User adoption and purchasing intention after free trial: an empirical study of mobile newspapers

Marketing stimuli such as free trial has been widely used to increase user acceptance and intention to purchase information services. Information technology (IT) acceptance theories, such as the technology acceptance model and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, have been widely used to explain information system (IS) usage. These theories, however, do not explicitly consider the effect of marketing stimuli that would influence and shape user beliefs, attitude and behavior towards the use and purchase of new IS/IT. Echoing calls for advancing knowledge in technology acceptance, we propose a theoretical model based on expectation conformation theory to investigate the effect of marketing stimuli in the form of free trial and price of using IS on consumers’ acceptance decision process. In this study, free trial of mobile newspaper is used as the research context. A survey sample of 192 responses is used to test the model. Results suggest that the trial experience has an impact on post-trial beliefs and attitude. Perceived fee also has an effect on the acceptance of the information service when the users need to pay for the service.