Author(s):
1. Atanas Yonkov,

Abstract:
While business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce is gaining more prominence as an important factor for economic growth in most of the developed nations, the adoption of online trade has been rather clumsy in other parts of the world. At the same time, only a few cross-cultural studies have been conducted. It is not yet clear whether and how the determinants of online shopping behaviour differ between countries. This study proposes and tests an international e-commerce adoption model, in order to find out if there are any differences in the determinants of e-commerce adoption across nations. Consumers from the Netherlands and Bulgaria are studied and the main differences between them are examined. These countries are carefully selected; although they are both European Union members, they are very different from micro- and macroeconomic perspective, and represent clearly distinguishable cultures, which make them especially suitable for research. The paper uses the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as a theoretical framework and extends it with demographic and country specific variables. Specifically, the paper examines the effect of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived risk with product, perceived risk with transaction and individual’s income on the decision to buy online. Cultural and economic factors are used in order to hypothesise about differences in the strength of the possible relations across countries. In order to test the model, a survey is distributed and regression analysis is used. The results show that the full model does not hold for both the Netherlands and Bulgaria, while important differences between customers are observed. Consumers differ in the payment methods they use to buy online and the factors that influence e-commerce adoption are not equal across samples. Perceived usefulness and individual’s income have a stronger relation to the decision to buy online for Bulgarian customers, while other factors such as the type of the internet connection turn out to be more important determinants of the online purchasing behaviour for the Dutch. Moreover, the paper calls for the need to include specific variables in the model for each country, e.g. self-efficacy for the Bulgarians and the type of internet connection and subjective norm for the Dutch.

Key words:
e-commerce, consumer behaviour, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Technology Acceptance Model

Date of abstract submission:
10.10.2013.

Conference:
REDETE 2014 - Researching Economic Development and Entrepreneurship in Transition Economies