Adoption of Mobile Technologies for Chinese Consumers

ABSTRACT When it comes to mobile communication technology, China is the largest market in the world. However, due to its rapidly changing economic environment causing disparities between geographical regions, it presents unique marketing problems. In order to attain a better understanding of China as a potentially highly valuable mobile communication technology market, we conducted a survey of 221 Chinese nationals and tested a proposed conceptual framework based on UTAUT with moderating variables. The results from SEM multi-group analysis indicate that gender and education level are significant moderating factors while internet usage experience does not register as significant. The results of this research suggest the necessity to take cultural background and disposition into consideration for the UTAUT. Keywords: Mobile Technology, Adoption, UTAUT, Chinese Consumer. 1. Introduction The Chinese mobile industry has grown with incredible speed with 282 million cell phone subscribers at the beginning of 2004. This means that more than 25% of the new customers across the world mobile communication market are coming from China (CellularOnline 2004). According to Yan (2003) when considering that the diffusion rate of Chinese Internet use with only 49.7 million subscribers in 2002, 206.6 million subscribers in the mobile communication market in same year directly underscores the priority status of mobile technology. This also suggests a higher acceptance rate of wireless internet than of wired Internet in China. In this China-specific situation, in which mobile technology seems to supersede wired Internet technology, it is foreseeable that mobile technology would be the best venue for introducing e-commerce technology. Up until 2004, the Chinese mobile communication market was dominated by two large companies, China Mobile and China Unicom. However, as China joins the World Trade Organization (WTO), this duopoly mobile market will be open for foreign operators from 2007. There are some indications that the mobile communication market has started to warm up to foreign rivals while the two domestic companies are losing their dominance to the Chinese mobile users (CellularOnline 2006). With the expected increasing competition in the Chinese mobile communication market in the near future, there is a need for systematic research on Chinese consumers in the mobile market. Making profits or even surviving in this largest but extremely competitive market may depend on an accurate understanding of Chinese mobile users, especially given China's unique cultural disposition and economic dynamics. Therefore, it is valuable to fill the gap of international dimensions in the field of mobile technology researches and to investigate how Chinese consumers in the largest world market behave and react to this newly adopted but rapidly diffused mobile technology. For investigating Chinese consumers' technology acceptance process, this research adopted the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) developed by Venkatesh et al. (2003) with finding how the theory can be useful to explain Chinese adoption of the mobile technologies. UTAUT has been considered the most prominent and unified model in the stream of Information technology adoption research with high robustness of the instruments regarding the key constructs (Li and Kishore 2006). Most of the previous studies were based on and conducted in developed countries, mainly in the United States and European nations. The legitimacy of applying standardized research methodologies and results from these western nations to understand the rapidly evolving Chinese mobile technology market is questionable (Zhang and Prybutok 2005). As noted by researchers, there is a need to test the models of IT acceptance in different cultural settings such as China because culture has been recognized as a significant construct impacting IT acceptance (Straub and Brenner 1997). …