The Impact of User Competence on Smartphone Satisfaction: Focused on Covariate Effect

Abstract

The unprecedented growth of smartphone use attracts academic attention, given that smartphones are an integration of the functions of voice communication, Internet access, and data retrieval and management. In general, users’ competence(finesse and knowledge) of smartphones can play an important role in increasing their smartphone usage. Yet, a little has done to examine the covariate effect of user competence in the relationship among smartphone quality, dependency, and customer satisfaction. The primary purpose of this study is, thus, to explore the differences in mean values of smartphone quality, dependency, and customer satisfaction for each group according to whether user competence is controlled or not. Appropriate measures were developed with previous studies and tested on 217 respondents who have used smartphones. The results showed that the roles of user competence in the two hypotheses are significant. The difference in mean values of smartphone dependency for the level of smartphone quality(high, middle, and low) can be more affected by finesse than knowledge. In addition, the difference in mean values of customer satisfaction for the level of smartphone dependency(high, middle, and low) can be more affected by user competence. Thus, the future research on the relationship between dependency and satisfaction needs to examine the covariate effect of user competence to provide a meaningful implication.