• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.193-212
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• 2011

Mobile instant messaging service is surfacing to an important keyword in the mobile market together with popularization of Smart phones. Mobile instant messaging service in Korea has become popular to the degree of 87.9% usages from total Smartphone holders, and it is expected that using populations will be more enlarged afterwards if considering a fact that its populations of Smartphone is continuously being increased after exceeding 10 million persons (Trend Monitor, June 2011). In the instant messaging market where competitions have been deepened day by day, raising customer's royalties will be the key for company's business survivals and goals of corporate marketing strategies. It could be said that understanding on which factors affect to customer retentions and royalties is very important. Specially, as changing status is being progressed very quickly in case of innovative mobile services like the instant messaging service, research necessities on how many do consumers use the services after accepting them, how much do consumers use them variously, and whether does it connect to long-term relations have been increased, but studies on such matters are in insufficient situations actually. Therefore, this study examined on which effects were affected to use-diffusion and loyalty factors from perceived customer vales' factors having been occurred after accepting the mobile instant messaging service, namely 'functional value', 'monetary value', 'emotional value', and 'social value'. Also, the study looked into what kind of roles do the service usage and using variety play to service's continued using intents as a loyalty index, recommending intents to others, and brand switching intents. And then the study laid the main purpose in trying to provide implications for enhancing customer securities and royalties on the mobile instant messaging service through research's results. The research hypotheses are as follows; H1: Perceived values will affect influences to royalties. H2: Use-Diffusion will affect influences to loyalty. H3: Perceived value will affect influences to loyalty. H4: The use-diffusion will play intermediating roles between perceived values and loyalty. Total 276 cases among collected 284 ones were used for the statistical analysis by SPSS ver. 15 package. Reliability, Factor analysis, regression were done. As the result of research, 'monetary value' and 'emotional value' affected to 'usage' among perceived value factors, and 'emotional value' was appeared as affecting the largest influence. Besides, the usage affected to constant-using intents and recommending intents to others, and using varieties were displayed as affecting to recommending intents to others. On the other hand, 'Using' and 'Using diversity' were appeared as not affecting to 'brand switching intentions'. Meanwhile, as the result of recognizing about effects of perceived values on the loyalty, it was appeared such like 'continued using intents' affected to'functional value', 'monetary value', and 'social value' first, and also 'monetary value', 'emotional value', and 'social value' affected to 'recommending intents to others'. On the other hand, it was shown such like only 'social value' affected influences to 'brand switching intents', and thus contrary results with the factor 'constant-using intents' were displayed. So, it seems that there are many applications to service provides who are worrying about marketing strategies for making consumer retains (constant-using) and new consumer's inductions (brand-switching intents). Finally, as a result of looking into intermediating roles of the use-diffusion factor in relations between conceived values and royalties at hypothesis 4, 'using' and 'using diversity' were displayed as affecting significant influences all together. Regarding to research result's implications, for expanding and promoting continued uses of the mobile instant messaging service by service providers: First, encouraging recognitions on the perceived value connected to users' service usage are necessary. Second, setting up user's use-diffusion strategies are required so as to enhance the loyalty after understanding a fact that use-diffusion patterns affecting to the service's loyalty are different. Finally, methods of raising customer loyalties and making constant relationships have to be grouped by analyzing on what are the customer value's factors that can satisfy users in competitive alterations.