Experience and facilitating conditions as impediments to consumers’ new technology adoption

ABSTRACT

The recent proliferation of new technologies and impediments to their adoption has made predicting new technology adoption/use complex and challenging. This paper aims to compare the predictive ability of behavioural expectation (BE) and behavioural intention (BI) given such impediments. BE predicts an attempt to perform a targeted behaviour, whereas BI predicts the likelihood of actually performing a targeted behaviour. An online longitudinal experiment was designed to examine the effects of two contrasting sources of impediments to new technology adoption: experience (internal) and facilitating conditions (external). The results confirm the tendency of subjects, who responded to BI measures, to make overestimations when they think they have more control over the (internal) impediments, and to make exaggerated underestimations when they think they have less control over the (external) impediments. Moreover, it is found that subjects who responded to BE measures have a stronger adoption–use correlation compared to subjects who responded to BI measures regardless of the type of impediments encountered. This study offers a basis for marketers to increase the rate of consumers’ adoption/use of new technology such as mobile applications. The research identifies boundary conditions to the predictive ability of BE and BI in the context of mobile applications adoption/use.

KEYWORDS:

• Impediments
• experience
• facilitating conditions
• behavioural expectations
• behavioural intentions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Harryadin Mahardika

Harryadin Mahardika’s research focuses primarily on new product adoption. He is currently a marketing lecturer at Universitas Indonesia and his work has been published in Australasian Marketing Journal, Journal for International Business and Entrepreneurship Development, and the proceedings of the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy.

Dominic Thomas

Dominic Thomas is currently a senior lecturer at Monash University. His research is primarily driven by how people make judgments and decisions. In addition, he examines the effect of social influences and affect on consumers decision-making processes. His current and recent projects include digital divide, nutrition labeling, loyalty programs, store brands and superstitious behaviour. His work has been published in Journal of Retailing, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Economic Psychology, Psychology and Marketing, and in the conference proceedings of the American Marketing Associations Marketing and Public Policy Conference and Advances in Consumer Research.

Michael Thomas Ewing

Michael Thomas Ewing is currently a Professor of Marketing and the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University. His research interests include marketing communications, marketing strategy, brand management, and social marketing/health promotion. His work has been published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Information Systems Research, the International Journal of Research in Marketing, Social Science & Medicine among others.

Arnold Japutra

Arnold Japutra is currently a lecturer in the department of marketing, business school, University of Western Australia. His research interests are brand management, consumer behaviour and relationship marketing in particular in the realm of consumer psychology. He has presented his work at several academic conferences (e.g. European Marketing Academy Conference, Global Marketing Conference). He has also published his papers at peer reviewed journal articles (e.g. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, International Journal of Hospitality Management, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Brand Management, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Journal of Strategic Marketing).