Personal Value (Lov) and Consumers’ Acceptance of Web Marketing Facilities (Awmf)Bthe Case of Consumers in Macaubthe Special Administrative Region of China

ABSTRACT - The paper attempts to study the relationship between Acceptance of Web Marketing Facilities (AWMF) based on The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) model (Kucuk and Arslan ,2000) and the Personal ValueBList of Value (LOV) (Beaty et al 1985)in the case of Macau (The Special Administrative Region of China) Consumers. Two factors of LOV were obtained and labeled as ASense of Peer Acceptance@ and three factors of AWMF were obtained and labeled as AInternet shopping as an usual activity@, ABelief of Internet Shopping Benefits@ and ASatisfied with Local Internet Provider@. Moreover, the data supports that the more consumers have high achievement-motivation, the less they believe that the Internet can provide benefits. Finally, it was found that there are significant differences between genders and several items of LOV and AWMF.

Citation:

NG, Sio Wang (2005) ,"Personal Value (Lov) and Consumers’ Acceptance of Web Marketing Facilities (Awmf)Bthe Case of Consumers in Macaubthe Special Administrative Region of China", in AP - Asia Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 6, eds. Yong-Uon Ha and Youjae Yi, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 378-385.

Asia Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 6, 2005      Pages 378-385

PERSONAL VALUE (LOV) AND CONSUMERS’ ACCEPTANCE OF WEB MARKETING FACILITIES (AWMF)BTHE CASE OF CONSUMERS IN MACAUBTHE SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION OF CHINA

NG, Sio Wang, Macao Polytechnic Institute, Macao

ABSTRACT -

The paper attempts to study the relationship between Acceptance of Web Marketing Facilities (AWMF) based on The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) model (Kucuk and Arslan ,2000) and the Personal ValueBList of Value (LOV) (Beaty et al 1985)in the case of Macau (The Special Administrative Region of China) Consumers. Two factors of LOV were obtained and labeled as "Sense of Peer Acceptance" and three factors of AWMF were obtained and labeled as "Internet shopping as an usual activity", "Belief of Internet Shopping Benefits" and "Satisfied with Local Internet Provider". Moreover, the data supports that the more consumers have high achievement-motivation, the less they believe that the Internet can provide benefits. Finally, it was found that there are significant differences between genders and several items of LOV and AWMF.

INTRODUCTION

Consumer researchers have embarked on the study of value most noticeably since 1960s. Rokeach (1968) asserted the concept of values in social sciences. Acceptance of Web Marketing Facilities (AWMF) based on The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) model (Kucuk and Arslan ,2000) has also been widely been utilized for researchers and practitioners to test, predict and explain users acceptance of technology. (Venkatesh and Morris,2000; Chau and Hu 2001; Agarwal and Prasad, 1999; Davis and Venkatesh ,1996; Doll, Hendrickson and Deng, 1998, and Fenech, 1998; Straub, Keil, and Brenner (1997). However, both of these theories have not been simultaneously studied in terms of their mutual relationship and thus, by adopting the samples of MacaoBThe Special Administrative Region of China" to investigate the inter-relationship between each another becomes more valuable for the field of consumer behavior study.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Personal Values

Value, as an important variable affecting human behavior has prompted extensive research activities in this area. Munson (1984) reviewed value research and concluded that value stretches on four disciplines: psychology, sociology, organizational behavior and consumer behavior. In the field of marketing, the scholars who embarked on the study include Rosenberg (1956) and Vinson and Munson (1976) who investigated the influence of value on consumer behavior. Other research studies have verified that personal values affect product choice (Pitts and Woodside, 1984; Homer and Kahle, 1988); Cheron and Muller (1993) investigated the present significant difference in ownership of products and personal values between Ontario and Quebec. Beat et al (1993) studied the relationship between gift giving and personal values of the parents of college students in the USA and Japan. Kau Ah Keng and Serene Liu (1997) investigated the relationship between personal values and complaint behavior in Singapore. Although previous studies have linked values and other behavior elements as dependent or independent variables in different cultural settings, none have linked consumers’ decision-making style and personal values in China setting.

Various instruments have been developed to measure different aspects of human values (Robinson and Shaver, 1973). One of the well-known ones was developed by Rokeach value survey (RVG) that consists of 18 instrumental values and 18 terminal values. Subjects are required to rank each on value’s importance. However, the method was criticized as it uses rank ordering rather than interval or ratio ordering (Clawson and Vinson, 1978). Another commonly and well-known used method of value measurement was developed by researchers at the university of Michigan (Veriff et al, 1981; Kahle, 1983). Beaty et al (1985) developed the instrument called List of Value (LOV) in the basis of theoretical works of Maslow (1954), Rokeach (1973) and Feather (1975). There are totally nine terminal values in LOV:

1. Sense of belongs

2. Excitement;

3. Warm relationship with others;

4. self-respect;

5. being well-respected;

6. self-fulfillment;

7. a sense of accomplishment;

8. fun and enjoyment in life;

9. Security.

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

The robustness of TAM has also been established through several application and replication (Adam et al, 1992; Davis 1989,1993; Davis et al 1993; Davis and Venkatesh 1996; Gefen and Struab 1997; Igbaria et al, 1997; Mathieson 1991; Morris and Dillon, 1997; Segars and Grover, 1993 and Subramania 1994). TAM built the model on the system usage intention and behavior as a function of perceived Usefulness(U) and Percieved Ease of Use (EOU) (Davis and Venkatesh, 1996). In general, TAM has two beliefs: perceived U which is the user’s perception for the extent to which the system will improve the user’s workplace performance, and perceived EOU depicts the user’s perception of the amount of effort required to utilize the system or the extent to which a user believes that utilizing a particular system would be free for effort (Davis, Bagozzi, and Warshaw, 1989) as depicted in Figure 1.

