Behaviour & Information Technology

Vol. 30, No. 2, March–April 2011, 241–250

An empirical examination of users’ post-adoption behaviour of mobile services

Tao Zhou*
Department of Management Engineering, School of Management, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou 310018, People’s
Republic of China
(Received 5 December 2009; final version received 31 October 2010)

Extant research has focused on the initial adoption and usage of mobile services and paid little attention to the post-
adoption and continuance usage. However, unless users continue using mobile services, service providers cannot
achieve success. Drawing upon the expectation confirmation theory, this research develops a mobile post-adoption
model. The post-adoption behaviour includes three variables: continuance intention, recommendation and complaint.
We conducted data analysis with partial least squares. The results indicated that expectation confirmation, perceived
ease of use, perceived usefulness and usage cost significantly affect users’ satisfaction, further determining their post-
adoption behaviour. In addition, perceived usefulness has a direct effect on the continuance intention.
Keywords: post-adoption; expectation confirmation theory; mobile services; perceived usefulness; usage cost

1. Introduction and the unified theory of acceptance and use of

With the deployment of third generation (3G) mobile
communication technologies, mobile commerce has
acquired rapid development around the world. Ac-
cording to a report issued by China Internet Network
Information Centre (CNNIC) in July 2010, the number
of mobile Internet users has reached 277 million,
accounting for 66% of the Internet population (420
million) (CNNIC 2010). This shows the great mobile
user base in China. By accessing the Internet via cell
phones and other mobile terminals, users can experi-
ence a variety of mobile services such as mobile search,
mobile banking, mobile games and mobile instant
messaging (IM). Mobile service providers expect
users to widely accept and use these new services.
Then they can acquire revenues from these services.
However, the user adoption rate of mobile services is
relatively lower than expected. For example, only
20.4% of mobile Internet users have ever used mobile
video (CNNIC 2010). Thus, it is necessary to identify
the factors affecting mobile user adoption and usage
behaviour.
Extant research has focused on examining the
factors affecting users’ initial adoption and usage of
mobile services (Sheng et al. 2008, Aldas-Manzano
et al. 2009, Kim et al. 2009, Kuo and Yen 2009,
Mallat et al. 2009, Shin 2009, Xu and Yuan 2009).
Information technology adoption theories such as the
technology acceptance model (TAM) (Fang et al.
2006), innovation diffusion theory (IDT) (Hsu et al.
2007), task technology fit (TTF) (Junglas et al. 2008)
technology (Park et al. 2007) are often used as the
theoretical bases. The factors identified to affect
initial usage include perceived usefulness, compat-
ibility, relative advantage and TTF (Hsu et al. 2007,
Junglas et al. 2008, Shin 2009). However, compared
to the abundant research on initial adoption, the
post-adoption has received less attention. Initial
adoption reflects users’ first-time usage of mobile
services, whereas post-adoption reflects their continu-
ance and repeated usage. For mobile service provi-
ders, initial adoption means user acquirement and
they can transform potential users into actual users,
whereas post-adoption means customer retention and
they can transform existing users into loyal users.
During the post-adoption phase, users have more
direct knowledge about mobile service providers,
based on which they decide whether to continue or
discontinue usage of an information technology
(Thong et al. 2006). Bhattacherjee (2001b) describes
post-adoption phase as the stage that ‘IS use
transcends conscious behaviour and becomes part of
normal routine activity.’
It has been uncovered that the cost of acquiring a
new customer is five times that of retaining an existing
customer (Reichheld and Schefter 2000). Mobile
service providers have spent great investment on
releasing new services. If users discontinue their usage
of these services, service providers cannot make profit.
On the other hand, the switching cost is low and
mobile users can easily switch to another service

*Email: zhoutao@hdu.edu.cn

ISSN 0144-929X print/ISSN 1362-3001 online

Ó 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/0144929X.2010.543702
http://www.informaworld.com
242 T. Zhou
provider. Therefore, paying attention to users’ post-
adoption behaviour and taking effective measures to
retain these users is critical for mobile service
providers. Extant research on post-adoption always
focuses on a behavioural variable: continuance usage
and neglects other behavioural outcomes such as
recommendation and complaint (Kim and Son 2009).
