Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the key factors that affect users’ adoption of e-books using an extension of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) that includes the following factors: environmental concerns, perceived benefits, and benevolence trust.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors analyzed survey responses from 343 participants using structural equation modeling to examine the hypothesized relationships in this research model.
Findings
The results show that users’ adoption of e-books is determined by performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, environmental concern, perceived benefit, and benevolence trust.
Research limitations/implications
The authors restricted this study to consumers’ adoption of e-books. Further studies could examine consumer’s adoption of other mediums, such as cutting-edge information technologies.
Practical implications
The results suggest that marketers should consider altering their methods of promoting e-books to attract consumers and further affect their usage intention.
Originality/value
This study proposes and tests an extended UTAUT model that includes the additional factors of environmental concern, perceived benefit, and benevolence trust in order to examine the influence of these factors on e-book adoption. The findings are particularly useful for assisting managers to increase e-book adoption.
This study extends prior research by examining consumer expectations regarding the lower price of products found in online shopping stores and considers the role of overhead cost in consumer decision-making. By using a laboratory experiment method, we verified the difference in the perceived overhead cost between the two types of retailers and the relationship between perceived overhead cost and internal reference pricing. This study involved 123 subjects. The findings show that consumers perceive online retailers' overhead costs as lower than store-based retailers' overhead costs and that lower perceived overhead prices cause consumers to have lower internal reference prices. This study supplements e-commerce research, can assist retailers in understanding consumers' perceptions of overhead cost and product prices, and serves as a reference for online retailers attempting to create pricing strategies.
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