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Chapter 4 E-environment 199

Activity 4.2 Understanding enablers and barriers to consumer adoption

Purpose
To identify reasons why businesses or consumers may be encouraged online
or may resist. visit the
www
Activity
Access a recent survey in your country of attitudes to the Internet. In particular, you
should concentrate on reasons why customers have used the Internet or have not used
the Internet at all. A compilation of research about the Internet and technology adop-
tion is available at www.clickz.com/stats. Examples of data are provided in Figures 1.10
and 1.14.

1 Summarize and explain the reasons for the levels of usage of the medium for
different activities.
2 What are the main enablers and barriers to higher levels of adoption of these different
activities and which actions should organizations take to increase adoption?

Alternatively, devise an ad hoc survey to investigate attitudes to and use of the Internet
using friends, family or classmates as respondents. Example questions might include
the following. What have you bought online? If not, why not? How many hours do you
spend online each month? How many e-mails do you receive or send? What stops you
using the Internet more? What aspects of the Internet are you concerned about?
Answers to activities can be found at www.pearsoned.co.uk/chaffey

1 Cost of access. This is certainly a barrier for those who do not already own a home
computer: a major expenditure for many households. The other main costs are the cost of
using an ISP to connect to the Internet and the cost of using the media to connect (tele-
phone or cable charges). Free access would certainly increase adoption and usage.
2 Value proposition. Customers need to perceive a need to be online – what can the Internet
offer that other media cannot? Examples of value propositions include access to more
supplier information and possibly lower prices. In 2000, company advertisements started
to refer to ‘Internet prices’.
3 Ease of use. This includes the ease of first connecting to the Internet using the ISP and the

ease of using the web once connected.
4 Security. While this is only, in reality, a problem for those who shop online, the perception
generated by news stories may be that if you are connected to the Internet then your
personal details and credit card details may not be secure. It will probably take many years
for this fear to diminish as using the Internet slowly becomes established as a standard way
of purchasing goods.
5 Fear of the unknown. Many will simply have a general fear of the technology and the new
media, which is not surprising since much of the news about the Internet non-adopters
will have heard will concern pornography, fraud and privacy infringements.
An attempt has been made to quantify the magnitude of barriers to access in a UK govern-
ment-sponsored survey (Booz Allen Hamilton, 2002) of different countries. Barriers for
individuals noted by the survey included:
No perceived benefit
Lack of trust
Security problems
Lack of skills
Cost.