By means of mobile terminals and networks, mobile
users’ recommendation and complaint will spread
rapidly and widely, thus taking a significant word-of-
mouth effect (Wiedemann et al. 2008a, Wiedemann
et al. 2008b). Therefore, these factors also need to be
taken into consideration when examining mobile user
behaviour. Recently, word-of-mouth has received
attention from information system researchers. For
example, Kim and Son (2009) noted that online
services users’ post-adoption behaviour includes four
factors: usage intention, word-of-mouth, willingness to
pay and inattentiveness to alternatives. Chea and Luo
(2008) measured online consumers’ post-adoption
behaviour with three variables: continuance intention,
recommendation and complaint. Consistent with these
findings, this research will examine mobile users’ post-
adoption behaviour that includes three variables:
continuance intention, recommendation and com-
plaint. We draw on the expectation confirmation
theory (ECT) as the theoretical base.
This research makes three contributions. First, we
adopted ECT to examine mobile users’ post-adoption
and found that expectation confirmation, perceived
ease of use and perceived usefulness affect users’
satisfaction, further determining their post-adoption.
Thus, this research extends previous findings that are
mainly based on TAM and advances our under-
standing of mobile user behaviour. Second, we tested
three behavioural outcomes including continuance
intention, recommendation and complaint. The results
indicated that satisfaction has significant effects on
these behavioural variables. This enriches previous
research that only includes usage intention as the
behavioural variable. Third, usage cost has significant
effects on satisfaction and three behavioural variables,
suggesting the necessity to take usage cost into
consideration when facilitating users’ post-adoption
behaviour.
The rest of this article is organised as follows. We
present literature review and theoretical background
in the next section. Then, we propose the research
model and hypotheses in Section 3. Section 4 reports
the instrument development and data collection
process. Section 5 presents data analysis and results,
followed by a discussion of these results in Section 6.
Then, we present the theoretical and managerial
implications in Section 7. We conclude the article in
Section 8.
2. Literature review and theoretical background
2.1. Mobile user adoption
As noted earlier, mobile users’ initial adoption has
received considerable attention in extant research.
Information technology adoption theories such as
TAM, IDT and TTF are often used as the theoretical
bases. TAM argues that perceived usefulness and
perceived ease of use are the two main factors
determining user acceptance of a new information
technology (Davis 1989). TAM has been used to
explain user adoption of various mobile services,
including mobile ticketing (Mallat et al. 2009), mobile
TV (Jung et al. 2009), mobile shopping (Aldas-
Manzano et al. 2009) and 3G services (Kuo and Yen
2009). IDT notes that five factors including relative
advantage, compatibility, complexity, observability
and trialability determine user acceptance of a new
technology (Rogers 1983). Among them, relative
advantage is similar to perceived usefulness, whereas
complexity is similar to perceived ease of use. IDT has
been adopted to explore user acceptance of multimedia
message services (Hsu et al. 2007) and mobile banking
(Kim et al. 2009). TTF proposes that only when
technology characteristics fit task characteristics will
users adopt and use this technology (Goodhue and
Thompson 1995). Prior research has used TTF to
explain user adoption of personal digital assistants in
the insurance industry (Lee et al. 2007a), mobile work
(Yuan et al. 2010) and location-based services (LBS)
(Junglas et al. 2008).
Compared to the abundant research on initial
adoption, mobile users’ post-adoption has received
relatively less attention. TAM is often used as the
theoretical base. Lee et al. (2007b) examined the effect
of culture on the post-adoption behaviour. They noted
that four cultural dimensions including uncertainty
avoidance, individualism, context and time perception
affect mobile Internet users’ satisfaction and their
continuance intention (Lee et al. 2007b). In addition,
perceived enjoyment is also found to affect mobile
Internet users’ continuance intention (Thong et al.
2006). Shin et al. (2010) reported that service variety,
access quality, cost rationality and ease of use affect
the perceived usefulness of mobile Internet, further
determining users’ continuance usage. Kuo et al.
