The consumer intention to use digital membership cards

The study focuses on the consumer perception regarding digital membership card, an trendy instrument in the customer relationship management (CRM). It adopts the Unified Theory of Acceptance of the Use of Technology 2, which takes into account the following determinants: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, price value, and habit. The population of the study is consumers having any membership cards. The data are collected from a random sample by using questionnaires on the Likert scale. The collected empirical data in conjunction with a multivariate regression model suggest the followings. The price value aspect is the key factor influencing the continuous intention of use of the instrument. The aspects of social influence, performance expectation, and effort expectation are more important than the hedonic motivation aspect. The findings imply that for companies to succeed with the digital CRM instrument, offering strong competitive advantages at a lower price is still important as much as the user friendliness of the device. Corresponding author: Fergyanto E. Gunawan Email addresses for the corresponding author: fgunawan@binus.edu First submission received: 29th January 2018 Revised submission received: 12th April 2018 Accepted: 12th November 2018 Introduction Smartphone is a pervasive device of mobile information and communication technology (ICT). As February 2015, the number of smartphone users has reached 68% of the global population, accounted for 1.2 billion smartphones (BuzzCity Report, 2015). Credit Suisse predicted that the smartphone ownership would approach 90% of the population or about 4.95 billion people (Booton, 2015). Without any doubt, the proliferation of the smartphone affects many aspects of business strategies including customer relationship management (CRM). CRM is a marketing practice with the intention to maximize the lifetime of customers on firms. CRM often uses ICT to leverage its practices (Reinartz, 2004). For example, the present company may use Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) to spread information and promote products of new programs at a low cost (Yilmaz,Y.S., Aydin,B.,I., and Demirbas, M., 2014). Due to the widespread of smartphones, the use of digital membership program in the form of mobile applications is gaining traction (Fujiwara & Nagasawa, 2015). We also witness the fact that the number of mobile applications has been growing exponentially but many of them are abandoned by their users. Application abandonment is mainly fueled by the loss of interest. For the reason, many studies have been performed to explore and investigate the usage of mobile apps including the use of transformational and informational mobile apps strategies to motivate usage (Kim et al., 2013; Campbell and Kwak, 2010; LaRue et al., 2010; Vladar and Fife, 2010; Wang and Wang, 2010). The use of mobile apps for branding was discussed in a great detail in Bellman et al., (2011). The relationship between experiential values and the use of mobile apps was studied by Maghnati and Ling (2013). However, how the users accept mobile apps for the purpose of customer loyalty membership programs is still unclear. This issue is the main research topic of this article. Journal of Business and Retail Management Research (JBRMR), Vol. 13 Issue 4 July 2019 www.jbrmr.com A Journal of the Academy of Business and Retail Management (ABRM) 118 Research Method To understand the factors affecting the adoption and use of the digital membership apps, we use the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). According to Venkatesh et al. (2003), UTAUT is preceded by eight theories, namely, Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Technology Acceptance Model/Technology Acceptance Model 2 (TAM/TAM2), Theory of Planned Behavior/Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB/DTPB), Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT), Motivation Model (MM), Combined-TAM-TPB and Model of PC Utilization (MPCU). Table 1 presents the relevant articles for those theories and their variables. The current research framework is depicted in Figure 1. The focus of the research is on the behavioral intention of the users of a digital membership instrument in the form of an app. Furthermore, the research seeks to understand how the intention is affected by the performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, price value, and habit. The required data are collected by questionnaires from a sample of 345 active users of the app. The instrument consists of questions in Likert scale where 1 is associated with strongly disagree and 5 is strongly agree. The obtained responses are used to establish a linear multivariate model of: