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Although both anecdotal and academic sources have suggested that interpersonal recommendation is an important means to promote mobile applications (apps), little to no research has investigated this topic. To fill the void, we develop a research model based on the Customer Value, Satisfaction, and Loyalty Framework (VSL). While prior VSL studies treated customer value as a black box and examined its effects as a whole, this research breaks down customer value to utilitarian benefits (consisting of app utility and app quality), hedonic benefits (consisting of app aesthetics and enjoyment), monetary sacrifices and non-monetary sacrifices (consisting of technicality, knowledge of alternative quality and privacy risk). This research extends VSL to the mobile app context and discerns factors that influence app recommendation. Based on the data analysis of 347 app users, we found that intention to recommend is a strong predictor of app recommendation behavior. Satisfaction with apps, users' app continuance intention, and hedonic benefits obtained from using apps are the direct antecedents of intention to recommend. Moreover, non-monetary sacrifices and utilitarian benefits have indirect effects on intention to recommend through satisfaction and app continuance intention. Contrary to our hypotheses, we did not find the significant effects of monetary sacrifices in the refined VSL. We also provide a detailed discussion about these findings, and the theoretical and practical implications of the research.
Xu et al. (Tue,) studied this question.