Doll, Hendrickson and Deng’s (1998) results provided a strong support for the validity and reliability of TAM. Szajna (1994) examined the TAM and found that the U/EUO model indicated reasonable prediction. Also, Szajna (1996) proved that TAM is a valuable tool for predicting intentions to use an information system. Straub, Keil, and Brenner (1997) examined and tested the TAM across Japan, Switzerland and the US. The results indicate that TAM holds for both the US and Switzerland but not for Japan.

FIGURE 1

TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL (DAVIS ET AL., 1989)

Acceptance of Web marketing Facilities

Although there has been a great number of study germane to TAM. Not many have focused on explaining the user acceptance of WMF through the TAM on a cultural, however, French (1998) tested perceived U and perceived EUO to predict user acceptance of World Wide Web and the results indicated a poor fit for the model until the introduction of an additional construct, computer self-efficacy. Agarwal and Prasad (1998) examined individuals’ perceptions toward the characteristics of information technology innovations as explanatory and predictive variables for acceptance behavior. Kucuk and Arslan (2000) investigated by comparing the AWMF in TAM basis into three countries of Britain, Denmark and Turkey. It was reported that significance difference was found between Turkey and Britain and Denmark in terms of AWMF, and no significant difference between Britain and Denmark.

    The U of WMF

According to Kucuk and Arslan (2000), the U of WM mainly reflects consumers’ perception of the extent to which using Internet would have satisfaction through ordering products and services on the Internet. The variables for of the U of WMF include five factors as follows:

Money Saving Bthe variable that represents consumers’ belief whether money would be saved through ordering products and services on the Internet;

Time SavingBthe variable which represents consumers’ belief in whether the Internet shopping is Time-saved;

Enjoyment of ShoppingBthe variable represents whether consumers enjoy Internet shopping more than traditional way of shopping;

Ability to access InformationBthe variable represents if consumer believe that it is more easy to get information on the Internet for the products and services which are not available in their local market;

SecurityBthe variable asking if consumers believe that shopping on Internet is "Safety" in terms of the danger of releasing personal information;

    The EUO of WMF

The EUO of WMF indicates consumers’ perception of the effort that is required in Internet for satisfying their needs. It includes four factors as follows:

User Friendly WebsiteBthe variable represents whether the consumers find web designs easy to use or users friendly to order products and services on the Internet;

Power of Server ProviderBthe variable to know whether consumers are satisfied with the local Server Provider in providing enough service for them to ordering products and services on the Internet;

User ExperienceBthis variable is simply asking whether users are well experienced with their Internet usage.

    Attitude and Intention Toward WMF

The Attitude and Intention Toward WMF has only one factor in whether consumers would have an intention to order products and services if they had accessed to Internet. (See Table 1)

METHODS

A well back-translated questionnaire in Chinese with the ten-item AWMF and a nine-items List of Value (LOV) Personal Value inventory was administered to the 201 undergraduate students of the School of Business of Macao Polytechnic Institute, Macao- The Special Administrative Region of China. The AWMF is in a scale seven points Likert scale ranging from 1 to 7 which 1 represents Strongly Disagree and 7 represents Strongly Agree and the nine items of the LOV is a 1 to 7 which 1 represents "Totally unimportant" while 7 represents "Very Important". The LOV and the AWMF inventories were run by factor analysis and their factor score were saved for further correlation analysis. The data was further analyzed by using T-test for investigating whether there is significant difference between gender and the attitude toward LOV and AWMF. Reliability test and KMO test were also adopted for adequacy testing purpose.

FINDINGS

Table 2 depicts the result of KMO test and the factor loading of the Personal Value (LOV) inventory. The KMO 0.816 proves that the LOV inventory is good for conducting Factor Analysis (George and Mallery, 2001). The factor analysis was run in condition of no factor was constrained. As a result, two factors were obtained in Total Variance Explained 53.41%. As shown in Table 2, Factor 1 is labeled as "Sense of Peer Acceptance" which includes six LOV items of "self-respected", "being well-respected", "fun and enjoyment of life", "security", "a sense of belongings" and "warm relationship with others". Factor 2 is labeled as "Sense of Achievement" which includes three LOV items of "self-fulfillment", a sense of accomplish" and "excitement".