(2009) found that service quality and perceived value
have significant effects on customers’ satisfaction and
post-purchase intention. Hong et al. (2008) drew on
the decomposed theory of planned behaviour to
explain user adoption of mobile data services. They
found that attitude, social influence, media influence,
perceived mobility and perceived monetary value
influence consumers’ intention to continue using
mobile data services. Lee et al. (2009) adopted the
 Behaviour & Information Technology
two-factor theory to explain the post-adoption usage
of mobile data services. They found that while
information quality positively affects usage increase,
system quality negatively affects usage decrease. Chung
and Kwon (2009) reported that both information
quality and system quality affect user satisfaction with
mobile banking.
2.2. Expectation confirmation theory (ECT)
ECT originates from consumer behaviour research and
has been widely adopted to explore consumer satisfac-
tion and post-purchase behaviour (Tse and Wilton
1988, Anderson and Sullivan 1993, Oliver 1993). ECT
proposes that consumers’ expectation and perceived
performance determine their satisfaction. Expectation
reflects consumers’ expectancy before they actually
experience products and services (Oliver 1980, Oliver
1993). Expectation serves as the comparison standard.
Consumers will compare their expectation and per-
ceived performance to form their satisfaction. When
perceived performance is higher than the expectation,
it leads to positive confirmation and satisfaction. In
contrast, when perceived performance is lower than the
expectation, it leads to negative confirmation and
dissatisfaction (Oliver 1980, Spreng et al. 1996).
In the information systems discipline, drawing on
ECT, Bhattacherjee proposed a revised ECT model
and applied it to explain users’ post-adoption of
information technologies (Bhattacherjee 2001a, Bhat-
tacherjee 2001b, Bhattacherjee and Premkumar 2004).
The revised model argues that expectation only reflects
user expectancy before actual usage, which is based on
second-hand information such as mass media and
other users’ opinion. However, users’ expectation
develops with the increased experience, and post-
adoption expectation will be based on the actual usage
experience (Bhattacherjee 2001b). Thus, adopting
expectation to explain post-adoption satisfaction is
inappropriate (Bhattacherjee 2001b). The revised
model incorporates perceived usefulness from TAM
to reflect users’ post-adoption expectation. It proposes
that both confirmation and perceived usefulness affect
user satisfaction, further determining continuance
intention. In addition, confirmation affects perceived
usefulness, which has a direct effect on continuance
intention. Figure 1 shows the revised ECT model
proposed by Bhattacherjee (2001b). The revised ECT
model has been used to explain the continuance usage
of WWW (Limayem et al. 2007).
3. Research model and hypotheses
According to the revised ECT model, when users’
expectation is confirmed, their perceived usefulness
243
Figure 1. The revised ECT model.
and satisfaction will be improved (Bhattacherjee
2001b). Expectation confirmation means that users
acquire the expected experience and service quality
when they use mobile services. Users have relatively
high expectations towards mobile service quality
including ubiquity, localisation and immediacy (Jun-
glas and Watson 2006). Ubiquity means that users can
access mobile services at any time from anywhere.
Localisation means that mobile service providers offer
the personalised information and services to users
according to their positions and preferences. Imme-
diacy means that users acquire real-time information
and services. If mobile service providers can meet these
expectations, users will feel that mobile services bring
them a good experience and are useful for their work
and life. They will also be satisfied. In contrast,
expectation disconfirmation means that users do not
acquire the expected experience and service quality.
Then users’ satisfaction and perceived usefulness will
decrease. Thus, we propose:
H1: Expectation confirmation significantly affects
perceived usefulness.
H2: Expectation confirmation significantly affects user
satisfaction.
Perceived usefulness is a main component of TAM
(Davis 1989, Davis et al. 1989) and reflects the utility
associated with using mobile services. Perceived
usefulness is found to be a stable variable predicting
user behaviour during both initial adoption and post-
adoption phase, whereas the effect of perceived ease of
use will gradually diminish and become insignificant
with the increased usage experience (Venkatesh et al.
