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The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors influencing customers’ willingness to participate in virtual brand community’s value co-creation and help companies better operating the virtual brand community.

Based on social cognitive theory and the features of the virtual brand community, this paper constructed a model of factors influencing customers’ willingness to participate in virtual brand community’s value co-creation. Then this paper quantitatively analyzed the mediating effect and the moderating effect.

The empirical analysis came to the following conclusions: first, in virtual brand communities, customers’ willingness to participate in value co-creation would be influenced by subject factors, environment factors, brand factors and perceived value factor. Second, customer involvement is an important moderator. The more involved the customer is, the more he/she will rely on the virtual brand community. Particularly, customer involvement has a positive moderating effect on the influence of subject factors, while it has a negative moderating effect on the influence of community experience and community trust. Third, perceived value plays a significant mediating role between subject factors and customers’ willingness to participate in value co-creation.

The results of this study can help companies better understand the influence of external factors like environment and brand so that they can better operate the virtual brand community and encourage customers to contribute to the development of the community and the brand.

Most of the existing studies focused on the formation of virtual brand communities and customers’ participation behaviors, but there is limited research focusing on what contributes to customers’ participation in value co-creation of virtual brand communities. This study, therefore, attempts to bridge the research gap.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the key factors influencing the service innovation of mobile social networks (MSNs), figure out the mechanism of all factors in different stages of service innovation and help mobile social application developers promote better service innovation.

From previous research, this paper adopted nine initial factors that influence the service innovation of MSNs, and divide the service innovation process into three stages (i.e. demand analysis, service design and innovation implementation). On that basis, the authors constructed a model, and then collected data from 184 managers from 20 leading MSN corporates in China through questionnaires to examine the model. Furthermore, factor analysis was used to extract key factors influencing the service innovation of MSNs, correlation analysis was employed to discuss the relationship among factors and regression analysis was applied to explore their specific roles in different stages in the service innovation process.

The empirical results show that the service innovation of MSNs is mainly influenced by five key factors: user, developer, market environment, social environment and technology. The authors found that different factors played remarkably different roles in the three stages. In specific, all factors but technology are important in the demand analysis stage; all factors but social environment are critical to service design; and all factors but user contribute to the implementation of service innovation.

The results of this study can help mobile social application developers and mobile social service providers in China to better understand the driving force of service innovation and what should be emphasized in different stages, and then find the optimal path to implement service innovation, improve their service quality and user experience and facilitate the development of Chinese MSNs.

This is the first research that comprehensively explores factors influencing the service innovation of Chinese MSNs from multi-dimensional perspectives, which provides profound theoretical guidance to the practice of service innovation in China. Also, it contributes to the development of innovation theory of traditional web services.

Social networking sites (SNSs) continue to grow in popularity with competition in the market growing as well. The purpose of this paper is to examine three research questions to determine how competition within the SNS area may affect the continuance intention on the incumbent SNS, Facebook. The first question examines the relationship between having an account on one of the four different SNSs and the impact on continuance intention. The second question examines attitudes toward specific alternatives and continuance intention on the incumbent SNS. The third question takes a broader examination of general attitudes about alternative attractiveness and attitude toward switching to predict continuance intention. A post hoc analysis was conducted to further understand the impact of specific SNS alternative attitudes on general attitudes.

Based on a survey of 918 users, this research examines the three questions using various methods including ANCOVA to examine question 1 and multiple structural equation models to examine questions 2, 3 and the post hoc analysis.

The analysis of the models suggests that both alternative attractiveness and attitude toward switching have the greatest impact on the continuance intention of the incumbent site. Specific sites were found to be complements or substitutes for the incumbent. The viewing of the specific alternative site as an alternative to Facebook had a negative impact on continuance intention. The general model of alternative attractiveness and attitude toward switching explained a moderate to substantial amount of continuance intention.

Although use and abandonment of SNSs have been examined extensively, minimal attention has been given to the impact that alternative SNSs have on continuance intentions of a user’s primary SNS.

Technology-enhanced learning (TEL), undoubtedly, creates a big difference in higher education students' knowledge and growth, which helps them become globally competitive in the job market eventually. The present study aims to investigate the effect of various factors, i.e. informational quality, compatibility, resource availability, subjective norms, subject interest, institutional branding and self-efficacy on students' adoption intention to TEL enrolled in different government and private educational institutes in Chhattisgarh state.

The primary data were collected from 600 students from different universities and colleges using purposive sampling technique with “criterion sampling”. Hierarchal multiple regression (stepwise) analysis was used on the collected data.

Results concluded that factors, i.e. compatibility, resource availability, subjective norms, subject interest and institutional branding are significantly and positively influencing students' adoption intention to TEL in Chhattisgarh, whereas self-efficacy and informational quality of TEL did not contribute significant effect for students' adoption intention.

There is a lack of research in the knowledge domain, especially in the field of TEL, in the state of Chhattisgarh. The different variables taken in the present study, such as informational quality, self-efficacy, institutional branding, subjective norms, resource availability, compatibility and subject interest of TEL, are the first of its kind where these variables are being examined on the students' adoption intention to TEL.