The proliferation of smartphone applications (Apps) has been a promising market and played a vital role being a business media. Having high mobility, capability and its ability to be personalized, smartphone Apps has attracted many audience groups as its service participants. However, the process of how people accept this technology is still unclear. Moreover, the factors that affect people’s attention of using this technology may somehow be different from others.
And as the current aging population, the 30s to 40s generation is the biggest market population. In the future, with continuation of low birth rate, they will be the dominant market of new technologies. Thus, there is a need to study the factors that affect user intention to use new technologies that focusing in those generation.
Based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), this study was to investigate new technology intention to use and loyalty among the 30s to 40s generation using social network smartphone Apps as the study case. The amended model of UTAUT was constructed focusing in four perceived constructs: the perceived usability, the perceived ease of use, the perceived enjoyment and the social factors, adopted from several studies that had been done before in related topic. We took age and experience as the moderating factors, as those may influence the user’s behavior towards the smartphone Apps.
Taiwan was chosen as our target research as they have the characteristic of constrictive population pyramid, and on the other hand they are one of the biggest bases for technological development. The result of this study will provide important implications for smartphone Apps acceptance among the aging population, and shall contribute for future design and marketing strategy.

Angeli, A., Sutcliffe, A., and Hartmann, J. (2006). Interaction, usability and aesthetics: What influences Users' Preferences? DIS Proceedings of the 6th conference on Designing Interactive systems (University Park, PA). New York, N.Y.: ACM, 271-280.
Appannie.(2012). Top 5 Matrix for Iphone in Taiwan. Retrieved October, 25th 2012 from http://www.appannie.com/matrix/iphone/taiwan/
Apple. (2012). Apple’s App Store Downloads Top 25 Billion. Retrieved October, 12th 2012 from http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/03/05Apples-App-Store-Downloads-Top-25-Billion.html
Carbon, C. C., & Schoormans, J. P. (2012). Rigidity Rather Than Age as a Limiting Factor in the Appreciation of Innovative Design. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 71(2), 51-58.
Cheong, J. H. and Park, M. (2005). Mobile internet acceptance in Korea. Internet Research. Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 125-40.
Cranswick, K., & Thomas, D. (2005). Elder care and the complexities of social networks. Canadian Social Trends, 77, 10-15.
Darby, M. R., & Karni, E. (1973). Free competition and the optimal amount of fraud. Journal of law and Economics, 16(1), 67-88.
Franko, O. I., & Tirrell, T. F. (2012). Smartphone app use among medical providers in ACGME training programs. Journal of medical systems, 1-5.
Garrett, J. J. (2010). The elements of user experience: user-centered design for the Web and beyond. USA: New Riders Pub
Gerpott, T. J. (2011). Attribute perceptions as factors explaining Mobile Internet acceptance of cellular customers in Germany–An empirical study comparing actual and potential adopters with distinct categories of access appliances. Expert Systems with Applications, 38(3), 2148-2162.
Gupta, M. L. (2012, October). Marketing the Intangible: Focus on Service Related Communication in the Financial Sector. Speech presented at the Pitch CMO Summit 2012, Hyderabad, India. Retrieved October, 28th 2012 from
http://www.exchange4media.mobi/Story.aspx?news_id=46860§ion_id=3
Hair, J., Black, W., Babin, B., and Anderson, R. (2010). Multivariate data analysis (7th ed.): Prentice-Hall, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA.
Heskett, J. (1980). Industrial Design (World of Art). London: Thames and Hudson
Hill, Peter. (1999). Tangibles, Intangibles and Services: A New Taxonomy for the Classification of Output. The Canadian Journal of Economics vol. 32, No 2 April 1999.
Jiang, E. & Frances, H. (2013). Smartphone sales in Taiwan's show 6% growth for 2012. Focus Taiwan News Channel. Retrieved December 24th, 2012 from http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?Type=aECO&ID=201303200035
Jin, Z. X., Plocher, T., & Kiff, L. (2007). Touch screen user interfaces for older adults: button size and spacing. In Universal Acess in Human Computer Interaction. Coping with Diversity (pp. 933-941). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Kenny, D. A. (2011). Measuring model fit. Unpublished manuscript.
Kim, S. H. (2008). Moderating effects of Job Relevance and Experience on mobile wireless technology acceptance: Adoption of a smartphone by individuals. Information & Management, 45(6), 387-393.
Kleijnen12, M., de Ruyter, K., & Wetzels, M. G. (2003). Factors influencing the adoption of mobile gaming services. Mobile commerce: Technology, theory and applications, 202.
Konstantas, D. and Morin, J. H. (2000). Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Hawaii International Conference: Trading Digital Intangible Goods: The Rules of The Game.
Kumar, A., & Lim, H. (2008). Age differences in mobile service perceptions: comparison of Generation Y and baby boomers. Journal of Services Marketing, 22(7), 568-577.
Kuniavsky, M. (2003). Observing the User Experience. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
Kwon, O., & Wen, Y. (2010). An empirical study of the factors affecting social network service use. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(2), 254-263.