2003). In addition, users always expect to acquire
useful mobile services, such as ubiquitous and con-
venient services (Shen et al. 2010). When this expecta-
tion is fulfilled, they will be satisfied (Spreng et al.
1996). Therefore, perceived usefulness will affect
satisfaction. Prior research has revealed the significant
effects of perceived usefulness on mobile users’
satisfaction and usage intention (Thong et al. 2006,
Lee et al. 2007b, Shin et al. 2010). Thus:
H3: Perceived usefulness significantly affects user
satisfaction.
244
H4: Perceived usefulness significantly affects continu-
ance intention.
Perceived ease of use is another component of
TAM and reflects the difficulty of using mobile
services. TAM proposes that perceived ease of use
affects perceived usefulness (Davis 1989). In addition,
users also expect to use mobile services without much
effort. When this expectation is fulfilled, they will be
satisfied and be willing to adopt the mobile services.
Especially, the constraints of mobile terminals such as
small screens and inconvenient input highlight the need
to present users with an easy-to-use interface (Lee and
Benbasat 2004, Zhang et al. 2010). Otherwise, users
may feel it is difficult to use mobile services and this
will affect their satisfaction and continuance usage.
The effects of perceived ease of use on satisfaction and
continuance intention have been noted in prior
research (Thong et al. 2006, Lee et al. 2007b). Thus,
we propose:
H5: Perceived ease of use significantly affects perceived
usefulness.
H6: Perceived ease of use significantly affects user
satisfaction.
H7: Perceived ease of use significantly affects con-
tinuance intention.
The post-adoption behaviour includes three vari-
ables: continuance intention, recommendation and
complaint. Compared to traditional and online com-
merce, mobile commerce users’ comments will spread
more rapidly and widely with the help of mobile
terminals and networks. These comments may affect
later users’ adoption and usage of mobile services. For
mobile service providers, the effect of recommendation
is positive, whereas the effect of complaint is negative.
However, if service providers carefully examine users’
complaints and take effective measures to correct their
service failures, they will find that these complaints are
useful (Huang et al. 2003). ECT notes that satisfaction
is a main variable affecting user behaviour (Oliver
1980). Kim and Son (2009) also noted that satisfaction
affects online service users’ usage intention and word-
of-mouth. Thus:
H8: Satisfaction significantly affects continuance
intention.
H9: Satisfaction significantly affects user
recommendation.
H10: Satisfaction significantly affects user complaint.
Compared to the large number of free online
services, mobile services always charge users for fees
such as communication fees and transaction fees
T. Zhou
(Wu and Wang 2005). These fees mean a burden for
many users. Users always expect to acquire high-
quality and low-cost services. If the usage cost is
expensive, they cannot feel satisfied. They may
discontinue their usage because of the financial costs
derived from using mobile services. In addition, they
may have negative comments on the mobile services
and complain to other users about the high usage cost.
Much research has revealed the effect of usage cost on
mobile user behaviour. Shin et al. (2010) noted that
cost rationality affects mobile Internet usage. Lu et al.
(2010) found that perceived service cost affects user
adoption of short message services (SMS). Hong et al.
(2008) reported that perceived monetary value affects
the intention to continue using mobile data services.
Shin (2009) suggested that perceived cost level predicts
user attitude towards using digital multimedia broad-
casting. Kuo and Yen (2009) noted that perceived cost
affects the behavioural intention to use 3G services.
These constructs such as cost rationality and perceived
cost level have similar meanings and reflect users’
perceptions of usage cost. Consistent with these
findings, we propose:
H11: Usage cost significantly affects user satisfaction.
H12: Usage cost significantly affects user complaint.
H13: Usage cost significantly affects user
recommendation.
H14: Usage cost significantly affects continuance
intention.
The research model is shown in Figure 2.
4. Research method
The research model includes eight factors and each
factor is measured with multiple items. All items were
adapted from existing literature to improve the content
validity (Straub et al. 2004). These items were first
translated into Chinese by a researcher. Then, another
Figure 2. Research model.
