Factors affecting customers' continuance intention to use the online booking system of service firms: The case of patients in health care services

Abstract

Nowadays, most service firms have implemented online booking systems for customers to register to use the firms' services via the Internet. In other words, customers can use online booking systems to register for firms’ services without coming in person to the firms to register directly as in the traditional way. The main objective of this study is to investigate the factors that directly and indirectly impact customers’ continuance intention to online booking systems of service firms. The research setting is health services in Vietnam, the survey data was collected from 302 patients at hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. A quantitative approach is used, and data is analyzed using structural equation modelling (SEM). This empirical study shows that the following two factors directly and indirectly influence patients' intention to use the online booking system. The first one is the quality of the system. The second factor is the system compatibility with customers. The results also indicate that these factors directly impact patients’ perceived usefulness and ease of use. Therefore, managers of service firms can promote the use of online booking systems by customers by improving the system quality and compatibility of the system. Discussions of managerial implications from the research results are presented in detail in the paper. Furthermore, this study has a significant theoretical contribution to the important role of system quality and system compatibility with customers, which has not been paid attention to in previous studies, especially in health services. Moreover, this study also contributes an additional empirical research result to the research stream related to the service delivery process of service firms in the pre-service stage.