THE INTERTWINED EFFECT OF PERCEIVED USEFULNESS , PERCEIVED EASE OF USE AND TRUST IN A WEBSITE ON THE INTENTION TO RETURN

Online information enquiry and purchasing products or services imply both the usage of an information technology (the internet) and an engagement in a commercial relationship with a cyber merchant. Based on this premise, we propose that the intention to visit a website is determined by two technology related construct, namely perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use and a relationship related construct, trust in the website. Empirical evidences show that trust in the website influence the intention to return on the website, both directly and indirectly, through perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Theoretical and managerial consequences of this intertwined effect are discussed. INTRODUCTION Based on the premise that internet is one option among others for consumers to fulfill his/her consumption needs, we asked ourselves what are the reasons for which they do or do not use this new tool at their disposal. Two streams of literature deal with this question of the acceptance of B2C electronic commerce by the final consumer (Gefen et al., 2003b). The first one sees the internet as an information technology and, as a consequence, the same antecedent which applies in the acceptance of any information technology are incorporated in models to explain the acceptance of using a commercial website (Gefen & Straub, 2000; Shih, 2004). In the second one, internet is primarily viewed as an interface between a merchant and a customer, and the focus is on the relationship itself. Internet is a facilitating medium between two parties, and the exchange taking place is not different from other exchange involving face-to-face, phone, fax, or e-mail contact. It implies that the well established literature on commercial exchange, and the antecedents involved, does apply in an online context (Gefen et al., 2003b; Pavlou, 2003). In this paper, we argue that internet is, by itself, an information technology, and this information technology is used by retailers, among others, to engage in commercial relationships with potential and actual customers. As a consequence, antecedents from the two streams of literature should have an impact on the acceptance of electronic commerce by consumers. INTERNET AS AN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: THE TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL Consumers should perceive some advantages to change their consumption habits and to switch from conventional retail format to commercial website to fulfill their consumption needs. Because internet is an information technology, previous models on individual acceptance of information technology (Venkatesh et al., 2003) has been applied into the internet context. The most widely used framework to explain the individual acceptance of information technology is the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989), perhaps because it is grounded in a very powerful model drawn from social psychology, the Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), one of the most fundamental and influential theories of human behavior, and tailored to information technology acceptance. The model can be seen as a special case of this theory, highlighting two salient beliefs which impact the attitude toward using the technology, namely its perceived usefulness and its perceived ease of use. This model is based on a cost-benefit paradigm, where users, facing the introduction of a new technology in a working context, build their attitude toward using it by balancing the perceived cost of using it in term of time and cognitive costs in one hand and the perceived benefits of using it in the other hand. To explain the acceptance of e-commerce, some variables were included within the TAM framework. The first kind of them are intrinsic to the information technology, namely perceived playfulness (Moon & Kim, 2001) and perceived enjoyment (Van der Heijden et al., 2003). The rationale behind the addition of those variables is that browsing a commercial website is not only instrumental in nature, but some intrinsic pleasure is sought and expected, and the state of flow can be reached (Hoffman & Novak, 1996). Within this stream of research, (Venkatesh et al., 2003) “Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology” can be considered as the most comprehensive model in the area of technology acceptance by end-user consumers but expands previous literature on information technology only. Additionally, variables from the individual were included within the TAM framework, namely self-efficacy (Benbunan-Fich, 2001; Ma & Liu, 2004), perceived control from the Theory of Planned Behavior (Koufaris, 2002), experience with online shopping (Balabanis & Reynolds, 2001), solitude (Das et al., 2003) and habit (Gefen, 2003). The third type of variables that can affect the usage of internet for consumption needs are the environment related variables. The main variables of this type in the literature are risk and trust. They can be trust itself ((Gefen et al., 2003a, 2003b; Pavlou, 2003; Van der Heijden et al., 2003), or one specific dimension of trust, namely perceived credibility (Wang et al., 2003). Contrary to trust, there is no empirical support of the effect of risk on behavioral intention or one the independent variable of the TAM. Chan & Lu (2004), McCloskey (2003) and Van der Heijden et al. (2003) did not find a significant effect of risk on, respectively, perceived usefulness, behavioral intention and attitude toward online purchasing. Pavlou (2003) found a significant but weak effect of perceived risk on intention to transact, but a strong direct effect of trust. INTERNET AS A MEAN OF ENGAGING IN A COMMERCIAL RELATIONSHIP: THE OVERWHELMING IMPORTANCE OF TRUST Internet is an information technology used by commercial organizations to exchange information with their customers an eventually engage in a commercial relationship. Accordingly, trust, from the relationship marketing paradigm, which was found to be a major determinant of successful buyer-seller relationship (Morgan & Hunt, 1994), should play a major role in “electronic relationship” even more when perceived risk is high. Trust, as a context related variable, linked to the social context where exchange is taking place, encompasses this crucial aspect of electronic commerce, beyond the usage of a technology by individuals. Trust was successfully introduced within the TAM framework, in online shopping context, either as a direct antecedent of purchase intention (Gefen et al., 2003a), as a direct antecedent of intended use and perceived usefulness (Gefen et al., 2003b) and as an antecedent of intention to transact, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use (Pavlou, 2003). The Pavlou (2003) model accounted for 64 % of explained variance, which outperformed models based on TAM and other technology-related variable, including TAM 2 which hardly explained 40 % of variance in usage (Legris et al., 2003). Specifically, given the fact that security concerns, about utilization of personal data or credit card information among others, are high among potential and actual online consumers, trust in the website should have a tremendous impact on their online consumption behavior. Online consumer need to understand their “virtual” social environment and, in particular, identify how, when, why and how other people act, as their offline counterparts. The fact that prior purchase has a strong effect on intention to purchase (Brown et al., 2003) or that simply the frequency of visiting a site positively impact the propensity to buy (Moe & Fader, 2004) is another support of the idea of the effect of trust on behavioral intention, since one major way of building trust is through real interaction with the other part. Accordingly, trust in the website is hypothesized to have a direct positive impact on commercial website usage. H1: trust in a commercial website has a positive impact on the intention to use this website Moreover, Pavlou (2003) shows a positive impact of trust on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use also. The rationale of the impact of trust on perceived ease of use is grounded in the transaction cost theory. The higher he/she trust in the website, the less effort the consumer has to make to scrutinize the details of the site to asses the benevolence of the merchant. On a trusted site, because he/she assume the benevolence of the online merchant, the consumer won’t waste time and cognitive effort to read the privacy policy, the term of use, and the conditions of sale, and thus experience higher ease of use. Accordingly, the following hypothesis is posited. H2: trust in a commercial website has a positive impact on the perceived ease of use of this website The impact of trust on perceived usefulness is based on the credibility dimension of the trust. However, benevolence only is not sufficient, the merchant do not only need to have the intention to fulfill the needs of the consumer, but also have to be able to do so in term of product of service quality, availability, time of delivery, preventing the risk linked to the usage of internet, and so one. Dealing with an honest but incompetent merchant is not useful. Consistent with the empirical evidence by Pavlou (2003), the following hypothesis is proposed. H3: trust in a commercial website has a positive impact on the perceived usefulness of this website Moreover, consistent with the original TAM model (Davis, 1989) and its numerous empirical verifications (Legris et al., 2003), and because internet is an information technology in addition to a mean of engaging in and maintaining commercial relationship, as discussed above, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use should have an impact on intention to use a commercial website and perceived ease of use should have an impact on perceived usefulness. Accordingly, we posit: H4: perceived usefulness of a commercial website has a positive impact on the intention to use this website H5: perceived ease of use of a commercial website has a positive im