Should We Take a Closer Look? Extending Switching Theories from Singular Products to Complex Ecosystem Structures

While previous research on software ecosystems (SECO) mostly focused on SECO providers or software developers, recent studies have begun to analyze the user perspective and try to explain switching behavior. However, SECOs are complex and consist of several components. Since current switching theories do not fully account for these complex structures, these need to be adapted. We expand the push-pull-mooring (PPM) framework to account for SECO components so as to obtain a more fine-grained understanding of why users decide to switch SECOs. We find that users’ switching decisions are primarily governed by pull factors, while mooring and push factors also have significant but smaller impacts. Individual SECO components show differential impacts across all PPM constructs, which should be considered by researchers and practitioners. Beyond SECOs, we seek to break new ground for technology switching and (post-)adoption models to consider complex interactions between different systems and their components.