USING ONE-STOP E-COMMERCE PLATFORMS FOR BABY PRODUCT PURCHASES: INSIGHTS ON GENERATION Y IN MALAYSIA

Abstract

This study focuses on technological and selected psychological factors predicting the use of one-stop e-commerce platforms among Generation Y parents in Malaysia to purchase baby products. These platforms offer great convenience for parents as they can purchase almost anything at any time on one platform. Nevertheless, purchasing baby products is different because parents often prefer to physically inspect baby products and directly interact with the sales representatives for clarifications and assurance. Hence, the decision to use the one-stop e-commerce platforms rely on the parents’ confidence of the platforms. Generation Ys, now entering parenthood, has been found to be the largest contributor to the revenue of e-commerce platforms. Therefore, factors predicting their acceptance of the one-stop e-commerce platforms for baby product purchases is important for the platforms. The Technology Acceptance Model was employed in the study, incorporating the two main technology-related factors – perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use – as well as three psychological factors namely trust, perceived risk and perceived benefits in predicting the Gen Ys’ adoption of e-commerce platforms for baby product purchases. Self-administered questionnaire was employed resulting in 200 usable responses from Gen Ys, aged between 26-40. The results indicate that all factors significantly explained Gen Y’s decision to use one-stop e-commerce platforms. The perceived usefulness of the one-stop e-commerce platform technology emerged as the most predictive factor and thus should be emphasised by operators in fine-tuning their platform. Perceived risk negatively predicts purchases as hypothesized, with concerns about the inability to inspect products emerging as the key issue.