Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence college students’ smartphone use for academic purposes by identifying the task-technology fit (TTF) of smartphones. A research model is proposed to explain how TTF of smartphones affects college students’ perceived academic performance and smartphone use. Design/methodology/approach Online surveys were administered to college students at a South Korean university that has offered online academic services for more than five years, and 1,923 valid responses were analyzed. The study used partial least squares path modeling to evaluate the measurement model, and the bootstrapping technique to test the significance of the hypotheses. Findings The findings highlight that the TTF of smartphones has a direct influence on students’ perceptions of performance impact and an indirect influence on smartphone use through a precursor of utilization, such as attitude toward smartphone use, social norms and facilitating conditions. Research limitations/implications Despite a reasonably large sample, a single cross-sectional survey has a likelihood of selection bias in the sample. Practical implications This study applies the TTF model to smartphone use among college students and suggests an effective way to motivate them to use mobile technologies for their academic activities. Originality/value The present study develops an empirical model to assess the adoption of smartphones and its effect on college students’ academic performance. Above all, the study identifies a causal relationship among TTF, precursor of utilization, smartphone use and a perceived impact on academic performance based on the development and validation of the TTF constructs of smartphones.

The rapidly increasing number of products available online ironically requires consumers to spend excessive time and efforts for searching the relevant product information. As a result, it is getting popular among online consumers to use the curated shopping, which can help consumers by providing a short list of products that are carefully selected by professional curators. In this study, we examined how the risk and value of curated shopping perceived by consumers affect their decision to use the curated shopping. Through empirical analysis, we found that the perceived convenience, efficiency of curated shopping, and the degree of shopping fatigue as positive factors that increase the intention to use curated shopping. On the other hand, the perceived financial risk was found to be a significant negative factor. Furthermore, it was interesting to find that previous experience of curated shopping acts as a moderator, which affect the strength of the above relationships. The academic and practical implications of these findings were discussed.

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