Continued Use Trajectories: How Entropy Work Sustains Technology Assemblages
研究为何有些技术产品被长期使用而其他被快速抛弃，通过组合理论分析访谈和观察数据，识别出四种持续使用轨迹，并揭示熵工作在维持技术产品有用性和易用性中的作用。
Why do some technology products enjoy enduring continued use, whereas others are quickly discarded? Existing marketing research explains that continued use is motivated by cost–benefit decisions over how useful and easy to use a tech product is. Yet the interconnected nature of contemporary technologies means that continued use can depend on tech products’ capacities to interact with other devices, objects, infrastructures, and people as parts of assemblages that generate useful properties. By analyzing interview and observational data of technology consumption through the lens of assemblage theory, the authors identify four continued use trajectories. These explain different paths from adoption to discontinued use by distinguishing component parts’ capacities to interact and hold assemblages together to sustain emergent properties. In each trajectory, continued use is sustained by entropy work to support a tech product's usefulness and ease of use. The authors consider implications of entropy work for theories of continued use and broader marketing scholarship, and offer recommendations to help firms manage the opportunities and risks that accompany different continued use trajectories.