Determinants in Deploying Mobile Commerce Technology

Problem statement: The research's problem lies in the fact that deploying m-commerce technology in Jordan represent the first serious trail to understand and explore the critical determinants that affect deploying mobile commerce technology. Approach: This research applied TAM model using the following variables: Perceived trust, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, social and cultural values and economic issues to explore determinants. Results: The result of the distributed 210 questionnaires to mobile commerce users in Amman Stock Exchange (Brokers and Investors) and 179 were returned correct and studied, reveal that perceived trust, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, social and cultural values have significant association with intention to deploy mobile commerce technology while economical issue is not significant. Conclusion: The results of the research indicate that TAM have capability in exploring critical determinants that affecting the intention to deploy mobile commerce technology in Jordanian marketplace, therefore, further studies are recommended to explore the critical determinants of deploying mobile commerce technology in other economic sectors. Keyword: Technology Acceptance Models, Mobile Commerce Information and Communication Technology Introduction Deploying mobile commerce technology is a very difficult issue, because m-commerce services are increasingly large and enhancing enterprises' abilities to offer mobile commerce services anytime and anywhere. However, studies on the use and adoption of mobile services indicate that traditional acceptance models need to be extended and modified when applied to mobile commerce technology. The need for exploring critical determinants that actually affect deploying mobile commerce is essential due to explosive growth and penetration of mobile devices worldwide in general and in Jordan in particular due to technological advances, regulatory changes and market demand, which prompted the willingness of the innovators and the organizations to deploy m-commerce. The significance of the research lies in the fact that deploying mobile commerce technology in Exploring Critical Determinants in Deploying Mobile Commerce Technology 36 Jordan represents the first serious trial to understand and explore the critical determinants that affect deploying mobile commerce technology and to understand the social phenomenon accompanied to the spread of mobile commerce. This study aims to present an in-depth study of M-commerce adoption, analyzing the variables which influence the decision maker's to determine the influence of relations with the characteristics of mobile device and the applications that can be obtained and to identify key drivers of future M-commerce intention in Amman Stock Exchange. Background and related research The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) can be traced back to the doctoral dissertation of Davis in 1989. Davis et al. (Davis 1989, Davis et al, 1989) looked at user acceptance of computer technology by comparing two models those of TAM and TRA(Ajzen, and, Fishbein, 1980) (Ajzen, 1991) TAM is tailored to IS context and was designed to predict IT acceptance and usage. TAM is based on the theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behavior Ajzen (Ajzen, 1991). Chau and Hu. (2002) decomposed perceived usefulness into two parts-perceived near term usefulness and perceived long term usefulness and he found that perceived near term usefulness had the most significant relation with the intention to use a technology, followed by perceived long term usefulness variable. In adoption research, the technology acceptance model focuses on the attitudinal explanations of intention to use a specific technology or service. Davis et all (Davis ,1989) According to this model, both perceived usefulness and ease of use influence the attitude of individuals towards the use of technoloogy, while attitude and perceived usefulness of the technology predict the individual’s behavior to use the technology. This model has been widely used over the past decade as a means of predicting user’s intention to use new technologies. There TAM could be useful in predicting user’s intention to adopt new services and applications. Numerous empirical studies have provided support for the proposition that perceived usefulness is the primary predictor of information technology usage[(Davis, Bagozzi and Warshaw, 1989), (Davis F, R Bagozzi and Warshaw, 1989), (Davis , Bagozzi and ,Warshaw, 1992), ( Gefen, Karahanna and Straub 2003), ( Wang. Shun, Wang .Min. Lin. Hsin and Tang, 2003) (Igbaria et al, 1997), (Gefen and Straub, 2003), ( O’Cass and Fenench (Shih, 2004) argue that TAM is appropriate for research areas in electronic commerce applications since electronic commerce is based on computer technology. As scholars indicate that M-commerce is an extension of e-commerce, it is