DOC 723 Week 5 Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks Example

Building the Blueprint: A Conceptual Framework Linking Onboarding to Customer Retention

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

DOC/723: Doctoral Seminar II

Week 5 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The learner and the company are composites written for a model paper; cited works are real.

Week 4 showed that research on why people keep using software and research on what suppliers do seldom connect. This study needs a framework that joins them in one account. This paper builds it carefully step by step, starting from the candidate theories and ending with a diagram whose arrows each carry a hypothesis.

What a Framework Does

Grant and Osanloo (2014) described the theoretical framework as the blueprint of a dissertation, guiding the problem, purpose, questions, methods and interpretation, and urged learners to select a framework that fits their research rather than adopting one by habit. They distinguished a theoretical framework, drawn from an existing theory, from a conceptual framework, the researcher's own synthesis of concepts. The dissertation uses a conceptual framework anchored in one established theory and supported by two further sets of ideas, each chosen for a specific job.

Candidate 1: Technology Acceptance

Technology acceptance models explain whether people adopt a system based on its perceived usefulness and ease of use (Davis, 1989). They are widely used, but they explain the decision to start using a technology. Hill Country's customers have already subscribed; the question is whether they stay. Acceptance models fit the wrong moment in the customer's life with the product, although their usefulness construct reappears in the continuance model.

Candidate 2: The Expectation-Confirmation Model

Bhattacherjee (2001) argued that continued use of an information system differs from initial acceptance and proposed a model in which the degree to which users' initial expectations are confirmed by actual use raises perceived usefulness and satisfaction, which together raise the intention to continue. Testing the model with users of online banking services supported these proposed paths.

The model fits the outcome: staying subscribed is continued use. It also suggests a role for onboarding, which could raise confirmation by helping customers experience the benefits they expected and raise perceived usefulness by showing them features that solve their problems.

Candidate 3: Service-Dominant Logic

Vargo and Lusch (2004) argued that marketing was moving toward a service-dominant logic in which value is not delivered in goods but co-created with customers through use, and in which the firm can only make value propositions that customers realize. This view helps explain why a supplier's actions after the sale, such as onboarding, matter: value from software exists only when customers use it well.

The Anchor and Its Supports

The expectation-confirmation model anchors the framework because it explains the outcome. Service-dominant logic supports it by explaining how a supplier's onboarding can shape the user-side processes the model describes. A third concept, the limited internal resources of very small firms, from small-business technology adoption research, explains why some customers depend more on supplier help.

The Conceptual Framework

In words: manager-led onboarding, a supplier action in the co-creation of value, increases customers' early use of core features. Greater feature use leads to confirmation of expectations and higher perceived usefulness, which sustain continued subscription. Because the smallest firms have no one whose job includes learning new software, onboarding substitutes for missing internal capacity, so its effect should be larger for them.

The diagram shows four boxes in a row: onboarding, feature adoption, confirmation and usefulness, retention. An arrow from firm size points at the first arrow, indicating moderation. A dashed arrow from onboarding to retention marks a possible direct path, such as relationship and trust, raised in Week 4.

The dashed arrow is the honest part of the diagram: it marks a path the framework suspects but the records cannot measure.

Linking the Framework to Hypotheses

H1, onboarding and retention: the full path from onboarding through adoption and confirmation to continued use.

H2, onboarding and feature adoption: the first arrow, grounded in service-dominant logic's account of supplier support for value creation.

H3, larger effect for the smallest firms: the moderating arrow from small-firm resource limits.

The exploratory low-use analysis: the dashed direct path.

Why Not a Single Theory?

A committee may ask why the framework combines three sources instead of using the continuance model alone. The model explains continued use but says nothing about suppliers or firm size, so on its own it could support only the claim that experience matters, not that onboarding shapes it or that small firms benefit more. Service-dominant logic alone explains why suppliers matter but makes no specific prediction about continued use. Combining them, with the resource concept for size, gives each hypothesis a basis. The combination stays disciplined because the continuance model remains the anchor; the other elements explain how onboarding enters its path and for whom.

A Rival Explanation the Framework Must Face

Switching costs offer a rival account of retention: customers stay because leaving is costly, for example because their appointment history and customer lists live in the software, not because they find it useful. If onboarding helps customers load their data, it could raise switching costs and retention without changing usefulness. The framework does not exclude this path. The learner will note it alongside the relational path as an alternative explanation and test whether the onboarding association holds among customers who imported few records, a partial check on the switching-cost account.

How the Framework Will Guide Interpretation

If H1 and H2 are supported and the association with retention shrinks when feature adoption is considered, the results fit the anchor path. If onboarding relates to retention among low-use customers, the dashed path gains support. If neither holds, the framework's assumption that supplier help changes early experience is called into question for this population, a finding worth reporting.

How the Framework Shapes Measurement

The framework explains why feature adoption is measured as use rather than settings switched on: the model concerns experience with the system. It also explains why confirmation and usefulness, though central, are not measured: the records contain behavior, not perceptions. The study tests the behavioral ends of the path and treats the perceptual middle as theory, a limit stated plainly.

What the Framework Leaves Out

Price, competitor offers and business closure also end subscriptions; the framework does not address them, and they are handled as covariates where records allow and otherwise noted as limits. The framework also treats the owner as the user, though in some businesses staff use the software while the owner pays.

Presenting the Framework

In the dissertation, the framework section will open with the diagram, follow with a one-paragraph narrative of the path and then explain each element with its sources. A table will list each hypothesis beside the framework element that predicts it and the variable that measures it, so committee members can check the links quickly.

Conclusion

Comparing three candidates, the expectation-confirmation model anchors the framework because it explains continued use, service-dominant logic explains how onboarding enters the process and small-firm resource limits explain the size hypothesis. Every hypothesis now maps to a specific path. Week 6 positions the problem within the wider literature.

References

Bhattacherjee, A. (2001). Understanding information systems continuance: An expectation-confirmation model. MIS Quarterly, 25(3), 351-370. https://doi.org/10.2307/3250921

Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), 319-340. https://doi.org/10.2307/249008

Grant, C., & Osanloo, A. (2014). Understanding, selecting, and integrating a theoretical framework in dissertation research: Creating the blueprint for your "house." Administrative Issues Journal, 4(2), 12-26. https://doi.org/10.5929/2014.4.2.9

Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2004). Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing. Journal of Marketing, 68(1), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.68.1.1.24036