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NTU Management Review Vol. 33 No. 3 Dec. 2023

product quality so that customers do not develop the willingness to switch to other health
app providers.
Third, user preferences and habit affect user switching. Our results show that the
greater the user’s habit of using the product, the lower the user’s switching intention.

Providers should think about how to make users get accustomed to the service of the
operator. For instance, different marketing strategies can be formulated for different focus
individuals to make users more dependent on products, strengthen corporate image or

word of mouth, and implement corporate social responsibility.

6.3 Limitations and Future Research
This study inevitably faces some potential limitations that can be further investigated
in the feature. First, the purpose of this study is to find the factors that influence users’

switching intentions of health apps; therefore, this research may not be applied to other
types of apps (e.g., gaming apps, social networking apps, and tool apps). Researchers
can consider modifying this research model to explore other types of apps in the future.

Second, this study is a cross-sectional study in which the time period of data collection
is limited to one month. Besides, the number of the questionnaire samples is only 218,
meaning that the sample may lack representativeness. If we had more time to collect a
greater number of samples, the results would be more stable and credible. Third, there are
actually many factors that may affect the willingness to switch health apps. Nonetheless,

based on the concept of push-pull drivers, this study considers only five factors: attractive
alternatives, social influence, dissatisfaction, switching costs, and habits; we might ignore
other important factors that deserve further investigation. Fourth, because the participants

in this study are all Taiwanese, the research results may be dissimilar to the situations in
other countries due to culture difference. Further researchers can consider verifying this
model in different cultural contexts. Finally, this study focuses on health apps on mobile
devices (cell phones or tablets), and does not cover other devices/hardware with similar
functions, such as IoT “Sport” devices, health bracelets or smart watches. We suggest that

related research on smart wearable devices can be developed in the future.

6.4 Conclusion

The purpose of this study is to investigate users’ switching intentions of health

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