The Factors Affecting Attitudes Toward HSDPA Service and Intention to Use: A Cross -Cultural Comparison between Asia and Europe

Hae Sung Jung; Jong Kuk Shin; Min Sook Park; Hong-Seob Jung; Graham Hooley; Nick Lee; Hyokjin Kwak; Sung Hyun Kim

doi:10.1080/12297119.2009.9707301

HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) is a 3.5-generation asynchronous mobile communications service based on the third generation of W-CDMA. In Korea, it is mainly provided in through videophone service. Because of the diffusion of more powerful and diversified services, along with steep advances in mobile communications technology, consumers demand a wide range of choices. However, because of the variety of technologies, which tend to overflow the market regardless of consumer preferences, consumers feel increasingly confused. Therefore, we should not adopt strategies that focus only on developing new technology on the assumption that new technologies are next-generation projects. Instead, we should understand the process by which consumers accept new forms of technology and devise schemes to lower market entry barriers through strategies that enable developers to understand and provide what consumers really want. In the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are suggested as the most important factors affecting the attitudes of people adopting new technologies (Davis 1989; Taylor and Todd 1995; Venkatesh 2000; Lee et al. 2004). Perceived usefulness is the degree to which a person believes that a particular technology will enhance his or her job performance. Perceived ease of use is the degree of subjective belief that using a particular technology will require little physical and mental effort (Davis, 1989; Morris and Dillon 1997; Venkatesh 2000). Perceived pleasure and perceived usefulness have been shown to clearly affect attitudes toward accepting technology (Davis et al. 1992). For example, pleasure in online shopping has been shown to positively impact consumers' attitudes toward online sellers (Eighmey and McCord, 1998; Mathwick, 2002; Jarvenpaa and Todd 1997). The perceived risk of customers is a subjective risk, which is distinguished from an objective probabilistic risk. Perceived risk includes a psychological risk that consumers perceive when they choose brands, stores, and methods of purchase to obtain a particular item. The ability of an enterprise to revolutionize products depends on the effective acquisition of knowledge about new products (Bierly and Chakrabarti 1996; Rothwell and Dodgson, 1991). Knowledge acquisition is the ability of a company to perceive the value of novelty and technology of the outside (Cohen and Levinthal 1990), to evaluate the outside technology that has newly appeared (Arora and Gambaradella, 1994), and to predict the future evolution of technology accurately (Cohen and Levinthal 1990). Consumer innovativeness is the degree to which an individual adopts innovation earlier than others in the social system (Lee, Aim, and Ha 2001; Gatignon and Robertson 1985). That is, it shows how fast and how easily consumers adopt new ideas. Innovativeness is regarded as important because it has a significant effect on whether consumers adopt new products and on how fast they accept new products (Midgley and Dowling 1978; Foxall 1988; Hirschman 1980). We conducted cross-national comparative research using the TAM model which empirically verified the relationship between the factors that affect attitudes- perceived usefulness ease of use perceived pleasure perceived risk innovativeness and perceived level of knowledge management- and attitudes toward HSDPA service. We also verified the relationship between attitudes and usage intention for the purpose of developing more effective methods of management for HSDPA service providers. For this research 346 questionnaires were distributed among 350 students in the Republic of Korea. Because 26 of the returned questionnaires were inconsistent or had missing data 320 questionnaires were used in the hypothesis tests. In UK 192 of the total 200 questionnaires were retrieved and two incomplete ones were discarded bringing the total to 190 questionnaires used for statistical analysis. The results of the overall model analysis are as follows: Republic of Korea x(2)=333.27(p<0.01) NNFI=0.88 CFI=0.91 IFI=0.91 RMR=0.054 GFI=0.90 AGFI=0.84 UK x(2)=176.57 (p<0.01) NFI=0.88 NNF19.90 CFI=0.93 IFI=0.93 RMR=0.062 GFI=0.90 AGFI=0.84. From the results of the hypothesis tests of Korean consumers about the relationship between factors that affect intention to use HSDPA services and attitudes we can conclude that perceived usefulness ease of use pleasure a high level of knowledge management and innovativeness promote positive attitudes toward HSDPA mobile phones. However ease of use and perceived pleasure did not have a direct effect on intention to use HSDPA service. This may have resulted from the fact that the use of video phones is not necessary for everyday life yet. Moreover it has been shown that attitudes toward HSDPA video phones are directly correlated with usage intention which means that perceived usefulness ease of use pleasure a high level of knowledge management and innovativeness. These relationships form the basis of the intention to buy contributing to a situation in which consumers decide to choose carefully. A summary of the results of the hypothesis tests of European consumers revealed that perceived usefulness pleasure risk and the level of knowledge management are factors that affect the formation of attitudes while ease of use and innovativeness do not have an effect on attitudes. In particular with regard to the effect value perceived usefulness has the largest effect on attitudes followed by pleasure and knowledge management. On the contrary perceived risk has a smaller effect on attitudes. In the Asian model ease of use and perceived pleasure were found not to have a direct effect on intention to use. However because attitudes generally affect the intention to use perceived usefulness pleasure risk and knowledge management may be considered key factors in attitude development from which usage intention arises. In conclusion perceived usefulness pleasure and the level of knowledge management have an effect on attitude formation in both Asian and European consumers and such attitudes shape these consumers' intention to use. Furthermore the hypotheses that ease of use and perceived pleasure affect usage intention are rejected. However ease of use perceived risk and innovativeness showed different results. Perceived risk had no effect on attitude formation among Asians while ease of use and innovativeness had no effect on attitudes among Europeans.

The Factors Affecting Attitudes Toward HSDPA Service and Intention to Use: A Cross -Cultural Comparison between Asia and Europe

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The Factors Affecting Attitudes Toward HSDPA Service and Intention to Use: A Cross -Cultural Comparison between Asia and Europe

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