Why should I pay for e-books?. An empirical study to investigate Chinese readers’ purchase behavioural intention in the mobile era
| Date | 05 June 2017 |
| Pages | 472-493 |
| Published date | 05 June 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-09-2015-0165 |
| Author | Min Zhang,Mingxing Zhu,Xiaotong Liu,Jun Yang |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Why should I pay for e-books?
An empirical study to investigate
Chinese readers’ purchase behavioural
intention in the mobile era
Min Zhang, Mingxing Zhu and Xiaotong Liu
School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, and
Jun Yang
School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology,
Wuhan, China
Abstract
Purpose –Because mobile phones offer a new, affordable and easy-to-use portal to reading material,
mobile reading is emerging as the most ultra-modern reading approach. From the perspective of mobile
reading service providers, knowledge of customer purchase, and consumption behaviour is critical for
their survival and success. This paper aims to provide insights into the factors that inuence the
purchase e-books.
Design/methodology/approach –Following means-end chain theory, the prospect theory and
elaboration likelihood model, a structural equation model is proposed to investigate and identify key
factors that drive the purchase intention of experienced mobile readers. In the theoretical model,
utilitarian value (UV) and hedonic value (HV) are supposed as formative second-order constructs formed
by related payoff.
Findings –Both UV and HV are positively associated with readers’ purchase intention. However, there
are no big differences between these two path coefcients. People seem to perceive relatively low
payment risk although perceived risk could still negatively affect purchase intention. As a predictor of
purchase intention, UV is less important when risk perception increases or when involvement (IV)
decreases. Furthermore, this study illustrates that uniqueness and convenience (CV) are signicant
components of UV, whereas curiosity and ow are components of HV.
Practical implications –Mobile reading providers should highlight the professional and specicity
of app such as beautiful cover, page setup that similar to real books and so on. Readers should be allowed
to post real-time reviews and communicate with others to improve their sense of satisfaction,
participation and belonging. The payment process should be concise and simple through which readers
can save their purchase time and effort. Mobile reading service providers should provide trustworthy
payment approaches, especially third-party platform and guarantee the CV and safety of payment
activity.
Originality value –By focusing on the impacts of relationships among UV, HV, perceived risk and IV
to purchase intention, this paper not only provides a theoretical understanding of mobile reading
The authors are grateful to the editors and the referees for their constructive comments that led to this
improved version. The authors were supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(Grant 71203166, 71672065), the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant number
71672065], the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant 2015 Wuhan
University project of Humanities and Social Science “Evaluation and Restoration Mechanism Research
of Online Reputation in Crisis Injury Environment”), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the
Central Universities (Grant 2016 Wuhan University project of Humanities and Social Science
“Humanities Computing & Semantic Mining”).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
EL
35,3
472
Received 2 September 2015
Revised 17 March 2016
6 August 2016
Accepted 12 October 2016
TheElectronic Library
Vol.35 No. 3, 2017
pp.472-493
©Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-09-2015-0165
purchase behaviour but also offers practical insights to reading material manufactures and app
developers for promoting such a process.
Keywords Elaboration likelihood model, Purchase intention, Prospect theory, Means-end chain
theory, Mobile reading
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Mobile reading refers to personal reading behaviour on mobile handhold devices, such as mobile
phones, PDAs, PSPs, MP4s and e-readers, and it is emerging as Zhang and Ma (2011) predicted.
While smartphones offer a new, affordable and easy-to-use portal for reading material, reading
with smartphones is emerging as the most ultra-modern reading approach in both personal and
work environments. Statistical data show that the shipments of smartphones reached 1.29 billion
in 2015, whereas the total number of global smartphones users would be over 2 billion by 2016
(eMarketer, 2014;TrendForce, 2016). In more recent years, super-duper hardware and network
environment have facilitated the breakthrough of the mobile service industry in China.
According to a government report issued by China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC,
2016), the quantity of Chinese mobile service users has researched 656 million by June 2016. The
prosperity of the mobile service market has ushered in mobile reading as a ubiquitous and
nationwide reading model for the Chinese people. In addition, on account of the integration of
portable and exible TIME (telecom, internet, media, and entertainment) service, the mobile
reading industry appeals to various stakeholders, such as IT vendors, telecom carriers and
content providers. Up to now, three major telecom carriers in China (China Mobile, China Unicom
and China Telecom), traditional publishing houses, content service providers and some internet
companies (such as Tencent.inc, Alibaba.inc, Baidu.inc, etc.) are all making great efforts to
explore the mobile reading market.
According to the theory of remedial media, new born media emerge as compensation or
remedy for existing media formats or their functional deciencies (Jou et al., 2016). From this
point of view, mobile reading can be considered as a reinvention of the web-based reading
approach (Itzkovitch, 2012). It includes personalised and exible content while providing
interactivity, mobility, timeliness, as well as the ability to overcome multiple temporal and
spatial barriers (Jou et al., 2016). Academic attention to mobile reading has taken on
paramount importance concerning the fast development of this industry. The notion,
strength and weakness of e-books are initial research topics. The consensus is that
convenience (CV) and the ability to view documents from on and off campus and 24/7
accessibility are the primary reasons for the wide acceptance of e-books (Jindal and Pant,
2013;Mulholland and Bates, 2014). Other researchers were engaged in comparing and
contrasting e-books with paper-based books. Studies have found that e-books are preferred
in a brief, improvisational and purposeful context, whereas paper-based books are preferred
for extended reading (Daniel and Woody, 2013;Jindal and Pant, 2013;Mulholland and Bates,
2014). Besides the theoretical studies, research has been conducted from a behavioural
perspective. Williams et al. (2014) found that subject norms, image, perceived usefulness,
perceived ease of use and cost are highly inuential in guiding e-reader use intention. West
and Ei (2014) carried out an empirical study to better understand the habit, attitude and
preference for mobile readers by examining when, how, why and to what extent people in
developing countries may read on mobile devices.
In conclusion, our careful literature review on mobile reading and e-books demonstrates that
two critical gaps exist, and these two gaps may represent fruitful opportunities for deeper research.
The rst gap is that theoretical research is relatively sparse into purchase intentions of
e-books in the mobile era, especially from the perspective of value-driving. Mobile reading
473
Why should I
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e-books?
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