Winning Back Technology Disadopters: Testing a Technology Re-Adoption Model in the Context of Mobile Internet Services

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of how Information and Communication Technology (ICT) service providers can win back disadopters of an earlier generation of technology when a new technology generation appears on the market. Integrating prior research on consumers’ defensive bias, knowledge accessibility, diffusion of innovation, and technology adoption, we developed a model to predict disadopters’ intention to re-adopt a technology. We postulate that the primary reason for disadoption moderates the impacts of both the drivers of re-adoption (i.e., perceived superiority, effort expectancy, price value of the new technology generation, and social influence) and the characteristics of prior usage experience with the disadopted earlier technology generation (i.e., duration of disadoption, tenure with the old generation, and usage intensity of the old generation) on re-adoption intention. We tested our technology re-adoption model in the context of mobile Internet services. Data was collected from 274 disadopters of an earlier generation of mobile Internet services before the advent of the third generation (3G) technology. The results supported most of our hypotheses. These findings have significant theoretical and practical implications, especially for firms interested in winning back technology disadopters. Finally, we present an agenda for further research into technology re-adoption.

Keywords: Technology disadopters, technology re-adoption, customer win-back, defensive bias, knowledge accessibility, technology adoption, UTAUT, diffusion of innovation, mobile Internet