The impact of the Internet technology on global commercial activities is best appreciated when one considers the tremendous rush by many businesses worldwide into online marketing activities since the year 2000. Among other scholars, Bradley and Stewart (2003) noted the highly indispensable ubiquity of the Internet in global retail banking and therefore predicted a near-universal adoption of Internet banking by 2011. Unfortunately, the global banking industry is currently still battling with persistent reluctance of retail customers to adopt the Internet banking channel due to certain factors, made even worse by the global financial crisis and economic recession precipitated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers of the US in September 2008. Two factors, customer readiness and channel readiness, were hypothesised in the current study as potential universal determinants of retail customer adoption of Internet banking (IB). The study involved two identical surveys carried out simultaneously in Scotland and Nigeria to cross-nationally test a proposed model of eight customer readiness variables and eight web-channel readiness variables in order to determine their universality as factors that can motivate or hinder retail customers' IB channel adoption. The sixteen variables were investigated as the possible universal predictors of customers' attitudes and intentions towards IB adoption using a combined adaptation of Davis' (1989) Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Ajzen' (2005) Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). A "mixed-mode method" (Wilson, 2006) was employed in primary data collection including web-based, email and intercept surveys. The comparative statistical analyses of the two national data sets involved the use of SPSS and AMOS for factor analyses as well as scale reliability and model invariance tests in both covariance structure and latent mean structure analyses. The results indicate significant scale reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and model fit for the final, re-specified version of the model. Three customer readiness variables (customer access, customer awareness, and customerprior involvement) and three channel readiness variables (channel ease of use, channel usefulness, and channel convenience) were validated in the final SEM model, which was confirmed as an adequate depiction of the hypothesised causal relationships in the study. Consequent upon the forgoing, this study contributes the validated model, named EQUAEVAL, to consumer behaviour and technology adoption theories in financial services marketing. The EQUAEVAL model represents a proposal for an equal evaluation of both customer and channel characteristics as universal antecedents of retail customer adoption of Internet banking. In terms of managerial implications, the study also contributes the validation of customer access, customer awareness, and customer prior involvement on one hand, and channel ease of use, channel usefulness, and channel convenience on the other hand, as issues that financial institutions anywhere in the world must deal with in order to redress the growing customer reluctance to Internet banking adoption.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:510806 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Onyia, Okey Peter |
| Publisher | University of Strathclyde |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://oleg.lib.strath.ac.uk:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=22002 |
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