Mobile Application Affordances and Perceived Strategic Competitiveness in an Emerging Market: The Mediating Role of Customer Digital Engagement

Abstract

Mobile applications are important digital touchpoints between telecommunications operators and subscribers in emerging markets, yet less is known about how user-perceived application affordances relate to perceptions of operator competitiveness. This study applies Technology Affordances and Constraints Theory (TACT) because it focuses on the relational action possibilities that arise between technology features and users' goals, rather than only adoption intention or service-quality evaluation. Drawing additionally on the resource-based view (RBV), the study examines the association between mobile application affordances and subscriber-perceived strategic competitiveness in Ghana, with customer digital engagement as an intervening variable. A quantitative cross-sectional survey produced 256 usable responses from subscribers of the major mobile network operators in Ghana, and the proposed relationships were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The results show positive and statistically significant path relationships from mobile application affordances to perceived strategic competitiveness and customer digital engagement, and from customer digital engagement to perceived strategic competitiveness. The indirect path through customer digital engagement is also statistically significant, indicating partial indirect association. The study contributes by integrating a user-level affordance explanation with a strategic resource perspective and by identifying customer digital engagement as a pathway linking perceived application affordances with perceived competitive positioning. The findings are interpreted cautiously because the design is cross-sectional and because convergent-validity weaknesses remain for the MAA and CDE measures.