efficient marketing strategy. Accordingly, study on influence factors of sustained use of SST is also of great significance and will be the theoretical innovation of this paper.The second chapter of this paper is literature review. First, review of service dominant logic (SDL) articles showed that interactivity between customers and technology interface was the key link during the realization of service value and the early interactivity played an important role in customers’ sustained use. Second, review of service quality literatures revealed that regarding interactivity as an important dimension of e-service quality and perceived value as the mediator between service and customer behavior intention was frequently used in prior studies. Besides, according to the latest view of SDL, customers emphasized more on process control in their service experience based on technology platform. Meanwhile, theories concerning perceived control believed that perceived control was a prerequisite of customer behavior decision, a strong feeling of perceived control can motivate customer while a week one can hinder their behavior. At last, a literature review on perceived control, perceived value and SST interactivity and willingness was made.The third chapter showed the research model which was strictly deduced and reasonably and clearly defined based on the literature review. The research logic would be SST interactivity-perceived value-customer willingness to sustained use, and taking the perceived control as a moderating variable between perceived value and customer willingness to sustained use. The fourth and fifth chapter verified the model through further research, mainly quantitative research and supplemented by qualitative research, first designing the scale and then analyzing the data. The scale was revised from present mature scales and was revised by interviews and pretest. The interviews were to revise the semanteme and formulation of items. And the pretest proved the high credibility and authentic of the scale by reliability and validity analysis. The data analysis consisted of reliability and validity test, which turned out to be good and hypothesis test. The correlation analysis verified the correlation between each variables and the regression analysis verified all the hypotheses.The last chapter displayed the research result, contribution, shortcomings and prospect and managerial implication.The conclusions were as follows:1. The interactivity between custom and technology affects customers’ willingness to sustained use of SST. The interactivity between customers and technology platform is the key factor that influences their perceived service value and service value acts on customers’ tie to the company and their loyalty. Multiple and high-quality information as well as friendly information presentation increase customers’ use frequency, that is, the better the early interactivity between customers and technology, the higher their willingness to sustained use is.2. The interactivity between customers and SST technology affects customers’ willingness to sustained use, with perceived value as the mediator. A higher the interactivity quality, for example, more friendly interface design or more service information, can lead customers to realize the value in use more efficiently. Value in use is an experience in consumption activities, including functional and emotional value and perceived value is mostly derived from customers’ service experience.3. SST perceived control influences perceived value’s effect on customers’ willingness to sustained use as a moderator variable. In accordance to the latest service logic views, customers emphasize more on technology control. Perceived control was a prerequisite of customers’ willingness to sustained use. When a customer has strong feeling of technology control, his tolerance on the expect service failure Is high and willing to increase his use frequency; on the contrary, when a customer is lack of perceived control, SST can’t be a channel to enhance the efficiency or service experience but block customers from getting service.Contributions of this paper are: 1. According to the literature review of SST, prior studies of SST mainly focused on driving factors of adoption, and there were few articles on factors that affect sustained use. This paper placed customers in the dominant role in value creation by SST. Based on service quality theories and service logic, it explored the early interactivity’s influence on willingness to sustained use, which offered a new method to related studies. Meanwhile, it theoretically supports enterprises which offer SST to improve the technology using efficiency and customer loyalty by optimizing interactivity, customer education and technology risk control.2. This paper applied the classic research logic, behavior-perceived value-reuse, and took perceived value as mediating variable between the early interactivity and sustained use, finally figured out the action mechanism, which better explained the relationship between interactivity and sustained use.3. This paper was based on the latest service logic views and underlined customers’initiative and control in value creation, and regarded customers’ perceived control as the moderating variable between the early interactivity and sustained use. Prior research demonstrated that self-efficacy and perceived risk affected the adoption of SST, but there was no agreed conclusion on which one was the main effect. Whereas, perceived risk and self-efficacy was the two influentials of perceived control. This paper adopted perceived control as a whole in the model, which supplied an alternative way to settle the dispute.There are still shortcomings of this paper, such as:It only investigated the online banks situation. However, when it comes to self-service machine terminals, interactivity contains not only the information and the way information are supplied, but also the accessible cost, for instance, the time cost to waiting-in-line. Thus, the applicability of the model in other situations still needs further research.2. All the samples of this survey are from the internet, which may decrease the generalizability of the research results. Besides, the majority of the respondents are under30(accounting for95.48%), which is young, and most of them have a bachelor or upper degree, which is high and their monthly income are mostly about5000, which is a little low. The distribution of above mentioned variables may influence customers’interactivity and service demand which may moderate the model. 3. This paper only provided a view of SST interactivity’s effect on customer sustained use, which is a correlation between single factors and can’t be used to forecasting.The managerial implications of this research are as follows:Based on the positive effect of SST interactivity on customer sustained use, enterprises can on one hand augment service information, on the other hand, optimize the interface design by enhance the browse convenience and respond speed to increase the interactivity quality.Based on the effect of SST perceived control on customer sustained use, enterprises can from one aspect increase customer perceived control by offering more customer education and risk control, from another aspect, improve the risk control by establishing risk warning and management mechanisms. |
PDF Full Text Request