 Behaviour & Information Technology
researcher translated them back into English to ensure
consistency. When the instrument was developed, it
was tested among 10 users with rich mobile service
usage experience. Then, according to their suggestions,
we revised some items to improve the clarity and
understandability. The final items and their sources are
listed in Appendix 1.
Items of perceived usefulness, expectation con-
firmation, satisfaction and continuance intention were
adapted from Bhattacherjee (2001b). Items of per-
ceived usefulness reflect users’ performance and
effectiveness improvement associated with using mo-
bile services. An item measuring productivity im-
provement was dropped due to its poor loading on
the factor. Items of expectation confirmation reflect
the confirmation of usage experience and service level.
Items of satisfaction measure users’ content and
pleasure with using mobile services. An item measur-
ing delight was dropped in order to improve the
clarity based on users’ comments. Items of continu-
ance intention reflect users’ continuance and switching
behaviour. Items of perceived ease of use and usage
cost were adapted from Wu and Wang (2005). Items
measuring perceived ease of use reflect the difficulty of
learning to use and skilfully using mobile services.
Items of usage cost reflect users’ perceptions of
equipment, access and transaction cost associated
with using mobile services. We measured recommen-
dation with three items adapted from Bougie et al.
(2003), which were used to reflect negative word-of-
mouth. Bougie et al. (2003) argued that ‘negative
word-of-mouth entails telling friends and other members
of one’s social network about a negative service
encounter and advising them not to acquire the services
of the organization involved’. This reflects a negative
recommendation. Thus, we used these items to
measure recommendation. The items measuring com-
plaint were also adapted from Bougie et al. (2003).
We dropped an item ‘I will ask the service provider to
take care of the problem’ because of the cross
loadings on other factors.
We collected data at a university and two service
halls of China Mobile and China Unicom, which were
the two main telecommunication operators in China.
There are plenty of users at these places and this will
expedite our data collection process. We randomly
contacted users and asked those with over half a year
usage experience of mobile services to fill the ques-
tionnaires. We scrutinised all questionnaires and
dropped those with too many missing values. As a
result, we obtained 269 valid responses. Among them,
65.4% were male and 34.6% were female. In terms of
age, 56.5% were aged between 20 and 29 years old. A
majority of users (65.1%) used mobile services for over
three times a day. The frequently used mobile services
245
included mobile IM, mobile news, mobile search and
mobile games.
We conducted two tests to examine the common
method variance (CMV). First, we conducted a Har-
man’s single-factor test (Podsakoff et al. 2003). The
results indicated that the largest variance explained by
individual factor was 11.71%. Thus, none of the factor
can explain the majority of the variance. Second, we
modelled all items as the indicators of a factor
representing the common method effect (Malhotra
et al. 2006). The results showed a poor fitness. For
example, the goodness of fit index (GFI) was 0.488
(50.90), and the root mean square error of approx-
imation (RMSEA) was 0.215 (40.08). The results of
both tests showed that CMV was not a significant
problem in our research.
5. Results
Following the two-step approach recommended by
Anderson and Gerbing (1988), our data analysis
includes two steps. First, we examined the measure-
ment model to test reliability and validity. Then, we
examined the structural model to test research
hypotheses and model fitness.
First, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis
(CFA) to test the reliability and validity. Validity
includes convergent validity and discriminant validity.
Convergent validity measures whether items can
effectively reflect their corresponding factor, whereas
discriminant validity measures whether two factors are
statistically different (Gefen et al. 2000). Convergent
validity can be reflected by the following indices:
standardised item loadings, the average variance
extracted (AVE) and composite reliability. The thresh-
old values for these indices are 0.7, 0.5 and 0.7,
respectively (Gefen et al. 2000). As listed in Table 1,
the actual values of all indices are better than the
threshold values. Further, all standardised item load-
ings are significant at 0.001. Thus, the scale has a good
convergent validity (Bagozzi and Yi 1988, Gefen et al.
