WhatsApp: A Business Tool in Unorganized Retail with Reference to TAM

Abstract

In the recent past, various social media have been considered as effective communication tools for communication between customers and organizations. The popularity and importance of social media has been on the rise due to various benefits they offer to the different stakeholders. The benefits include ease of exchange of communication (text, voice, pictures and video), lowering of communication costs and seamless connectivity. The purpose of this study is to investigate the adoption and use of social media as a business tool by the unorganized retailers with reference to Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). For this purpose, WhatsApp has been considered as a business tool to examine and validate the basic TAM model. The role of various factors (ease of use, perceived usefulness, user attitude etc.) that influence about how and when WhatsApp would be used in the context of conducting business transactions in the unorganized retail sector has been empirically examined using primary data collected from unorganized retailers. A survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire. The structural equational modelling was used to validate the TAM model.