Investigating consumer adoption, usage and impact of broadband: UK households

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Despite a large investment, the majority of countries especially the UK demonstrate a slow adoption of broadband. In order to enhance the adoption and use of broadband this research examines the factors influencing the decisions of household consumers. This research aims to address the two main areas of concern: first, to investigate consumer-level factors affecting the adoption of broadband in UK households; and second, to understand the usage of broadband and its impact upon household consumers in the UK. This research adopted a quantitative approach that was executed in the following steps. First, it developed a conceptual model by selecting and justifying relevant constructs from appropriate theories and models related to technology adoption, usage and impact. Second, it operationalised the constructs by developing and validating the research instrument by employing the content validity, reliability and construct validity approach. Finally, it empirically validated and refined the conceptual model by employing a survey research approach. The findings suggested that all the constructs included in the conceptual model, except knowledge, significantly influence the consumers when adopting broadband in a UK household. The significant constructs include relative advantage, utilitarian outcomes, hedonic outcomes, primary influence, facilitating conditions resources and self-efficacy. The rate and variety of Internet usage is significantly higher for broadband consumers than narrowband ones. It was also found that significantly more numbers of broadband consumers perceived changes in time allocation patterns on various daily life activities than narrowband ones. This research contributes towards theory, practice and policy. The contribution of this research towards theory is that it integrates and determines the appropriate information systems (IS) literature in order to enhance knowledge of technology adoption from the consumers' perspectives. An added contribution to theory is the development and validation of a research instrument that future studies can utilise to examine broadband and other similar technologies in household context. Considering the slow adoption of broadband, this research also provides implications for policy makers and the providers of broadband in order to encourage and promote homogenous adoption and usage

Investigating Broadband Diffusion in the Household: Towards Content Validity and Pre-Test of the Survey Instrument

Studies on broadband diffusion are just beginning to emerge and exploratory in nature. Progress has been made to develop conceptual models to understand diffusion and adoption of broadband from the consumer perspective. However in order to test the conceptual model of broadband diffusion, a reliable survey instrument is yet to be developed and validated. Therefore, the aim of this research in progress paper is to perform content validity and pre-test a survey instrument. The objectives of this paper are: first, to ‘ identify’ constructs and their respective items that adequately cover relevant dimensions of factors that affects consumers in the domain of broadband diffusion; second, to ‘determine’ whether the identified constructs and respective items sufficiently cover relevant dimensions of the factors affecting consumers in the domain of broadband diffusion; and third, to conduct a ‘ pre-test’ on resulting survey instruments in order to obtain feedback for improvements before finalising the questionnaire. Initial items for each construct were identified from both technology adoption literature and exploratory studies on broadband adoption. Validation of the identified items was then performed employing variations of a quantitative approach to content validity. The findings obtained from content validation are then presented and discussed thereafter. Finally, the paper is concluded by emphasising the limitations of content validation and setting the future research direction towards investigating broadband diffusion in the household context

Analyzing the Factors of Broadband Adoption in the Householf

This research paper is an empirical investigation of the adoption rates and factors of broadband adoption in a local community (the London Borough of Hillingdon) in the UK. The aim of this research was to identify what are the challenges from the demand side that the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) face when deploying broadband. The study was conducted using a mail survey on a total of 172 household consumers from the London Borough of Hillingdon. The theoretical aspect of the literature was based upon the decomposed theory of planned behaviour (Taylor & Todd, 1995) and a model of adoption of technology in the household (Venkatesh and Brown, 2001). The results of this research found that broadband adoption in the household is driven by relative advantage such as faster access, utility outcomes, such as the uses of broadband for work purposes, and hedonic outcomes that refers to use of broadband for entertainment purposes. The main factors for the nonadopters were identified to be, high costs and lack of needs. The gradual adoption of broadband by the consumers is not only an industry concern, but government aim as well. Therefore this research should offer a substantial contribution to all interested stakeholders including the ISPs and government

Pay-per-click advertising: A literature review

Digital marketing is being widely employed to efficiently and effectively market products/services to achieve increased sales and generate higher revenues. It allows businesses to effectively communicate desired content to their consumers. Pay-per-click (PPC) is one such form of digital marketing. PPC is often acknowledged for the different advantages it offers, and at the same time, it is notably criticised for fraud and other issues associated with its use. The literature on this subject, although limited, has invested considerable efforts in unveiling the pros and cons of employing PPC as a marketing/advertising strategy. This paper reviews 50 publications on PPC advertising to synthesise their findings and arrive at a common ground for understanding the digital presence and impact of this form of marketing. Alongside discussing the findings, observed limitations and opportunities for future research have been identified and reported

