Investigating Affordance Factors of Users' Continuous Usage Intention toward Branded Mobile Payment Based on the Customer Engagement Model: a Dual Route Perspective

Mobile payment is getting prevail under this trend because of the emerging development of mobile technology and service. Launching branded mobile payment becomes an emerging trend recently, such as Esun Wallet, Easy Wallet, Fami Pay, iCash Pay, Watsons Pay, PX Pay, Carrefour Pay, Happygo Pay, or Skm Pay. Retailer, social media and banks keep on going to develop their own mobile payment tools. In order to attract customers to use their own mobile payment tools, retailers try to integrate the original mobile app and mobile payment tool and then offer consumers more preferential membership services. However, before the new branded mobile payment launched, there are already many mobile payment tools available and some of them can be used in multiple scenarios. In addition, consumers may have their habituate in mobile payment tools. How to attract consumers’ attention and retain customers has become tough task. When retailer just launched their own mobile payment, customers are usually attracted by the price discounts, coupons or marketing campaign and then joined the members and used the mobile payment tool for transactions. After that, customers may easily switch to use other mobile payment. Therefore, we would like to explore how to induce customers to keep in using the branded mobile payment in the physical retail stores. But literature related to branded mobile payment is limited.This study expects to develop the research model based on customer engagement model which is the superior way to nurture customers’ loyalty in the marketing field. The customer engagement describes the process that customers experience product/service in the shopping context, and then customers will have positive or negative perception based on the evaluation of the shopping journey. The cumulative positive outcomes enhance customers’ connection to the branded mobile payment and finally customer tends to continuously use it. In the stage of experiencing product/service, we propose two routes for experiencing based on Tseng and Lee's (2018) study. In the utilitarian route, we develop antecedents related to application based on affordances theory, which emphasized the importance of interplay of users/actors, technology and environmental object. In the affective route, we pay attention to effects of brand image and connection. In the stage of evaluation, we identify outcomes of evaluation as multidimensional concept of perceived benefits, including functional, experiential, symbolic and monetary benefits. In the third stage, the accumulated positive outcomes fosters customers' highly emotional connection towards the branded mobile payment, and then encourage customers' repeated usage intention. However, customers’ past habitual behavior may inhibit the process of customer engagement to being loyal. So, we employ the perspective of status quo bias for explaining why customers hesitate to continuously using branded mobile payment. The past investment increase customers' transaction cost and sunk cost, as well as tendency to weigh potential losses larger and then heighten customers' inertia behavior.This study will conduct online surveys for data collection. We will propose theoretical and managerial implications based on results of data analysis.

Project ID:PB10907-4419
External Project ID:MOST109-2410-H182-015