The “like” feature on Facebook has emerged as a commonly used paralinguistic tool for communicating, and its importance as an indication of positive feelings toward the posts of others is likely to increase. Comprehensive research is needed into why and how users are motivated toward ‘liking’ behavior, and whether this behavior generates an intention to continue using Facebook over time. This study combines the theory of uses and gratification and a subjective norm perspective to create an integrated model that predicts liking behavior and usage intentions on Facebook. The research model is tested with data collected from online users of Facebook and the proposed model is supported by a measurement and structural model analysis based on empirical data collected from 267 Facebook users. The findings indicate that the most salient motivations for users to liking behavior are enjoyment, information seeking, social interaction, and subjective norms, and that they subsequently reinforce their continuous intention toward the Facebook. The results also revealed that subjective norms contribute strongly to the projections of liking behavior and continuous usage intention. The proposed research model contributes to global marketing research and information-technology service management by integrating personal and social motivators to understand the acceptance of social networking technologies by users in Asia. In particular, the outcomes stand to enhance the current state of knowledge of social networking site developers, managers, and organizations to improve acceptance of their services or products, development of customer support, advertising, and/or product development. The present results lay the foundation for uses and gratification theory and subjective norms model that have important theoretical and practical implications and may guide future research efforts in this context.

While social networking services (SNS) have led to major economic and social transformations worldwide, it is becoming increasingly important to understand what constitutes the sustainable use of SNS. The current study focuses on Facebook and examines the impact of multidimensional and hierarchical service quality on sustainable use intention. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the data that has been collected through online surveys. The results show that all four dimensions of service quality (outcome quality, environment quality, interaction quality, and social quality) have significant positive effects on satisfaction. Satisfaction is found to be a reasonable predictor of sustainable use intention and word-of-mouth (WOM) communication, and the influence of WOM on sustainable use intention is also confirmed. Among all the dimensions, outcome quality and interaction quality influence WOM most strongly. The findings from this study bridge a literature gap in the context of SNS by demonstrating how SNS managers can improve service quality, leading to increases in satisfaction, WOM, and sustainable use intention.

Purpose Billions of people around the world are experiencing new ways of interacting with people using the social networking sites (SNS). With the heavy traffic and technological capabilities, SNS offers remarkable gratifications to its users, but there is a lack of knowledge about how gratifications play a role in usage intention and whether there are other factors that influence this relationship. Therefore, this study aims to fulfill these research gaps. Design/methodology/approach To explore these issues in depth, this study conceptualizes a comprehensive framework based on the theory of uses and gratification (UGT), habit and the subjective norm. Structural equation model is used to analyze the survey data. Findings The results of the study reveal that UGT has a significant direct effect on usage intention. Furthermore, user habit and subjective norm play an important mediating role in the relationship between UGT and usage intention. Originality/value The proposed framework would extensively contribute to the SNS literature and managerial insights by integrating personal and social factors in determining the user acceptance of the media.

Purpose The mobile payment system has changed payment patterns and has the potential to improve people’s quality of life and increase the bank’s efficiency. In return, the risks and trust factors inevitably led to increased challenges and become a major concern in the adoption of mobile payment service. Yet, little is known about how risk and trust factors can affect the adoption of mobile payment. Hence, this paper aims to come into contact to solve these issues in the context. Design/methodology/approach A comprehensive research model that reflects the customer satisfaction and loyalty to the adoption of mobile payment services is developed and empirically tested using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Findings Findings reveal that the perceived risk has a significant negative impact on perceived trust and customer satisfaction. Perceived trust is the most important variable in building customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction is the reasonable predictor of customer loyalty. In addition, gender differences moderate the adoption of the mobile payment service. Originality/value The results of the study hold several implications for scholars in the field of technology adoption on financial transactions and offer valuable managerial insights to design their mobile payment adoption strategies to pursue greater acceptance and diffusion of this new payment system.

Telemedicine ensures quality, cost-effective, and equally accessible healthcare services for everyone. Nonetheless, a poor usage rate could curb its progression in developing cultures like Bangladesh. Therefore, this research examines how external stimuli promote the continuous usage intentions of synchronous telemedicine services through engagement and satisfaction by deploying the stimulus-organism-response framework. A final sample of 312 telemedicine users was analyzed using the structural equation modeling in AMOS. The average age of the participants was 26.28 (std. deviation 5.53), and their average use of telemedicine was 2.39 times (std. deviation 1.31) over the last six months. This study empirically endorsed that the stimuli, including performance expectancy, information quality, and contamination avoidance, as well as organismic factors such as engagement and satisfaction, directly impacted the continuance desires for telemedicine use. In addition, the analyses validated the mediation roles of engagement and satisfaction. Furthermore, performance and effort expectancies influenced engagement, which affected satisfaction along with performance expectancy, functionality, and information quality. Accordingly, telemedicine facilitators should integrate these critical attributes into the system to sustain engagement, satisfaction, and usage intentions. This study has pioneered the effects of performance and effort expectancies on continuous usage intentions facilitated by engagement and satisfaction in the telemedicine landscape.

