Using Rogers’ diffusion of innovation model, this study attempts to compare the adoption of internet shopping with that of cable television shopping in Taiwan. Rogers’ diffusion model has been criticized for its pro-innovation bias, and thus this study expects that the adoption of internet shopping will be consistent with the predictions of Rogers’ model, while the adoption of cable television shopping will not. A telephone survey with 1227 valid interviews was used to collect data for this study. As expected, most findings regarding internet shopping follow the predictions of this model. However, the diffusion process in relation to cable television shopping digresses from the path predicted by Rogers’ model. The detailed findings of the study are discussed in the article.

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This study adopts the functional perspective of group decision making as the theoretical framework to examine the differences between computermediated communication groups and face-to-face communication groups in terms of their decision-making process and performance. A field experiment was adopted by the study, which was built into a communication course involving two classes in a national university in northern Taiwan. These classes comprised 23 groups of 4 or 5 members each working for their final group projects. Of the 23 groups, 11 (51 persons) were randomly assigned to perform the task via computer-mediated communication, and the remaining 12 groups (61 persons) via face-to-face communication. The data analysis shows that most findings of the study confirm the notions of media-capacity theories. However, the findings of this study do not support the propositions of the functional perspective of group decision making. More detailed findings are discussed in the article.

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