Customer’s adoption of 5G services on social media: The mediating role of customer-based brand equity and technology adoption

Abstract

Rapid evaluation of mobile network technology has a significant impact on the telecommunication industry’s traditional system. A deep understanding of consumer’s adoption behaviour of the innovative mobile service is required. The Fifth generation of mobile communication technology has recently been introduced to the market for individual and commercial use. We specifically focused on how social media is used by telecommunication companies to influence consumer’s 5G mobile service bundle purchase intention. Since this research targets the Chinese market, we choose WeChat as a representative platform to analyse the companies’ social media marketing activities. In this research, we collected 765 valid online responses through an online survey administered to the survey of their intention to purchase 5G mobile service bundle. Structural equation modelling technique was used to test the direct and mediation hypotheses. The result shows that SMM activities has a positive and direct influence on adoption readiness, CBBE and selfefficacy. Moreover, SMM activities have a positive influence on purchase intention through the mediation of adoption readiness and CBBE. However, the result reposted that SMM activities have a direct and negative relationship with purchase intention. The result also showed self-efficacy has no influence on purchase intention and does not mediate the relationship between SMM activities and purchase intention of 5G mobile service bundles. On the contrary, Self-efficacy has an influence on purchase intention through the mediation effect of adoption readiness. This research is this is the first study to examine the interrelationships between SMM activities technology adoption and brand equity. Furthermore, this is one of the first studies on consumer’s intention to purchase 5G mobile services bundles. The thesis also provides a new perspective for analysing other technology product and service adoption which also help the telecommunication industry better understand customer’s behaviour and develop an effective marketing strategy