2021 Volume 54 Issue 3 Pages 44-58
Customer organizations that adopt new social services encounter difficulties in continuously using such services. Although previous researches have focused on the creation and diffusion of new social services, few studies have clarified the mechanisms that promote the continuous usage of those services by customer organizations. This paper examines the effects that spontaneously created networks among customer organizations have on the continuous usage of new social services.
The survival analysis is employed by using the case of “learning therapy,” a dementia prevention or improvement service for nursing-care facilities. The paper analyzes differences in the learning therapy survival rate by comparing the network structure, cohesive or centralized, wherein the customer organization is embedded. The empirical results indicate that the survival rate increases when a customer organization is embedded in a cohesive network. The paper concludes as follows: 1) affective trust among the customer organizations is developed through this network, thereby facilitating knowledge-sharing; 2) when customer organizations share knowledge of the usage of new social services, they engage in quality improvement and problem-solving for that service to further promote its continuous usage.
