Research Article
An Empirical Study on the Theoretical Integration Model of User Satisfaction and Emotional Attachment
Published: January 2008 · Vol. 37 No. 5 · pp. 1171-1203
Full Text
Abstract
Recently, research on user experience has been increasing in the field of management studies, and existing studies related to user experience assume that when users have good experiences through the use of specific devices or systems, user satisfaction improves, and that such enhanced user satisfaction can effectively explain and predict user loyalty. However, because user experience is a broad concept encompassing not only the usefulness and ease of use of a device or system but also various elements such as aesthetic aspects and emotional dimensions, counterarguments have been raised regarding whether existing theoretical models centered on user satisfaction can sufficiently reflect the aspects of user experience through interaction with specific devices or systems, and whether user satisfaction alone can effectively explain user loyalty. Therefore, this study, recognizing these problems in existing research, introduced the new theoretical concept of emotional attachment and determined that this concept of emotional attachment could complement the theoretical and practical limitations of user satisfaction-centered theoretical models. To this end, this study developed a new theoretical model—the emotional attachment formation model—from the perspective of user experience through a review of existing studies related to emotional attachment, and theoretically extended existing models related to user experience by integrating the existing user satisfaction-centered model with the newly developed emotional attachment formation model. Furthermore, this study conducted a survey of users of four digital devices (mobile phones, MP3 players, TVs, and refrigerators) to empirically validate the developed integrated theoretical model. The survey results revealed that the integrated theoretical model proposed in this paper can explain and predict user loyalty more accurately than the existing user satisfaction-centered model. This paper concludes by presenting the limitations of the study and its theoretical and practical implications.
