A user-oriented policy for ICT acceptance: the 'relative utility' approach

Business strategies and policies which proved to be successful in increasing internet penetration in the early days may no longer be appropriate. This is likely to be highly probable in countries where the majority of people are already connected to the internet. As more people have the ability to be connected online, it becomes more likely that the remaining fraction of non-adopters is either difficult to convince, under-skilled or simply lacking the financial resources to afford a connection. In view of this problem, this paper proposes a policy approach aimed at increasing personal computer and internet acceptance in collaboration with industry. The measures developed within this approach are based on strategies of segmentation and differentiation. This entails the specific targeting of product offerings towards different socio-demographic groups within the population. In addition, our approach not only concentrates on removing barriers, as most e-inclusion policies do, but also at increasing the value of ICT for end-users. This approach is based on a project that applied both qualitative and quantitative research methods in an investigation to determine the relationship between the socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics of non-adopters. In addition, it also looked at, their profile in terms of access levels, ICT skills and attitudes towards ICT and their requirements and expectations (if any) with reference to ICT. In this paper we show, firstly, that members of homogeneous socio-demographic and socio-economic groups indeed share similar characteristics in terms of access, skills and attitudes and, secondly, that these groups can be effectively reached by policy makers and businesses with specific product offerings