Consumer adoption of virtual stores in Korea: Focusing on the role of trust and playfulness

Abstract

AbstractThe business‐to‐consumer aspect of electronic commerce (EC) is the most visible business use of the World Wide Web (WWW). A virtual store allows companies to provide product information and offer direct sales to their customers through an electronic channel. Success in this business is dependent on understanding the concerns of customers and identifying the factors that promote the intention to use a virtual store. Thus, this paper aims to examine the human motivations underlying individual behavioral intention to use a virtual store in Korea. This study employs TAM (technology acceptance model) as the base model and develops a more comprehensive version of TAM to better reflect a virtual store. The model employs playfulness, trust, information richness, and system quality, in addition to perceived usefulness and ease of use. The study investigates the causal relationships among the constructs used in this revised TAM and identifies the causal role of the constructs in developing the intention to use a virtual store. It finds that attitude toward a virtual store is the most significant factor in predicting the behavioral intention to use a virtual store. It also identifies perceived playfulness, perceived trust, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use as four major factors that directly affect virtual store users' attitudes. The results also indicate that information richness and system quality have significant albeit indirect impacts on consumer adoption of a virtual store. Considering the explosive growth of the virtual store market, a well‐established business strategy in a virtual store will deliver great success to the virtual store operators. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.