How oppositional loyalties resulting from produceruser collaborations reduce new product entry: Examples of online games
Instead of technological lock-in effects, oppositional loyalty to a product may emerge from users collaborations in the product, which grant consumers emotional experiences with the brand, encourage personal relationships, and provide emotional benefits. Therefore, consumers may limit their allocations of resources to competing new products because they devalue a new offerings relative product performance and its user and complementary networks. Prior rate of use enhances this devaluating effect, and prior experience deepens the negative effects. In contrast, users with minimal prior experience and low usage rates more easily accept new products. This study tests these predictions in a path analysis with data pertaining to an online game, collected from consumers in cybercafs; the 296 respondents across 191 cybercafs support the hypotheses.
oppositional loyalty collaboration new products online games user and complements network