Socio-economic factors and their influence on the adoption of e-commerce by comsumers in Singapore
For the past few years, a steady growth has been observed in the Internet-based commerce activities in Singapore and Asia-Pacific region. However, there has been very limited study that empirically investigates the socio-economic factors and their influence on the adoption of electronic commerce (e-commerce) by consumers in Singapore. This study seeks to fill some of the gaps in this area. Viewing such a medium as a form of new innovation, the five socio-economic characters namely gender, age, income level, education level and the exposure to the Internet were hypothesized to see whether there was any relationship between these five factors and the consumer's willingness to adopt e-commerce. The results indicate that income level; education level and exposure to the Internet were significant predictors in explaining the rate of adoption of e-commerce. However, contrary to general beliefs, this study showed that the gender and the age of consumers are not important factors for the adoption of e-commerce in Singapore. This study may help the e-merchants and policy makers to better understand consumer behavior and attitude towards e-commerce so that suitable changes can be made to make e-commerce more attractive and popular in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific region.
socio-economic factors e-commerce adoption of technology e-commerce security