The Effect of Design Characteristics of Mobile Applications on User Retention: An Environmental Psychology Perspective

摘要

As many people have adopted mobile applications for their hand-held devices, mobile applications are becoming widely used in everyday life. Nonetheless, some applications are used only few times and then abandoned. Particular since many firms have launched mobile applications for communicating with and delivering their products or services to customers, user retentions toward mobile applications can be critical. To address this challenge, we identify how design characteristics of mobile application enhance user retention toward mobile applications, particularly in the context of cross-channel commerce. Drawing on an environmental psychology, we address that user beliefs stimulated by environmental cues (e.g., design characteristics) affect users' cognitive and affective internal states, which in turn lead to their retention toward mobile applications. Contributions of this study include 1) theoretically, a suggested theoretical framework for effective mobile application design as an extension of website design, and (2) practically, helping practitioners to articulate effective mobile applications or the Internet strategy in mobile-based online markets.