2000). The fit indices of the CFA are within the
threshold values. For example, the adjusted GFI
(AGFI) is 0.835 (40.8), the comparative fit index is
0.974 (40.9), the normed fit index is 0.952 (40.9) and
the RMSEA is 0.062 (50.08). In addition, all
Cronbach Alpha values are larger than 0.7, showing
a good reliability (Nunnally 1978).
To examine discriminant validity, we compared the
square root of the AVE and factor correlation
coefficients. As listed in Table 2, for each factor, the
square root of AVE is significantly larger than its
correlation coefficients with other factors. Thus, the
scale has a good discriminant validity (Fornell and
Larcker 1981, Gefen et al. 2000).
246 T. Zhou

Second, we employed partial least squares (PLS) to T ¼ –0.25) are insignificant. Thus, both recommenda-
estimate the structural model. The results were listed tion and complaint have no direct effects on con-
in Table 3. Compared to the covariance-based tinuance intention.
LISREL, the component-based PLS has less demand
on sample size and data distribution (Gefen and
Straub 2005). The explained variance of perceived 6. Discussion
usefulness, satisfaction, continuance intention, recom- As shown in Table 3, except H7, all other hypotheses
mendation and complaint is 21.3, 39.5, 37.6, 30 and are supported. Expectation confirmation, perceived
21.9%, respectively. ease of use and perceived usefulness have significant
We conducted a post-hoc analysis to examine the effects on satisfaction, which further determines three
possible correlations among three behavioural out- behavioural variables: continuance intention, recom-
comes: continuance intention, recommendation and mendation and complaint. Expectation confirmation
complaint. We added two direct paths from recom- and perceived ease of use affect perceived usefulness,
mendation and complaint to continuance intention further determining continuance intention. We did not
and re-estimated the model. The results indicated that find the direct effect of perceived ease of use on
both paths including the path from recommendation to continuance intention. In addition, while usage cost
continuance intention (b ¼ 0.05, T ¼ 1.16) and the path has negative effects on satisfaction, continuance inten-
from complaint to continuance intention (b ¼ –0.01, tion and recommendation, it has a positive effect on
complaint.
Table 1. Standardised item loadings, AVE, CR and Alpha The results indicate that expectation confirmation
values. and perceived ease of use have significant effects on
Item perceived usefulness and these three factors determine
Factor Item loadings AVE CR Alpha user satisfaction. Among them, expectation confirma-
tion has the largest effect on satisfaction (g ¼ 0.35).
Perceived ease of PEOU1 0.827 0.73 0.89 0.81
use (PEOU) PEOU2 0.902 This shows that meeting users’ expectation is a main
PEOU3 0.833 way to enhance their satisfaction. Mobile users always
Perceived PU1 0.935 0.86 0.95 0.92 expect to acquire impressive usage experiences and
usefulness (PU) PU2 0.907 high quality services (Jung et al. 2009), including
PU3 0.939
Expectation CONF1 0.903 0.81 0.93 0.88 ubiquitous, immediate and personalised services. How-
confirmation CONF2 0.882 ever, the constraints of mobile terminals and networks
(CONF) CONF3 0.915 such as slow responses and unstable connectivity may
Satisfaction (SAT) SAT1 0.868 0.78 0.91 0.86 negatively affect their usage experience. Thus, mobile
SAT2 0.886
SAT3 0.892 service providers need to improve their back-end
Usage cost COST1 0.946 0.83 0.93 0.88 systems to enable users to acquire mobile services at
(COST) COST2 0.890 any time from anywhere. This brings a positive utility
COST3 0.889
Continuance USE1 0.970 0.93 0.98 0.96
to users and can improve their satisfaction. Further-
intention (USE) USE2 0.965 more, users may have different expectations towards
USE3 0.958 mobile services. For example, students may be
Recommendation RECM1 0.910 0.84 0.94 0.90 concerned with the hedonic attributes of mobile
(RECM) RECM2 0.942
RECM3 0.896 services such as enjoyment and playfulness, whereas
Complaint COMP1 0.930 0.83 0.94 0.87 businessmen may be concerned with the utilitarian
(COMP) COMP2 0.936 attributes of mobile services such as reliability and
COMP3 0.863 responsiveness. This means that mobile service

Table 2. The square root of AVE (shown as bold at diagonal) and factor correlation coefficients.

