Understanding Consumer Recommendation Behavior in a Mobile Phone Service Context

Mobile service usage has become an important research topic in the field of MIS. In the past decade, research results have important implications for marketing managers with regard to the development of mobile services or advertising content employed to increase a consumer’s intentions to use. We consider that a customer is not only a service user, but also the partner of a firm. Therefore, we focus on two determinants of customer recommendation behavior, namely, overall satisfaction and flow experience. We also propose a number of hypotheses related to the constructs of overall satisfaction, and test them using data provided by 3G mobile service subscribers. The results contribute to our understanding of how customers are willing to make recommendations to others. Besides increasing customer satisfaction, we should consider a mediating factor—users’ flow experiences. Our findings provide empirical support for most of the hypotheses. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are also discussed, and suggestions for further research are offered.