Individuals' adopton of cloud services: A technology base switching decision

Abstract

Cloud computing is currently very popular. A few cloud services, such as Gmail and YouTube, have demonstrated notable success. So far, most research has primarily focused on technical implementation and business models of cloud services, and scant research explains why individuals do or do not use cloud services. This research-in-progress aims to propose a study to examine why a web user adopts or does not adopt a cloud service. When investigating the adoption issue of cloud services more closely, one may realize that whether to use the services is not an adoption decision, but a switching decision. In a switching decision, individuals change their allegiance from one form of (offline) applications to cloud services. This research-in-progress proposes five factors, namely service superiority, technology radicalness, ease of use, monetary value, and ubiquity control, which are motivators or inhibitors for an individual to switch from an offline device to cloud services. We plan to use a survey for data collection to test the five hypotheses.