Adoption of Online Shopping: A Technology Acceptance Perspective

Abstract

Use of the Internet has increased remarkably in the past few decades and, therefore, has created a need to better understand the adoption of e-commerce across different cultures. Our study makes a significant contribution in different ways. First, an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) was developed and validated in an international setting, other than the U.S., in order to better understand the adoption of e-commerce across different cultures. This study extends McCoy et al. (2007) and Straub et al. (1997) work by validating TAM in the Pakistani culture. Contrary to our expectation, the predictive power of TAM seems robust and holds for both Pakistan and Canada. Second, the importance of perceived ease of use (PEOU) to intention to shop online was validated across the two cultures. The results of this study clarify an important issue in TAM studies, namely, when and why PEOU is important and influences intention to use a system (Gefen and Straub 2000; Keil et al. 1995). PEOU is more important than perceived usefulness (PU) in motivating users to accept a technology at the early adoption stage and its importance diminishes as users become familiar with the system. Practitioners, who might have confusions regarding the importance of PEOU due to previous TAM studies, should reconsider the extent to which PEOU affects online shopping at the early adoption stage. Similarly, in the case of Canadian customers, PU is the main factor that directly and indirectly affects intention to shop online. Furthermore, in developing programs to motivate customers to shop online, e-retailers must recognize the importance of trust on PEOU, PU, attitude and intention to shop as trust had the strongest effect on PEOU for the Pakistani sample and on PU for the Canadian sample.