Abstract
Extant Information Systems literature has demonstrated that there are 3 types of software products – Utilitarian, Hedonic and Social. A stream of motivation literature has also shown that there are three salient human psychological needs – the need for autonomy, competence and relationship. In this study we suggest that the user preference for a particular type of software product will vary with the psychological need profile of the user. To test this proposition, we conducted a study with actual users of three types of software products identified in literature – Google Keep (utilitarian), Critical Ops (hedonic) and Facebook (social). The findings of the study confirm that users driven by predominant need for competence preferred utilitarian software products while those driven by need for autonomy preferred hedonic software products and those driven by the need for relationship preferred social software products. These findings highlight the relevance of software product/ projects managers considering users’ psychological needs while developing/ upgrading software to maximize usage of their software products.
Recommended Citation
Kakar, Ashish, "What is the Psychological Needs Profile of Users of Facebook?" (2020). SAIS 2020 Proceedings. 8.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/sais2020/8