Table 3 is another result and factor analysis of AWMF. The KMO value of 0.731 indicates that it is acceptable for conducting factor analysis (George and Mallery, 2001). There are totally three factors obtained from the factor-unconstrained condition. Resulting in 52.3% of total variance explained, factor 1 is labeled as "Internet shopping as a usual activity" which includes the AWMF items of "It is more easy to get information on the Internet about products and services that are unavailable in local market", "Ordering products and services on the internet is secure enough", "Web design is easy to use or user friendly to order products and services", "My experience in using internet is enough", "In accessing internet, I have an intention to order products and services"; factor 2 is labeled as "Belief of Internet Shopping Benefits" which includes the items of "Ordering products and services on the Internet can save money", "Internet Shopping is time-saved’, "I enjoy internet shopping more than traditional shopping methods" and factor 3 is labeled as "Satisfied with Local Internet Provider" which includes items of "The speed of internet is satisfactory enough for internet shopping" and "The local internet service provider is satisfactory enough to order products and services on the internet".

TABLE 1

TEN ITEMS OF AWMF

TABLE 2

FACTOR LOADINGS AND THE KMO TEST OF THE LOV PERSONAL VALUE

The factor analysis was conducted for two purposes. First is for investigating the characteristics of Macau consumers in terms of the LOV and AWMF nature. Second is for obtaining the factor score for a further calculation of correlation coefficient of the LOV and AWMF. Table 4 depicts the result of the univariate analysis that the Pearson correlation is obtained by calculating the factor score of the two-factor of LOV and the three-factor of the AWMF. As shown in Table 4, only the LOV factor "Belief of Internet Shopping Benefits" is significantly and negatively associated with the AWMF factor of "Sense of Achievement". That is, the more people are achievement-oriented, the less they believe that Internet can provide benefits for them.

It was hypothesized that there is no difference between gender and the LOV /the AWMF. Table 5 is the T-test result of the LOV and the Gender. It was found that gender had significant different attitude towards the LOV items in terms of "being well-respected" and "fun and enjoyment". To specifically study difference between the gender with each items by conducting cross-tabulation analysis with X² test, it was also found that female consider "being well-respected" and "fun and enjoyment of life" to be more important than male do.

The second hypothesis is that there is no difference between gender and the AWMF. Table 6 illustrates the results of the T-test of gender and AWMF. It was found that three items of the AWMF are significantly different with gender, namely, "I enjoy Internet shopping more than traditional shopping methods", "Ordering products and services on the Internet is secure enough" and "In accessing Internet, I have an intention to order products and services". Moreover, followed by a cross-tabulation analysis with X² test, it was found that female is more likely disagree on "I enjoy Internet shopping more than traditional shopping methods", "Ordering products and services on the Internet is secure enough" and "In accessing Internet, I have an intention to order products and services".

TABLE 3

FACTOR LOADINGS AND THE KMO TEST OF THE AWMF

TABLE 4

PEARSON CORRELATION OF LOV TWO-FACTOR AND AWMF THREE-FACTOR

TABLE 5

TEST-TEST OF LOV AND GENDER

TABLE 6

TEST-TEST OF AWMF AND GENDER

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

This exploratory study attempts to investigate the Personal Value (LOV) and the Acceptance of Web Marketing Facilities (AWMF) in terms of 1) their characteristics of the consumers in Macau; 2) their interrelationship and 3) whether difference significantly exits between genders. The study shows that Macau consumers’ personal value is peer relationship-oriented and self-achievement-oriented. For the AWMF, three types of consumer orientations are justified. Firstly are those who see Internet Shopping as a common and usual way of shopping; secondly type are those who believe that Internet Shopping can provide benefits such as time-saved and money saved and thirdly are those who are satisfied with local Internet service provider. When accessing the inter-relationship between LOV and AWMF, it was found that the more those who have high achievement motivation, the less they believe that Internet is a way of providing the benefits and the less they prefer shopping on Internet rather than traditional shopping approach. The study also shows that in comparing with male, female in Macau more likely disagree that Internet shopping are more enjoyable than traditional shopping; they do not think ordering products and services on the Internet is secure enough; and they do not have any intention to order products and services during navigating.

The finding of the study serves as a basic reference for the local or multinational business that adopts Internet as a selling channel. Since consumers in Macau are more likely peer-relation concern and self-achievement driven, marketing planners should develop the strategy on focus of these Chinese unique characteristics, for example, in developing advertising and sales promotion strategy, marketing planners should emphasize on the element of "reference group" as one of the important variables in consumer behavior. Since "net security" is found to be an important factor especially for female in Macau, any message emphasizing "security" would be a vital factor to increase their confidence of shopping through Internet. It is proven by the study that consumers in Macau basically accept Internet shopping as a usual way for shopping, believe that time and money could be saved through shopping in Internet and, being satisfied with the local Internet providers. However, the key is that they are lacking of confidence. In conclusion, if the local or multinational business are planning to develop their business through the Internet channel in Macau market, it is suggested that they should: 1) design peer-relation / achievement motivated advertising theme; 2) promotion for reinforcing consumer’s confidence in emphasizing "buying through Internet is secured"; 3) endeavor to educate female consumers in believing that net shopping is secured and funny because female are likely more to be potential buyers that male.

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