PEOU PU CONF SAT COST USE RECM COMP

PEOU 0.855
PU 0.248 0.927
CONF 0.073 0.406 0.900
SAT 0.217 0.454 0.492 0.882
COST –0.095 –0.395 –0.239 –0.435 0.909
USE 0.203 0.540 0.355 0.458 –0.422 0.964
RECM 0.179 0.400 0.456 0.534 –0.340 0.428 0.916
COMP –0.097 –0.223 –0.356 –0.419 0.370 –0.271 –0.417 0.910
 Behaviour & Information Technology 247

Table 3. Path coefficients and their significance. This indicates that mobile service providers need to
Supported focus on perceived usefulness in order to promote
Hypothesis Path Coefficient or not users’ initial adoption and post-adoption. For exam-
ple, mobile service providers can adopt LBS to acquire
H1 CONF ! PU 0.39*** Yes users’ location and then provide context-related
H2 CONF ! SAT 0.35*** Yes
H3 PU ! SAT 0.18* Yes information and services to users. These personalised
H4 PU ! USE 0.36*** Yes services will better meet users’ needs and improve their
H5 PEOU ! PU 0.22** Yes perceived usefulness (Lee and Jun 2007). Nevertheless,
H6 PEOU ! SAT 0.12* Yes mobile service providers should acquire users’ permis-
H7 PEOU ! USE 0.05 No
H8 SAT ! USE 0.20* Yes sion in advance because it may arouse users’ privacy
H9 SAT ! RECM 0.48*** Yes concern (Xu et al. 2009). We did not find the direct
H10 SAT ! COMP –0.32*** Yes effect of perceived ease of use on continuance
H11 COST ! SAT –0.27** Yes
H12 COST ! COMP 0.23** Yes
intention. However, perceived ease of use significantly
H13 COST ! RECM –0.13* Yes affects perceived usefulness and satisfaction. Thus,
H14 COST ! USE –0.19* Yes perceived usefulness and satisfaction fully mediate the
effect of perceived ease of use on continuance
Note: *P 5 0.05; **P 5 0.01; ***P 5 0.001.
intention. This result is consistent with that of Chiu
et al. (2009).
Usage cost has negative effects on satisfaction,
providers need to conduct market segmentation and continuance intention and recommendation, but has a
provide users with services catering to their differen- positive effect on user complaint. Thus, high usage
tiated expectations. The significant effect of perceived cost will lead to users’ complaint and decrease their
ease of use on satisfaction also indicates that mobile satisfaction, continuance intention and recommenda-
service providers should provide a well-designed tion. The effect of usage cost on mobile user
interface to users. behaviour has been validated in extant research
Satisfaction has significant effects on three beha- (Kuo and Yen 2009, Shin 2009, Shin et al. 2010). A
vioural variables: continuance intention, recommenda- report by CNNIC (2009) shows that 34.6% of mobile
tion and complaint. Especially, the effects of Internet users agreed that mobile service fees were too
satisfaction on recommendation and complaints are expensive. Thus, mobile service providers should try
very strong (b ¼ 0.48 and b ¼ –0.32, respectively). This to decrease usage cost. For example, some banks have
result is consistent with previous findings. For exam- offered 50% discount of the transaction fees to
ple, Kim and Son (2009) found that satisfaction has a promote users’ adoption of mobile banking services.
significant effect on online services users’ word-of- On the other hand, mobile service providers need to
mouth. Thus, mobile service providers need to build improve the charge transparency and cannot charge
early adopters’ satisfaction because their evaluations users without their knowledge. In fact, Chinese
will affect later adopters’ decision. If these early Ministry of Information Industry has issued a policy
adopters are satisfied, they may recommend mobile named second confirmation (service providers can
services to other users and this produces a positive only charge users after getting their second confirma-
word-of-mouth effect. Otherwise, it leads to a negative tion) to regulate mobile service providers’ charging
word-of-mouth effect. behaviour.
