Exploring the factors that drive customers to engage with preventive health technologies

Title: Exploring the factors that drive customers to engage with preventive health technologies

Authors: Lisa Baiwir, Laurence Dessart, Cécile Delcourt

Extended abstract:
Preventive health technologies (hereafter PHT)—defined as any technology, device or digital solution that aims to improve the general health of the population—are increasingly gaining importance in the market. Particularly, 87.4 million consumers in the U.S. used at least one health & fitness app in 2020 (Statista, 2020), and the number of Fitbit users worldwide increased by roughly 350% between 2014 and 2020 (Statista, 2021). Additionally, this trend was further reinforced by the Covid-19 pandemic (Ang, 2020), and around 71,000 new health & fitness apps were launched in 2020 (Eaves, 2021).
PHT often target a behaviour change related to health-enhancing habits (e.g., the physical activity of customers, their nutrition or sleep patterns). As such, they promote an improvement in the lifestyle and wellbeing of the population and could be highly relevant in the fight against chronic diseases (WHO, 2021) and, thus, the rise of healthcare costs (Shortell, 2009). Consequently, the growing importance of PHT is not only bound to customers and companies, but also to society at large. Experimental studies suggest that PHT could indeed be effective in promoting behaviour change (e.g., Hosseinpour & Terlutter, 2019), although increased engagement with the technology was found to significantly improve its efficacy (Schoeppe et al., 2016). Thus, understanding the drivers of customer engagement with PHT is key to foster the creation of enduring health-enhancing habits.
Although the concept of customer engagement, defined as customers’ voluntary interactions with a product or brand (Hollebeek et al., 2019), has been extensively discussed in the literature, particular insights on customer engagement with PHT are scarce. The current literature has three major gaps when it comes to understanding why customers engage with PHT. First, studies on PHT mainly focus on their adoption and short-term use (e.g., Canhoto & Arp, 2017; Chen et al., 2020; Yousaf et al., 2021). While technology adoption is a necessary step in the process of engagement, it is not enough to sustain the expected preventive behaviours and create long-term habits (Canhoto & Arp, 2017). Second, the drivers of customer engagement are mainly studied with a brand (e.g., Fehrer et al., 2018; Hollebeek et al., 2014; Pansari & Kumar, 2017) or a community (e.g., Brodie et al., 2013; Dessart et al., 2015) as a focus, rather than a technology. Third, few investigations take place in the peculiar context that is healthcare (Berry, 2019; Berry & Bendapudi, 2007). As customer engagement is intrinsically linked to a specific context (Brodie et al., 2011; Hollebeek et al., 2019), dedicated focus on the drivers of customer engagement with PHT is needed to better understand the phenomenon.
To reach this objective, this investigation combines an extensive literature review, integrating and extending several streams of research (i.e., customer engagement, patient engagement, preventive healthcare, health technologies) with in-depth interviews with users of PHT to advance a comprehensive framework that captures the factors encouraging customers to engage with PHT. Up to now, 19 customers of PHTs have been interviewed thanks to a semi-directive guide including open-ended questions on respondents’ motivations to engage with the PHT used. Data collection is still ongoing, and further testimonies are planned to be collected and analysed using a discovery-oriented approach through thematic analysis.

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