PurposeBanking services encounter major challenges in determining customer's psychometric behavioral intentions. Scholars suggest that a theoretical approach to better understand the key constructs of service marketing, such as service quality, perceived value, customer satisfaction, corporate image and behavioral intentions, is critical to bank performance. The present study aims to design and test a comprehensive multidimensional and hierarchical model of service quality with higher-order psychometric constructions and their mediation effects in the model.Design/methodology/approachData from a self-administered structured questionnaire are analyzed by confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.FindingsEmpirical results confirm that multidimensional and hierarchical service quality are best suited to assess overall banking service quality, in which outcome, interaction and environment quality are the important primary dimensions, with each of them having several subdimensions. Service quality is the significant antecedent of behavioral intentions, customer satisfaction, corporate image and perceived value. Customer satisfaction and service quality are the best determinants of behavioral intentions. In addition, customer satisfaction, perceived value and corporate image are complementary variables, having significant mediation effects on the relationship between service quality and behavioral intentions.Originality/valueAs a maiden study in the context of emerging economies, this research integrates a comprehensive service quality theory and valuable customer loyalty constructs, which are crucial to banks' financial performance, bolstering evidence for the theoretical pitch. This study also provides managers with a clear idea of how they can develop sustainable service marketing strategies and policies on the psychometric perceptions of customers, thereby leading banks to achieve long-term goals.

The study aims to examine user’s perceptions of the service quality of social networking sites (SNSs), contributing to customer satisfaction and usage intention leading to social commerce (s-commerce) intention. An online survey with a structured questionnaire was conducted to obtain contextual data, comprising 549 valid samples. The results indicate that outcome and environment quality have a significant influence on satisfaction, whereas interaction and outcome quality have a positive impact on usage intention of SNSs. Satisfaction is a noble indicator of usage intention; social capital and perceived trusts have a significant effect on s-commerce intention; and usage intention has the greatest influence on s-commerce intention. Perceived trust proves to be an important partial mediator between usage intention and s-commerce intention. Our results highlight the important role of service quality in behavioral perceptions of SNS users, shed much light on the social capital and s-commerce intention, and provide valuable contributions for understanding s-commerce behavior in SNSs context. The results of this study bridge gaps in SNS literature by demonstrating how s-commerce vendors or SNS practitioners can increase service quality, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and usage intention and thereby affecting the acceptance of s-commerce.

PurposeEnd-of-life electronic products exchange (EEPE) program could be an effective approach to e-waste recycling that requires consumers' participation. Thus, it is highly recommended to study factors stirring consumer behavior with regard to EEPE programs, which is largely under-explored in the existing literature. Hence, grounding on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Attitude-Behavior-Context (A-B-C) model, this study attempts to understand the determinants of consumers' EEPE intention by adding contextual and non-cognitive factors to the proposed research model.Design/methodology/approachEmploying a purposive sampling technique, respondents were drawn from university students and general consumers of electronic products in a developing country. Factor analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM) and SPSS PROCESS were used to analyze the collected data.FindingsEmpirical results confirm that subjective norm has the strongest positive impact on EEPE intention. Following this, attitude toward EEPE and perceived behavioral control play positive mediating roles in determining EEPE intention. Moreover, government initiatives moderate the unsolicited “attitude–intention gap”.Practical implicationsDrawing on this study's outcomes, the study urges to form comprehensive awareness-building campaigns, rules and regulations regarding proper e-waste management, promote “exchange offer” programs and educational programs to encourage EEPE.Originality/valueThis study makes two fresh contributions to the extant literature. First, by coupling the TPB and A-B-C theory, this study showed that both attitude (i.e. attitude toward EEPE) and context (i.e. government initiatives) are essential in eliciting individual-level post-consumption pro-environmental behavior (PEB) (i.e. EEPE). Second, government initiatives elucidate the attitude–intention gap in the reverse logistics context, especially in developing countries.