Perceived coolness of mobile shopping applications and its consequences

Abstract

The explosive development of technology along with the 4th industrial revolution requires innovative applications of technology to be differentiated to bring more competitive advantages as well as values to business firms. However, creating these unique differentiators is increasingly difficult for businesses due to the increasing similarity of features in technology applications. The “cool” concept has emerged as a compelling differentiator that allows users to have greater experiences in freshly technology applications such as mobile shopping apps. Drawing upon the flow theory and social exchange theory, this study proposes a theoretical model to investigate the effects of a sense of coolness on immersive experience which in turn leads to customers’ received values from mobile shopping apps (termed as values for customers) as well as their contributed values to mobile shopping apps (termed as values from customers). The mediating role of immersion on the relationships between perceived coolness and values for customers and values from customers are also examined. With the dataset collected from 351 mobile shopping app users in Vietnam, this study applies the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) approach to test the proposed hypotheses. The analysis results show that mobile shopping app coolness facilitates “value get, value give”, i.e. values from the firm to customers and values from customers to the firm. The immersive experience is found to mediate the relationship between customer perceived coolness of mobile shopping apps and these above values. The findings provide valuable managerial and theoretical implications with respect to the effects of perceived coolness on customers value creation.