Lee, M. C. (2010). Explaining and predicting users’ continuance intention toward e-learning: An extension of the expectation–confirmation model. Computers & Education, 54(2), 506-516.
Levitt, T. (1980). Marketing success through differentiation-of anything. Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University.
Liaw, S. S., Hatala, M., & Huang, H. M. (2010). Investigating acceptance toward mobile learning to assist individual knowledge management: Based on activity theory approach. Computers & Education, 54(2), 446-454.
Lin, K. Y., & Lu, H. P. (2011). Why people use social networking sites: An empirical study integrating network externalities and motivation theory. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(3), 1152-1161.
Lunden, I. (2013). App Downloads In Year To Sept 2012, Apple Leads Google + Microsoft Overall, But Microsoft Tops For Innovation. Retrieved November, 5th 2012 from http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/02/abi-43-6b-app-downloads-worldwide-in-year-to-sept-2012-apple-leads-google-and-microsoft-overall/
MacCallum, R. C., Browne, M. W., & Sugawara, H. M. (1996). Power analysis and determination of sample size for covariance structure modeling. Psychological methods, 1(2), 130.
Mao, E., Srite, M., Thatcher, J. B. and Yaprak, O. (2005). A research model for mobile phone service behaviors: empirical validation in the US and Turkey. Journal of Global Information Technology Management. Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 7-27.
Martini, A. (2012). Please, Stop Saying Software is an Intangible Product [Web blog]. Retrieved October, 22nd 2012 from http://arialdomartini.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/please-stop-saying-software-is-an-intangible-product/
Melenhorst, A. S., Rogers, W. A., & Bouwhuis, D. G. (2006). Older adults' motivated choice for technological innovation: evidence for benefit-driven selectivity. Psychology and aging, 21(1), 190.
Morris, M. G., & Venkatesh, V. (2000). Age differences in technology adoption decisions: Implications for a changing work force. Personnel psychology, 53(2), 375-403.
Nelson, P. (1974). Advertising as information. The Journal of Political Economy,82(4), 729-754.
Nielsen. (May 2012). State of the Appnation – A Year of Change and Growth in U.S. Smartphones. Retrieved October 22nd , 2012 from
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/?p=31891
Park, Y., & Chen, J. V. (2007). Acceptance and adoption of the innovative use of smartphone. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 107(9), 1349-1365.
Power, M. (2012). Delivering Web to Mobile. JISC CETIS. Retrieved October 20, 2012 from http://bitly.com/jiscobs-tw-2
Rathje, E. (2005). User-oriented considerations in Web design.
Saag, A., Randlane, T., & Leht, M. (2010). Keys to plants and lichens on smartphones: Estonian examples.
Schenkman, B. N., & Jönsson, F. U. (2000). Aesthetics and preferences of web pages. Behaviour & Information Technology, 19(5), 367-377.
Sledgianowski, D., & Kulviwat, S. (2009). Using social network sites: The effects of playfulness, critical mass and trust in a hedonic context. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 49(4), 74-83.
Stapleton, C. D. (1997). Basic concepts and procedures of confirmatory factor analysis. ERIC Clearinghouse.
Tang, J. (2009). The considerations of the web page design. WSEAS Transactions on Information Science and Applications, 6(4), 637-646.
Trestian, I., Ranjan, S., Kuzmanovic, A., & Nucci, A. (2009, November). Measuring serendipity: connecting people, locations and interests in a mobile 3G network. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM SIGCOMM conference on Internet measurement conference (pp. 267-279). ACM.
Van der Heijden, H. (2004). User acceptance of hedonic information systems.MIS quarterly, 695-704.
Van der Meulen, R. & Rivera, J. (2013). Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales Declined 1.7 Percent in 2012. Gartner Inc. Retrieved from: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2335616
Van Schaik, P., & Ling, J. (2008). Modelling user experience with web sites: Usability, hedonic value, beauty and goodness. Interacting with Computers,20(3), 419-432.
Venkatesh, V., Morris, M. G., Davis, G. B., & Davis, F. D. (2003). User acceptance of information technology: Toward a unified view. MIS quarterly, 425-478.
Venkatesh, V., Thong, J., & Xu, X. (2012). Consumer acceptance and use of information technology: extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology. MIS Quarterly, 36(1), 157-178.
Wang, Y. S., & Shih, Y. W. (2009). Why do people use information kiosks? A validation of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. Government Information Quarterly, 26(1), 158-165.
Wang, Y. S., Wu, M. C., & Wang, H. Y. (2009). Investigating the determinants and age and gender differences in the acceptance of mobile learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40(1), 92-118.
Weeks, K. M. (2012). Going Mobile: A Guide to Mobile Website and Application User Preferences. Unpublished, California Polytechnic State University, California, United States.
Xu, Q., Erman, J., Gerber, A., Mao, Z., Pang, J., & Venkataraman, S. (2011, November). Identifying diverse usage behaviors of smartphone apps. InProceedings of the 2011 ACM SIGCOMM conference on Internet measurement conference (pp. 329-344). ACM.