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Factors affecting a Mobile Application’s Acceptance : An empirical study of user acceptance of WeChat in China

Along with the development of smart phones and smart phones operating systems, users of smart phones are able to install software, games and other programs provided by third-party providers. WeChat as a third party software that exists in the current market, is an in-stant messaging application that enables users to send voice, video, pictures and text to their contacts through mobile network. Being a new application, the user acceptance of WeChat has not been studied. Therefore, the result of this study will be valuable to fill the knowledge gap about user acceptance study of this mobile application, and future development of other similar instant messaging mobile application could also benefit from this study. This study focuses on WeChat users and answers to the following research questions: 1. What are the factors that affect the users‘ acceptance of WeChat? 2. How could other competing instant messaging applications improve their user acceptance? The purpose of this study is to explain factors that affect the users‘ acceptance of WeChat among WeChat users who are studying in one specific school and working in one specific company. This study adopts a deductive, theory testing approach. The research model was proposed through literature review and expert interview, and six hypotheses were developed based on the research model. A survey was conducted subsequently to collect quantitative data. Hypotheses were tested through analyzing the quantitative data by using SPSS. Through testing the hypotheses, this study concluded that effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, cost and privacy are the factors that could affect user acceptance of WeChat. Other similar IM mobile applications could take those identified factors as reference in further user acceptance study, and the proposed research model in this study could also help in improving understanding of user acceptance in similar IM mobile application study.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hj-21650
Date January 2013
CreatorsZeng, Zili, Hu, Xin, Mei, Shuo
PublisherInternationella Handelshögskolan, Högskolan i Jönköping, IHH, Informatik, Internationella Handelshögskolan, Högskolan i Jönköping, IHH, Informatik, Internationella Handelshögskolan, Högskolan i Jönköping, IHH, Informatik
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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