Modeling roles of subjective norms and eTrust in customers' acceptance of airline B2C eCommerce websites

Abstract

Airline companies have increasingly employed electronic commerce (eCommerce) for strategic purposes, most notably in order to achieve long-term competitive advantage and global competitiveness by enhancing customer satisfaction as well as marketing efficacy and managerial efficiency. eCommerce has now emerged as possibly the most representative distribution channel in the airline industry. In this study, we describe an extended technology acceptance model (TAM), which integrates subjective norms and electronic trust (eTrust) into the model, in order to determine their relevance to the acceptance of airline business-to-customer (B2C) eCommerce websites (AB2CEWS). The proposed research model was tested empirically using data collected from a survey of customers who had utilized B2C eCommerce websites of two representative airline companies in South Korea (i.e., KAL and ASIANA) for the purpose of purchasing air tickets. Path analysis was employed in order to assess the significance and strength of the hypothesized causal relationships between subjective norms, eTrust, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude toward use, and intention to reuse. Our results provide general support for an extended TAM, and also confirmed its robustness in predicting customers' intention to reuse AB2CEWS. Valuable information was found from our results regarding the management of AB2CEWS in the formulation of airlines' Internet marketing strategies.