JultikaUniversity of Oulu repository

In current high performance networked cloud computing environment, Software as a Service (SaaS) originates as an efficient substitute to on-promise software with many advantages. While the current statue is after some period of using, SaaS adopters switch back to on-promise software. However, SaaS adopters’ continuance using on SaaS is a major consequence for SaaS provider’s profitability. Motivated by this, in this thesis the objective is to study what factors influence SaaS adopters’ decision on continue (or discontinue) adoption of SaaS. Expectation Confirmation Model (ECM) has been a frequently used model to study Information system (IS) continuance since the early 2000s, and researchers built extended ECM based on different characteristics of different IS contexts to study IS continuance. Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to propose an extended ECM to study SaaS continuance. In this thesis, SaaS providers’ dissatisfying factors were studied in order to build extended ECM. Through studying the current dissatisfying state of SaaS, system quality, service quality and trust were found are the possible factors prevent customers’ continuance usage towards SaaS. In order to add these 3 new constructs into legacy ECM, systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted to explore the existing studies in Information System continuance based on ECM. Through the implications from SLR, the extended model (research model) was designed. The empirical research was carried out through a case under RecRight Oy, which is a SaaS company base in Helsinki, Finland. 186 online responses were collected within RecRight’s worldwide client companies in Helsinki in June 2017. The results suggest that SaaS adopters’ continuance intention is significantly associated with perceived usefulness, confirmation, satisfaction, system quality and service quality. Contrary to the assumption and past findings, trust does not directly contribute to SaaS continuance intention. In conclusion, the designed research model in this thesis contributes to developing and empirically testing SaaS continuance intention. This model will be helpful for researchers to further study SaaS continuance.