Why do some technology products enjoy enduring continued use while others are quickly discarded? Existing marketing research explains that continued use is motivated by cost-benefit decisions over how useful a tech-product is and how easy it is to use. 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 theorizing 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 implications of entropy work for theories of continued use and broader marketing scholarship are considered, and recommendations to help firms manage the opportunities and risks that accompany different continued use trajectories are offered.

中文翻译：

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EXPRESS：持续使用轨迹：熵工作如何维持技术组合

为什么有些科技产品能经久不衰，而另一些却很快被丢弃？现有的营销研究解释说，持续使用是由成本效益决策驱动的，即技术产品的有用性和易用性。然而，当代技术的相互关联性意味着，技术产品的持续使用可能取决于技术产品与其他设备、物体、基础设施和人交互的能力，作为产生有用属性的组合的一部分。通过从组合理论的角度对技术消费的访谈和观察数据进行理论化，作者确定了四种持续使用轨迹。这些通过区分组成部分相互作用和将组合保持在一起以维持新兴特性的能力来解释从采用到停止使用的不同路径。在每个轨迹中，持续使用都是通过熵功来维持的，以支持技术产品的实用性和易用性。考虑了熵工作对持续使用理论和更广泛的营销学术的影响，并提供了帮助企业管理伴随不同持续使用轨迹的机会和风险的建议。