Factors Influencing Chinese Consumers’ Desire to Use E-payment in Thailand

Abstract

As Corona virus pandemic has become a major driving force of seismic shift in how people shop and pay all over the world. These new consumer preferences of e-Payment are here to stay and will continue to shape the next normal for everyone involved in this whole new ecosystem for the years to come. Therefore all key stakeholders need to understand what factors influence and shape this changing market dynamics and shifting consumer expectations for these new e-Payment trends in order to remain competitive and thrive. Since Thailand has become tourist destination of Chinese. Consequently, e-Payment is becoming popular in recent years especially during Covid-19 pandemic. The purpose of this research is study of Factors influencing Chinese consumers’ desire to use e-Payment in Thailand. These factors are Benefits (BN), Trust & Security (TS), User friendly (UF), Technology (TN), Popularity (PP), Culture (CU), Government Policy (GP), Social Pressure (SP), Pop Culture (PC), Product value (PD) and e-Payment behavior (EP). 400 sample were collected using electronic questionnaire through social media such as Facebook, WeChat and Line. We used second-order Structural Equation Models (SEM) for data analysis. The result shows that RMSEA is .052 (<.06) which strongly indicates a “close fit” and the Goodness of Fit Index (GFI) value is .900, the model seems to fit well according to the descriptive measures of fit. More importantly, Trust & Security (TS) and second-order latent variable called Product value (PD) which represents User friendly (UF) and Technological aspects (TN) of e-Payment system seem to have significant effects on customer desire to use e-Payment due to their p-values are both less than .05. That means if e-Payment operators can provide highly-secure, high-tech, and user-friendly e-Payment system that can be trusted, people will be more likely to switch to use e-Payment to replace cards and cash any day. The results found in this research will help all key stakeholders—businesses, merchants, issuers and regulators alike—shape their strategy and identify critical technologies, rules and regulations to best position their organization for growth and support a rapid evolution of e-Payment methods in the new normal.