Social media marketing and advertising

Social media has recently gained tremendous fame as a highly impactful channel of communication in these modern times of digitised living. It has been put on a pedestal across varied streams for facilitating participatory interaction amongst businesses, groups, societies, organisations, consumers, communities, forums, and the like. This subject has received increased attention in the literature with many of its practical applications including social media marketing (SMM) being elaborated, analysed, and recorded by many studies. This study is aimed at collating the existing research on SMM to present a review of seventy-one articles that will bring together the many facets of this rapidly blooming media marketing form. The surfacing limitations in the literature on social media have also been identified and potential research directions have been offered

Infusion of the Internet and Indigenous Tourism: An Australian Framework

IT management focuses on planning and developing new IT solutions. The importance of production (operation, support, maintenance) and further development of existing solutions is often neglected, although these tasks are responsible for the majority of today’s IT costs. The paper presents the results of a survey of the life cycle costs of 30 IT application systems. Within the survey, the distribution of costs over the application life cycle was recorded and evaluated. The results show the central importance of recurring costs for production and further development. For a production time of 5 years these costs amounted to 79% of all life cycle costs, whereas only 21% of the costs were incurred during the planning and initial development stages. Further findings include an evaluation of the poor quality of the cost data and the important role of business units as service providers

Examining consumer acceptance of green innovations using innovation characteristics: A conceptual approach

In the wake of global warming and environmental preservation, all processes and actions are now being directed along the lines of creating a greener environment. Household solar equipments are one such initiative, whereby people around the world are being encouraged to adopt green innovations even within homes. Recent emphasis is particularly along the usage of solar energy for home lighting, heating and cooking. To achieve increased adoption of these green innovations, it is important to understand the behaviours of various factors that may influence consumers in forming favourable intentions towards such innovations. This article aims to develop a theory-based conceptual framework for examining user adoption of household solar innovations. Attributes from Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory, Tornatzky and Klein’s Meta-Analysis, and Moore and Benbasat’s Perceived Characteristics of Innovating theory will be used to design the intended framework for examining the adoption of household solar and other green innovations

Conceptualising the role of innovation--attributes for examining consumer adoption of entertainment--related innovations

Several enhancements and new features have been introduced in the television entertainment industry to offer the viewers with a high quality viewing experience when it comes to contemporary home entertainment services. Tata SKY’s direct-to-home (DTH) service is one such service that has been recently introduced in the Indian context. For achieving an increased adoption rate of this innovation, it is important to gain an understanding of the behaviour of different factors that influence the potential consumers to form positive intentions about such innovations, in turn attracting them to accept and use of such innovations. This paper, thus aims at developing a theory-based conceptual framework for examining the consumer adoption of entertainment related innovations using the innovationattributes that have been acknowledged in the recent literature as having considerable influences on the acceptance of various innovations. Innovation-attributes from Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory, Tornatzky and Klein’s meta-analysis, and Moore and Benbasat’s perceived characteristics of innovating theory will be used here to develop a conceptual framework suitable for investigating the adoption of entertainment related innovations

E-GOVERNMENT ADOPTION RESEARCH: A META-ANALYSIS OF FINDINGS

The purpose of this paper is to undertake a meta-analysis of findings reported in existing research on adoption and diffusion of e-government. Usable data relating to e-government adoption research were collected from 112 papers out of 779 research articles identified from the ISI Web of Knowledge database and journals dedicated to electronic government research. The findings indicate that there are some variables such as: perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, intention to use, attitude, satisfaction, actual use, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control, which are common and drive the research from citizens as well as from employees’ perspective. The meta-analysis of the existing e-government adoption studies found that the majority of the construct relationships demonstrated the significant range of average summative correlation, and effect size, but the influence of ‘facilitating condition’, and ‘perceived risk’ on ‘intention to use’ and of ‘service quality’ on ‘satisfaction’ was found as non-significant. The broader analysis of the e-government adoption and diffusion research also reflects that although a large number of theories and theoretical constructs were borrowed from the reference disciplines, their utilization by e-government researchers appears to be largely random in approach. The paper also acknowledges the theoretical contributions, limitations and suggests further research directions