Examining factors affecting adoption of mobile commerce by young consumers in China

Professional Doctorate - Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)With the advancement of mobile devices and sophisticated mobile data transmission technologies by telecommunication providers such as 4G, mobile commerce (or m-commerce) has become an important platform in order to facilitate brand-consumer interactions. In particular, attention is increasingly focused how brands can reach specific consumer segments such as teens and young adults. Despite prior research in the adoption of m-commerce over the past decade in the marketing and information systems literatures, factors affecting consumer adoption towards m-commerce by young consumers requires further theoretical and empirical elaboration. This research aims to examine factors affecting consumer adoption of mobile commerce in the young Chinese consumer market. In doing so, this study extends the prominent technology acceptance model- the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model 2 (UTAUT2), by incorporating two additional variables such as self-efficacy and personal innovativeness to account more for the role of individual consumer differences and capability, in the m-commerce adoption process. This research model is then examined on how the relationships in the model may differ across two regions within China, Shanxi and Hong Kong. The proposed model is empirically tested using 460 respondents collected in China from a self-administrated survey in two regions, Shanxi and Hong Kong. The structural equation modeling (SEM) with partial least squares (PLS) analysis is employed to evaluate the model. The findings showed that three of six constructs: performance expectancy, personal innovativeness and social influence have significant effects on adoption intention in Chinese consumer market whereas self-efficacy has a negative influence. The findings also show that the strength of the paths on the factors affecting adoption intentions of m-commerce are similar when compared between each region, however, differences were detected. In conclusion, based on a review of the important issues in the areas of consumer behavior and technology adoption theory, this study proposed and empirically validated a model to examine the factors that influence m-commerce adoption in the young consumer market in China. The outcome of this study benefits marketers in understanding the factors affecting user adoption in order to facilitate his or her usage behavior by composing effective strategies which reach their target consumers, and expand business opportunities in the young Chinese consumer market. Furthermore, the study provides insights to marketers as to whether a common marketing strategy can be applied to different regions of young consumers within China to facilitate m-commerce adoption