Factors Underlying the Adoption of Online Banking by Mexican Consumers

Abstract

Although Mexico is considered one of the most important emerging markets in global business, there is littleknowledge about the adoption of internet banking in Mexico. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine thefactors underlying the adoption characteristics of internet (online) banking by Mexican consumers, which willbenefit both academics and financial institutions. The paper uses both qualitative and quantitative approaches forresearch methodology. The qualitative method is used to gain insight into how consumers value online bankingby interviewing both adopters and non-adopters of internet banking (hereafter IB). Then, a questionnaire isdeveloped to include thirty-nine questions. The paper utilizes Factor Analysis to identify the characteristics ofthe adoption and the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to examine the differences between adopters andnon-adopters’ attitudes toward some attributes of the adoption. The results from Factor Analysis suggest eightcharacteristics of the adoption, namely difficulty, trust, compatibility, third party concerns, human contact, socialinfluence, security, and computer proficiency. Analysis of Variance shows that adopters and non-adoptersdiffered on their attitudes toward four attributes of the adoption: difficulty, trust, compatibility and humancontact. Comparing the attitudes of adopters and non-adopters with the issues of security and third partyconcerns, the study found no significant differences. An interesting finding was that human or physical contactwas considered important for non-adopters, showing the weakness of online banking. A discussion of the resultsand the implications for bank managers were included in the study.