How does the value provided by a software product and users' psychological needs interact to impact user loyalty

A multi-disciplinary review of literature shows that products can provide three types of value to the users - utilitarian, hedonic and social. Further, these values impact user outcomes such as their loyalty to the product. However, in this study we suggest that the relative impacts of these values on user loyalty to the product will vary with user needs. To test this contention we conducted a study with actual users of three software products - Producteev, Kerbal and Facebook. The results of the study confirm that user needs selectively moderate the impact of the various values provided by the software product to the users on their loyalty for the software product. These findings have implications for software product managers. They highlight the relevance of developing software products aligned with the profile of the targeted users to maximize their loyalty to the software product and the importance of the hitherto unexplored SV in the context of software products.