Identifying the Factors Affecting the Users’ Shift from Local Social Networks Using PPM Model (Case Study: Soroush Messenger)

The experts believe that in addition to many advantages in the development as well as extensive and rapid sharing of information, foreign messengers have brought consequences and problems for the other countries due to the infrastructure problems, privacy issues, and the non-native nature. Therefore, it highlights the need to use native messengers if available. On the other hand, local messengers, including Soroush messenger, as their competitors in order to compensate for these problems and difficulties, are not as popular within the country. The question is “what factors are involved in the Iranian users’ adherence to to Telegram messenger even after restrictions on the access to this foreign messengers” and “why did not the Iranian users complete a shift toward the domestic messengers. Understanding the key factors affecting the attraction of Iranian users to the samples of domestic messengers is one of the most important issues for the owners of these local messengers. Therefore, this study aimed to discover and identify the factors affecting the immigration behaviors of the users of Soroush messengers. Utilizing these factors can help the managers of  Soroush messenger to plan effectively in orde to be able to attract and retain the users in these messengers.

The present study is applied in terms of purpose and used a qualitative method of content analysis through semi-structured interviews. The participants in this study were selected based on purposeful sampling. The researchers collected the research data through interviewing 17 experts and managers of the local media including Soroush messengers, as well as media professors. Content analysis was used to analyze the interviews. Initially, 562 comments and meaningful sentences were reviewed which led to the extraction of 392 primary codes after removing the duplicated sentences. In the second stage, a total of 80 axial codes were obtained after removing the duplicated codes. Ultimately in the third stage of coding, 14 categories were extracted from the available data. It is noteworthy that data collection started in March 2016 and lasted until June 2017.

According to the research model, any changes and shifts are affected by three groups of pressure factors including distrust, dissatisfaction, privacy risk, data security risk, user fatigue, and the messengers’ dependence on the institutions and organizations; the attractive factors include peer influence, perceived quality, anonymity, changes in the laws and policies, and some intervening factors including switching costs, habit, mental norms, and resistance to change. Therefore, the research findings were classified into three groups with different behavioral and social characteristics affecting the users’ shift from the local messengers.

Conclusion

Although there are several local messengers competing with foreign messengers, they have not been popular in public. The respective reasons were examined in this study where people’s distrust and bad feelings towards the local messengers are among the most important factors. Security of the data is one of the most important factors in Iran and also in the world, violation of which can lead to dissatisfaction and distrust of the service. Ambiguity in legal issues can also be considered as one of the factors that cause users to distrust local messengers while maintaining the law and the security of their information. Therefore, changes in the laws and regulations in this area and the need to establish monitoring and enforcement mechanisms to protect user privacy can help support and attract the users toward local messengers. Moreover, technical issues, poor system quality, low Internet speed, as well as severe filtering are among the effective factors which lead to dissatisfaction and fatigue among the users.