A customer value, satisfaction, and loyalty perspective of mobile application recommendations

a r t i c l e i n f o Although both anecdotal and academic sources have suggested that interpersonal recommendation is an important means to promote mobile applications (apps), little to no research has investigated this topic. To fill the void, we develop a research model based on the Customer Value, Satisfaction, and Loyalty Framework (VSL). While prior VSL studies treated customer value as a black box and examined its effects as a whole, this research breaks down customer value to utilitarian benefits (consisting of app utility and app quality), hedonic benefits (consisting of app aesthetics and enjoyment), monetary sacrifices and non-monetary sacrifices (consisting of technicality, knowledge of alternative quality and privacy risk). This research extends VSL to the mobile app context and discerns factors that influence app recommendation. Based on the data analysis of 347 app users, we found that intention to recommend is a strong predictor of app recommendation behavior. Satisfaction with apps, users' app continuance intention, and hedonic benefits obtained from using apps are the direct antecedents of intention to recommend. Moreover, non-monetary sacrifices and utilitarian benefits have indirect effects on intention to recommend through satisfaction and app continuance intention. Contrary to our hypotheses, we did not find the significant effects of monetary sacrifices in the refined VSL. We also provide a detailed discussion about these findings, and the theoretical and practical implications of the research. The past decade has witnessed a phenomenal growth of smartphones, as well as its killer application—mobile applications (apps). Buoyed by an enormous user-base, mobile apps have captured the attention of business [58]. In order for organizations to reap the benefits of information technology (IT), they must understand user behaviors. Presumably, the forgoing argument also applies to mobile apps, an emerging IT artifact. Organizations' initiatives in apps cannot succeed without a deep understanding of individuals' app usage behaviors. To date, only a handful of information systems (IS) research directly address the topic of mobile app usage [7,79]. Among them, the main focus is on examining users' intention regarding the initial acceptance and the continuance of apps. Given that IT usage exists in multiple forms beyond simple adoption [10], we believe that the current literature provides a limited explanation of app users' behaviors. Thus, the first objective of this research is to examine users' recommendation of mobile apps, a type of user behavior in the post-adoption stage of IT that is …