Both perceived usefulness and satisfaction have
significant effects on continuance intention. Compared
to the effect of satisfaction (b ¼ 0.20), the effect of 7. Theoretical and managerial implications
perceived usefulness on continuance intention From a theoretical perspective, this research drew on
(b ¼ 0.36) is relatively larger. This shows that when ECT as the theoretical base and found that expectation
mobile users decide to continue using a service, they confirmation, perceived ease of use, perceived useful-
are utilitarian-based and concerned with the utility ness and usage cost have significant effects on user
derived from using this service. They expect mobile satisfaction, further determining the post-adoption
services to improve their working and living perfor- behaviour. As noted earlier, previous research has
mance and effectiveness. The significant effect of focused on the initial adoption and usage of mobile
perceived usefulness on continuance intention has services, and seldom examined the post-adoption and
been supported in previous research such as Lee continuance usage. However, the post-adoption is
et al. (2007b) and Shin et al. (2010). Perceived critical for mobile service providers because of the
usefulness was also found to be a significant determi- low switching cost and high cost of acquiring new
nant of initial adoption (Mallat et al. 2009, Shin 2009). customers. The results indicate that improving user
248 T. Zhou
satisfaction is crucial to the post-adoption of mobile
services. Future research can examine other factors’
effects on post-adoption, such as trust and commit-
ment. The results also indicate that perceived useful-
ness has a significant effect on users’ continuance
intention. This provides further support to previous
findings (Shin et al. 2010). To more fully reflect post-
adoption behaviour, besides continuance intention, we
include recommendation and complaint into the model
as dependent variables. Due to the significant word-of-
mouth effect, we feel that it is imperative to take both
factors into consideration when studying mobile user
adoption. These results show that satisfaction has
strong effects on recommendation and complaint. This
advances our understanding of mobile post-adoption
behaviour.
From a managerial perspective, our results imply
that meeting mobile users’ expectation is critical to
improving their perceived usefulness and satisfaction.
Thus, mobile service providers should enhance their
service quality and provide users with a good usage
experience. They also need to conduct market
segmentation and offer services catering to users’
differentiated needs. Perceived usefulness is also
found to be a significant factor of satisfaction and
continuance intention. Considering its effect during
both initial adoption and post-adoption phase,
mobile service providers need to attach great im-
portance to the perceived usefulness. They can
optimise their interface design to decrease users’
operation difficulty and increase their perceived
usefulness. They can also provide value-added ser-
vices such as LBS including location-tracking services
and location-awareness services to bring a positive
utility to users (Junglas and Watson 2008). The effect
of usage cost also needs to be considered. Mobile
service providers should charge rational fees with
high transparency. Otherwise, users’ satisfaction will
decrease, which leads to a negative word-of-mouth
effect.
8. Conclusion
Drawing on ECT, this research develops a mobile post-
adoption model. With empirical analysis, we found that
satisfaction is a main factor determining users’ post-
adoption behaviour, which includes three variables:
continuance intention, recommendation and complaint.
Expectation confirmation, usage cost, perceived ease of
use and perceived usefulness significantly influence
users’ satisfaction. Thus, mobile service providers need
to present users with high quality and low cost services.
By this way, they can improve user satisfaction and
realise customer retention.
This research has the following limitations. First,
we collected data in China, where mobile commerce is
developing rapidly but still in its infancy. Thus, our
results need to be generalised to other countries with
developed mobile commerce. Second, in addition to its
direct effect, usage cost may exert a moderation effect.
For example, usage cost may have a larger effect on
deal-seekers’ usage intention than the effect on fashion-
seekers’ usage intention. Future research can examine
the moderation effect of usage cost. Third, we con-
ducted a cross-sectional study. However, user beha-
viour is dynamic. A longitudinal research may provide
more insights on users’ behaviour development.
Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by a grant from the
National Natural Science Foundation of China (71001030), a
grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation
of the Ministry of Education (09YJC630052), a grant from
the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation
(Y7100057) and a grant from the China Postdoctoral Science
Foundation (201003478).
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