Determinants of behavioural intention to use e-payment system in Nigerian retail industry: A conceptual extension of UTAUT with concern for customers

A number of scholars have emphasised the need for change in business processes. These changes are often necessitated by new technological development, changing consumer preference, cultural pluralism, knowledge capital, and globalization. It is therefore paramount that business organisations must embrace change in order to survive the competitions in nowadays ever-growing technology-driven marketplace. Nigerian business environment is not in isolation in this regard, owing to the introduction of new payment process to the economy; the cash-less policy, which entails all business to change their payment process to an electronic based. There is so much resistance to change from the merchants, thus calls for a research to identify the factor that can influence the merchants to adopt the change. The volume and value of cash-based transactions in Nigeria is high and expected to rise.This is linked to non-adoption of new e-payment process introduced by the Central Bank. The adoption of Point of Sale (POS) terminal is reported to be very low.A number of researchers have used several technology adoption theories to answer a similar phenomenon, but their studies were fragmented.Thus the Unified Theory of acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) combined eight among those numerous theories and models of technology adoption, toward a unified view. However, several studies that used UTAUT and investigate behavioural intention to use technology yielded conflicting findings. Therefore the current study, based on review of past literature, observed that despite the important of customers to every business enterprise, it was found that previous researchers have neglected their influence on managers' behavioural intention.Thus the current study conceptualised that managers' behavioural intention to use POS is expected to be influenced by their concern for customers.Therefore, the current research proposed to extend UTAUT with a new construct "Concern for Customers", to enhance the current understanding of behavioural intention.Specifically, to investigate the managers' behavioural intention to use point of sale (POS) terminal in Nigerian retail industry. This research contributes in two folds; practically and theoretically. Customer is the main focus of any business enterprise, thus require attention.This concern for customer is expected to influence the decision of retail industry managers.Therefore, by incorporating this construct into technology adoption research, findings of the will help the industry players and regulators in formulating policies that considers the customer's preference. The conceptual paper compares only on the fundamental concepts and findings, thus calls for an empirical validation of the proposed framework