Perceived Usefulness and Ease-Of-Use Items in B2C Electronic Commerce

Abstract

The standard perceived usefulness and ease-of-use items of technology acceptance model were developed for organizational contexts, but they are also used in studies of consumer acceptance of electronic commerce. However, the terms used in the items are to some extent ambiguous. It is difficult to evaluate improvement in productivity, performance or effectiveness in purchasing products online. In this paper, items from a few recent electronic commerce studies applying technology acceptance model are summarised. Web-based qualitative data is analysed and the emerged features of electronic commerce that are important to consumers are compared with the measurement items from prior research. Finally, a combination of items based on the comparison is proposed. Consumers perceive the 24/7 accessibility of Web shopping site as useful, but this feature has not been measured in the prior studies reviewed here.