Common or Not? Variations in E-Commerce Adoption Factors Between India and the USA

ABSTRACT

The e-commerce adoption rate is not the same across countries, and there are significant variations. While most technology adoption research has been carried out in on ecommerce across countries, this study focuses on introducing novel constructs with a mix of cross-cultural study. The present study therefore uses a sample mix from a developed nation (the USA) and a developing nation (India) to explore the e-commerce adoption factors. In this study, the supportive factors of perceived trust are hypothesized as causal factors for e-commerce adoption and studied with USA and India results. The factors considered in the proposed model are: hedonic motivation; comparison shopping; and perceived trust (further classified as honesty, benevolence, and competence). The study used Amazon’s MTurk to collect data from Indian (n = 471) and US (n = 440) respondents. The results of the multi-group moderation technique reveal that honesty, comparison shopping, and hedonic motivation were stronger for the US sample, while benevolence and comfort were stronger for the Indian sample. Based on the results, theoretical contributions, managerial implications, and future research directions are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Adoption factors
• e-commerce
• India
• Usa

Acknowledgment

Would like to thank my organization for giving me the opportunity to carry out this research work and for providing us with the requisite resources and infrastructure for carrying out the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Reuban Gnana Asir T

Reuban Gnana Asir T is a part time research scholar at College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University and works as Service Product Manager at Nokia, Chennai. His interests include analyzing the technology adoption trends of IoT, eCommerce, Cloud and evolutions of internet technologies.His educational background consists of continuous learnings, includes Bachelor of Engineering (B.E) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Madras University and Master of Business Administration (M.B.A) in Technology Management from Anna University. In Profession, Reuban has accomplished certifications across domains, that includes Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Network Routing Service (NRS1), Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) Certifications. In research he has published several papers in International conferences and publications predominantly on IoT, E-comerce research and has qualified State Level Eligibility Test (SLET) in Management Studies. Reuban has over 23 years of work experience in Telecommunications, Switching and Routing, IP Video Content Delivery Networks, IoT and Cloud Services portfolio.