Adoption and acceptance of mobile commerce in Saudi Arabia: the case of e-ticketing in the airline industry

摘要

Mobile technology has influenced business strategies over recent years and the increasingudpenetration of mobile devices and related solutions such as mobile commerce hasudrevolutionised consumer organisations. Saudi Arabia with its high mobile penetration has theudpotential for higher usage of mobile services in the near future. This research aimed atudunderstanding and evaluating the acceptance and adoption of mobile commerce in SaudiudArabia with specific focus on the airline ticketing services through evaluation of the attitudeudand behaviour of the airline consumers towards mobile commerce in airline ticketing services.udThe research was designed as a mixed and explanatory research and used both deductive andudinductive approaches to understanding mobile commerce acceptance in airline ticketingudservices. The research also involved extensive review of technology adoption models such asudTechnology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use ofudTechnology (UTAUT), based on which a research framework was developed and hypothesesudspecified. Quantitative study involved online questionnaire based survey with 207 travellersudwho were connected at the King Abdul-Aziz airport in Saudi Arabia, while qualitative studyudinvolved interviews with eight employees of Saudi Airlines. The collected data was analysedudusing MS Excel and SPSS and subjected to descriptive, regression and content analysis.udThe research findings indicate positive perceptions of airline travellers towards the usefulness,udease of use and other related benefits of using mobile commerce for air ticketing services. Theudkey factors influencing the attitude were identified to be the ease of use, usefulness and socialudinfluence, while key determinants of behavioural intention were identified to be mobility,udcompatibility and usefulness. The other factors such as cost, trust, perceived risk and usecontextudwere not found to be the key influencers of the behavioural intention of Saudi Arabianudtravelers towards use of mobile commerce for airline ticketing services. Another key findingudwas the lack of any significant differences, perhaps surprising, in the behavioural intention touduse mobile commerce across various demographic groups based on age, gender and education.udThe research findings will be useful for both practitioners of mobile commerce as well asudacademicians involved in research on acceptance and adoption of mobile commerce. Moreover,udthe research findings are not just useful for the airline industry in Saudi Arabia, but can also beudconsulted by those interested in understanding mobile-commerce acceptance in airline industryudanywhere else across the globe or any other industry in Saudi Arabia.