thus justifiable to extend TAM to examine consumer intention to adopt behavior. Unifying the various models of IT acceptance was completed by[(Chau & Hu. 2002) (Davis ,2001)] and wherein they integrated the elements of eight prominent models. The UTAUT aims to explain user intentions to use an IS and subsequent usage behavior. The theory holds that four key constructs (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating International Journal of Information Science and Management, Special Issue Sep. – Oct., 2010 Saad G. Yaseen / Suleiman Zayed 37 conditions) are direct determinants of usage intention and behavior(Venkatesh and Speier, 1999). Gender, age, experience and voluntariness of use are posited to mediate the impact of the four key constructs on usage intention and behavior(Venkatesh and Speier, 1999). Moreover, Prior studies have extended TAM with new constructs such as perceived playfulness, perceived enjoyment and others. It is also widely recognized that subjective norms and perceived behavioral control are important for understanding and predicting intentions and behavior in specific contexts[(Chan , Cheung and Ming, 2004) ( Chismar and Patton, 2003),( Klopping, Inge and McKinney, 2004),( Luarn and Lin Hsin, 2004)( Triandis. Kagitcibasi and Yoon, 1980)( Venkatesh .M.Morris, Davis and Davis, 2003) (Malhotra et al., 1996)]. Based on the literature discussed and relations hypothesized between different variables, we constructed a research model shown in Fig. 1, this model is used to test how people and organizations deal with new technology, accept, resist or reject and potentially influence an individual and organizational adoption decision regarding mobile commerce, because mobile commerce technology is considered the new wave of IT. An extended version of the technology acceptance model was employed to determine factors such as trust, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, social and cultural values, economic issues that influence a decision maker intention to adopt this type of technology in doing business. Perceived trust Trust is considered as a key factor for succeeding in doing e-commerce and mcommerce, trust is major enabler of mobile device transactions because of a natural human need to believe in the social surrounding of the virtual environment Perceived Usefulness: "The degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance, by ubiquity, convenience localization, personalization, device optimization"( Davis et al., 1989). Figure 1. The proposed model. Source: Prepared by the researchers Perceived ease of use "The degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of International Journal of Information Science and Management, Special Issue Sep. – Oct., 2010 Exploring Critical Determinants in Deploying Mobile Commerce Technology 38 physical and mental effort"( Davis et al., 1989), freedom from difficulty and effort Social and cultural trends Social factors are defined as “an individual’s internalization of the reference group’s subjective culture and specific interpersonal agreements that the individual has made with others, in specific social situations”(Venkatesh V. and M. G. Morris, 2000). Thus, social factors try to capture the congruency between social norms and individual beliefs and how the human part of an individual’s environment affects one in performing a specific behavior. Social factors are defined as “an individual’s internalization of the reference group’s subjective culture and specific interpersonal agreements that the individual has made with others, in specific social situations”( Venkatesh and Morris, 2000). Economic issues Economics is the social science that studies "mankind in the everyday business of life". Intention Intention is an indication of a person's readiness to perform a given behavior and it is considered to be the immediate antecedent of behavior. Hypothesis To accomplish the objectives of this research, the following hypothesis will be tested: H1: Perceived Trust have direct significant effect on m-commerce users' intention to deploy m-commerce technology. H2: Perceived Usefulness have direct significant effect on m-commerce users' intention to deploy m-commerce technology. H3: Perceived ease of use has significant effect on m-commerce users' intention to deploy m-commerce technology. H4: Social and cultural values have direct significant effect on the m-commerce users' intention to deploy m-commerce technology. Materials and Methods In this study brokers and mobile commerce technology users from Amman stock exchange are chosen to conduct study. Reliability The results of reliability show that Alpha Cronbach’s was 0.7098 for trust variable, 0.663 for usefulness variable, 0.703 for ease of use, 0.7636 for social and cultural values, 0.9033 for economical issues, 0.834 for intention and 0.8184 for actual use (Table 1). The International Journal of Information Science and Management, Special Issue Sep. – Oct., 2010 Saad G. Yaseen / Su