Beyond Adoption: A Case Study of a Mobile E-Learning Information System for Frontline Competency Development in Retail : Aligning usage behaviour, user perception, and management intent

Abstract

The value an enterprise information system ultimately delivers depends less on its initial adoption than on whether users continue to engage with it meaningfully once it has entered routine operation (Bhattacherjee, 2001). In retail, mobile e-learning applications have become a primary means by which dispersed sales associates develop the product knowledge and relational competencies that underpin commercial performance, yet engagement with such systems characteristically erodes after initial use. Post-adoption research has seldom examined corporate e-learning systems operating at scale among frontline employees, leaving it unclear whether the way such a system is used, perceived and intended to function converge upon a shared reality or diverge. This thesis asks how usage behaviour, user perception and management intent converge or diverge around an e-learning information system deployed for frontline competency development in a retail organisation. It is conducted as a single case study of the European retail operations of a large international beauty company, treated anonymously, which has operated a mobile e-learning application since 2018. Adopting a pragmatist, mixed-method design, it triangulates back-office behavioural data, a user perception survey, and semi- structured interviews with headquarters stakeholders. The system proves technically adopted and nominally performing, yet structurally misaligned with the conditions of its use: users attribute a high intrinsic value to the application while reporting markedly low operational integration into their daily work, engagement remaining brief and fragmented in the absence of protected training time. The three dimensions converge in recognising the platform’s informational value but diverge on the organisational conditions required to realise it. The thesis thereby qualifies the relationship between perceived usefulness and continued use that is central to post-adoption theory, showing that perceived usefulness can remain high while effective integration stays structurally constrained, and derives managerial implications for content governance, diagnostic monitoring, and the treatment of protected training time as a governance decision.