Paper Info
Title
Role Of The Customer Value In The Software As A Service Concept
Abstract
According to evolving literature on the Software as a Service (SaaS) concept, the benefits proposed for the customer and the provider are controversial as many of the customer benefits are also serious risks for the service provider. A sustainable service in the proposed one-to-many SaaS-mode will therefore require an effective business model capable to lock-in customers. For this purpose we propose applying general e-commerce business models. To tailor these for SaaS, we need to develop new instruments in order to study the customer benefits and value creation. For our explorative empirical study we propose that ease of use and usefulness from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) should be combined with content, context, and infrastructure from Rayport and Sviokla's model in order to study the evolution of the lockin of the customers of online services. Our empirical data on 251 online newspaper readers showed that the above-mentioned predictors appeared in new factorial combinations of navigational characteristics, usefulness, novelty of the content, complementarities, and the context of the service. These combinations were significant predictors of the customer lock-in, many of them being competitive. For the experienced customers, personally relevant and useful content and effective infrastructure explained over 40 percent of the variance in the lock-in. For the non-experienced users the novelty of the services was the most significant predictor of the lock-in. We discuss the role of the customer value sources (novelty, effectiveness, and complementarities) for practical development of the online Software as a Service offering.
Year
DOI
Venue
2005
10.1007/0-387-29773-1_36
CHALLENGES OF EXPANDING INTERNET: E-COMMERCE, E-BUSINESS, AND E-GOVERNMENT
Keywords
Field
DocType
Software as a Service, online newspapers, e-commerce, value creation, customer lock-in
Customer intelligence,Customer retention,Service quality,Customer to customer,Computer science,Knowledge management,Customer advocacy,Service level requirement,Customer Service Assurance,Customer equity,Process management
Conference
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
189
1571-5736
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
4
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Markku Sääksjärvi1225.58
Aki Lassila231.42