Factors impacting behavioural intentions to adopt the electronic marketplace: findings from small businesses in India

Abstract

The pandemic has accelerated e-commerce adoption for both consumers and sellers. This study aims to identify factors critical to the adoption of electronic markets (EM) during the pandemic, from the perspective of small sellers in non-metro cities. The research design utilizes core dimensions of the UTAUT model and selected constructs from protection motivation theory; since business closure vulnerability also triggers electronic market adoption. A questionnaire survey method was used to collect data from 150 sellers from tier-II/III cities of India. Study results identified performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and perceived vulnerability as significant determinants of behavioural intention towards adoption of EM. The findings also explain the moderating impact of sellers' awareness of information technology and merchants’ age on behavioural outcomes. Given the growing demands from such cities, the research offers insights for marketers to understand the bottlenecks and ways to motivate small sellers to get associated with EMs.

Electronic Markets on platform culture

“…Among the factors that serve to explain this seemingly paradoxical situation were on the one hand the specific market structure cities (referred to as tier II and tier III cities), they analyze the motivations to join the leading electronic markets in India, i.e., Amazon, Flipkart and Myntra. Despite these electronic markets were available for a longer time already, most small sellers were reluctant and only joined them as the traditional channels were shut down during the pandemic (Misra et al, 2022). Based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), the authors confirm the role technology attributes such as the expectance to improve business performance and efficiency as well as the positive impact of social influence of other competitors, but also observe that important knowledge regarding the potentials and services of electronic markets were missing.…”