Technology Support and Post-adoption It Service Use: Evidence from the Cloud

Does a provider’s technology support strategy influence its buyers’ postadoption IT service use? We study this question in the context of cloud infrastructure services. The provider offers two levels of support, basic and full. Under basic support, the provider handles simple service quality issues. Under full support, the provider also offers education, training, and personalized guidance. Using a unique data set on public cloud infrastructure services use by 22,179 firms from March 2009 to August 2012 and fixed effects dynamic panel data models, we find that buyers who opt for full support use 31.84% more of the service than those who do not. Moreover, buyers continue learning from the provider as they continue having access to full support, and full support has a stronger influence on buyer behavior the longer it has been accessed. The effect of technology support on the effectiveness of buyers’ IT use follows a similar pattern: it increases upon switching from basic to full support and its impact grows over time.