Modeling consumer switching behavior in social network games by exploring consumer cognitive dissonance and change experience

The rapid proliferation of e-service innovations has resulted in a rich availability of similar eservices from different developers or brands. This rich availability of alternative e-service providers as well as the rapid technological development has prompted users to switch from one e-service provider to an alternative more frequently (c.f. Bhattacherjee et al., 2012). Users can freely switch between different e-service products, and “switching to a competing e-service is almost as easy as downloading and installing it, or completing an online registration form to sign up for a different service” (Bhattacherjee et al., 2012, pp. 327). Therefore, Yang and Peterson (2004) warned that competition in the Internet environment is just a click away because customers appear to face only minimal barriers to switch to alternative products or services.