As a number of studies in consumer behavior have discovered the role of affect in consumer decision, technology acceptance related studies start to explore the role of IT users'' affect on acceptance and continuous intention. However, extant studies on switching intention have heavily focused on cognitive factors and thus the role of IT users'' affect on switching intention has been neglected.
Some major studies on switching intention(Keaveney 1995; Bhattacherjee 2012) suggest the growing importance of customer switching, especially in digital transformation era and the plausible influence of affect on the switching intention. So this study explores the role of IT users'' affect on switching intention, focusing on the internet only bank in Korea. Internet only bank is IT service based on mobile network, biometrics, big data and artificial intelligence as well as financial service offering deposit, loan, investment and insurance products.
This study differentiates itself by incorporating cognitive and affective factors as factors affecting switching intention, and exploring the valence of emotions, not specific emotions. As theoretical background, this study employs Technology acceptance model(Davis 1989), Post acceptance model (Bhattacherjee 2001) and PANAS(positive and negative affect schedule, Watson 1989) to explore the key cognitive and affective factors influencing users'' switching intention. The research model includes seven factors, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and expectation confirmation as independent variable, positive affect and negative affect as mediator, and switching intention as dependent variable.
Data was collected through online survey and total 752 valid responses were analyzed with structural equation modeling using AMOS. Key findings indicate that negative affect is positively related with switching intention and the perceived ease of use influences the negative affect. This implies that if the core need of ease of use is not properly served, internet only bank users experience negative affect and that leads to switching to other alternative banking services. The main finding suggests that financial firms including internet only bank need to monitor where and when customers experience negative feelings through big data analysis.
This research has the following limitations. First, as switching costs play crucial role in switching decision, further research can examine switching costs. Second, longitudinal research may provide more insights as the internet only bank in Korea was established more than two years ago. Third, though PANAS is most widely used in measuring affect, consumer specific affect schedule may provide valuable findings.