Investigating the Relationship Among Ease-of-Use, NPS, and Customers’ Sequent Spending of Cloud Computing Products

Abstract

Ease of use is one of the crucial principals when evaluating the experience of interacting with the product consoles, and NPS measures the customers’ brand loyalty. This study aimed to investigate the possible relationship between the two metrics in the cloud computing field, and explore whether the customers’ attitude influence their actual consuming behavior, which has been rarely discussed in the enterprise service industries. Researchers collected data though questionnaires and background databases, then correlation analysis, regression and ANOVA were conducted to test the hypotheses. One of the main procedures was to compare the sequent monthly spending of customers from different groups, and samples were grouped by their ease-of-use rating and NPS identities (promoters/passives/detractors). The final results indicated a positive correlation between the ease-of-use scores and NPS of a cloud computing product, especially when their usage experience lays emphasis on operating consoles. Furthermore, a notable finding showed that, promoters’ monthly spending increase were significantly higher than those of detractors and even reached 8 times in 9 months after the NPS survey, with the sample roles controlled as the purchase decision-makers rather than merely users. However, no difference was detected between the retention of promoters and detractors, which might due to the ambiguity in precisely defining the churn/retention. This is the first scientific research that investigated the relationship between ease-of-use and NPS, and the impact of attitudes towards products on sequent spending at the micro (customer) level, with the innovative perspective from the cloud computing industry.