A study on factors that affect users’ behavioral intention to transfer usage from the offline to the online channel

Abstract
Increasingly more service providers offer both offline and online services simultaneously, but consumers still seem to prefer using offline services rather than online ones. Our research focuses on factors that influence users’ intention to transfer their usage from the offline to the online channel that offer similar services. Drawing on the valence framework and prior research related to habit, innovativeness, and Internet experience, we propose a research model that incorporates motivators and inhibitors of usage transfer from both the offline and online channels. Using banking services in China as the research context, our study reveals that innovativeness in new technology and relative benefit have positive effects on users’ intention to transfer usage. Conversely, habits that consumers form in the offline channel have a negative effect on the intention to transfer usage. Moreover, our findings indicate that Internet experience moderates the relationship between relative benefit and consumers’ intention to transfer usage from offline to online services. These results provide a better understanding of consumers’ usage-transfer behavior and offer suggestions to providers in boosting their consumers’ use of online services.