Factors affecting intentions to use mobile content services in ho chi minh city

In this study, perceived convenience and perceived mobility are also introduced asexternal factors that reflect the behavioral intention to use mobile content services, inaddition, the m

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

HUYNH TRAC SIEU FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTIONS TO USE

MOBILE CONTENT SERVICES

IN HO CHI MINH CITY

MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours)

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014

International School of Business

HUYNH TRAC SIEU

FACTORS AFFECTING INTENTIONS TO USE

MOBILE CONTENT SERVICES

IN HO CHI MINH CITY

ID: 22120137

MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours)

SUPERVISOR: DINH CONG KHAI, PhD

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I respectfully express my gratefulness to my research instructor,

Dr Đinh Công Khải for his warmly supports, taking the time from the beginning ofthe research to shape my research design and during every step of the thesis process

To my ISB Research Committee (IRC), I would like to thank for your recommendingand putting me back on track of research Besides, I would be grateful to ProfessorNguyễn Đình Thọ for his encouragement, insightful recommendations, and valuerequirements during my process

My sincere thanks also come to my teachers at International Business School University of Economic Ho Chi Minh City who provide a lot of knowledge for meduring my MBA course

-I would also like to thank many different individuals who help me in my developingresearch, especially the professional mobile development department in UFSInternational Inc Moreover, I owe thanks to my close friend – Hồ Quang Chi Bảo;your assistances and contributed comments made my research measurement scalesmore accurate and fit

Furthermore, I would like to specially send my thanks to my classmates, my friendswho are working in banks, schools, industrial zones, software developmentcompanies, and mobile application development companies for their support during

of Yang and Yoo (2004), whereas both affective and cognitive attitudes as two parts

of attitude construct in TAM

In this study, perceived convenience and perceived mobility are also introduced asexternal factors that reflect the behavioral intention to use mobile content services, inaddition, the mediating role of affective attitude between cognitive attitude andbehavior intention is investigated

The study analyzed a sample of 505 consumer responses in Ho Chi Minh City, theresults showed that all the cognitive and affective attitudes, perceived mobility,perceived convenience, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use - have impact

on the behavioral to use mobile content services via direct-effect, indirect-effect orboth

The finding of this research most focused on providing a guideline for futuredirection of mobile content services, especially most focus on the attitude changetoward using the mobile services

Keywords: Mobile content services, behavioral intention, cognitive attitude, affective attitude, perceived mobility, perceived convenience.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF FIGURES vi

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS viii

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 9

1.1 Research Background 9

1.2 Research Motivation 11

1.3 Research Objectives 12

1.4 Research Scopes 12

1.5 Significance of the Research 13

1.6 Research Methodology 13

1.7 Structure of Research 13

1.8 Summary 14

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND RESEARCH MODEL 15

2.1 Mobile Content Services 15

2.2 Theory of Reasoned Action 17

2.3 Theory of Planned Behavior 18

2.4 Technology Acceptance Model 18

2.4.1 Revised Original TAM with Separate Affective and Cognitive Attitude 20 2.4.2 Perceived Convenience – An External Variable of TAM 22

2.5 Perceived Mobility 23

2.6 Research Model and Hypothesis Development 23

2.6.1 Theoretical Model 23

2.6.2 The Competitive Model 27

2.7 Summary 28

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 29

3.1 Research Process 29

3.2 Construct Measurement 31

3.3 Measurement Refinement 33

3.3.1 Qualitative Pilot Study 33

3.3.2 Quantitative Pilot Study 34

3.4 Main Study 38

3.5 Data Analysis 40

3.5.1 Confirmatory Factor Analysis 40

3.5.2 Structural Equation Modeling 40

3.6 Summary 41

CHAPTER 4 DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS 43

4.1 Sample Specification 43

4.2 Confirmatory Factor Analysis 44

4.3 SEM Approach for Theoretical Model 48

4.4 Optimized the Theoretical Model 50

4.5 Competitive Model Test 52

4.6 Applying Bootstrap Procedure 55

4.7 Hypotheses Testing 57

4.8 Construct Effects 59

4.9 Models’ Generalized Squared Multiple Correlation 60

4.10 Summary 61

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS AND LIMITATIONS 62

5.1 Conclusions 62

5.2 Managerial Implications 64

5.3 Limitation and Further Research 65

REFERENCES 68

Appendix A. 77

Appendix B 83

Appendix C 86

Appendix D. 89

Appendix E 90

Appendix F 93

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 The Theory of Reasoned Action model……… 17

Figure 2.2 Theory of Planned Behavioral 18

Figure 2.3 First modified version of TAM 19

Figure 2.4 Final version of TAM 19

Figure 2.5 TAM with Affective and Cognitive Attitude 21

Figure 2.6 Revised TAM with Intention, Affective and Cognitive Attitude 21

Figure 2.7 The proposed theoretical model 24

Figure 2.8 The competitive model 28

Figure 3.1 Research process 30

Figure 4.1 Saturated model of the theoretical model 46

Figure 4.2 Standardized SEM results for theoretical model 49

Figure 4.3 The optimized theoretical model 51

Figure 4.4 The Standardized SEM results of Competitive Model 53

Figure 4.5 The final research model 56

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Summary of Supporting Works for Research Proposition 27

Table 3.1 Cronbach’s Alpha 36

Table 3.2 EFA Results 38

Table 3.3 Summary of the Data Collection Process 40

Table 4.1 Respondent Demographic 44

Table 4.2 Correlations between Constructs 47

Table 4.3 Measurement Validation 48

Table 4.4 Construct Relations 48

Table 4.5 Relations of Constructs (Standardized) 52

Table 4.6 Competing Measurement Modeling 54

Table 4.7 Summary of Models 54

Table 4.8 Competitive Model-Relations of Constructs (Standardized) 55

Table 4.9 Bootstrap Results (Final Model) 55

Table 4.10 Hypotheses Test – Results (Standardized) 57

Table 4.11 The Direct, Indirect and Overall Effects 59

Table 4.12 The Squared Multiple Correlations (R-squared Values) 60

Table A1 Original Measurement Scales 77

Table A2 Measurement Scale (Draft Questionnaire) 78

Table A3 Final Measurement Scales (Final Draft Questionnaire) 80

Table D1 KMO and Bartlett's Test 89

Table E1 Assessment of Normality 90

Table E2 Estimates of Saturated Model (Unstandardized) 91

Table E3 Standardized Regression Weight (Saturated Model) 92

Table F1 Covariances – MI for Theoretical Model 93

Table F2 SEM – Estimates Optimized Model (Unstandardized) 93

Table F3 SEM – Estimates Optimized Model (Standardized) 94

Table F4 SEM – Estimates Competitive Model (Unstandardized) 95

Table F5 SEM – Estimates Competition Model(Standardized) 96

Table F6 Bootstrap – Final Selected Model (Standardized) 97

Table F7 SEM – Variances of Residuals, Independent Constructs 98

Table F8 Bootstrap – Bootstrap Distributions (Final Model) 99

Table F9 Squared Multiple Correlations 101

Table F10 Standardized Residuals for Theoretical Model 102

Table F11 Standardized Residuals for Optimized Model 103

Chi-Squared ValueExploratory Factor AnalysisInformation System

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin ValueModification IndicesMaximum LikelihoodMobile Content Services

P-Value

Perceived ConveniencePerceived Ease Of UsePerceived MobilityPerceived UsefulnessRoot Mean Square Error Of ApproximationStructural Equation Modeling

Technology Acceptance ModelTucker & Lewis Index

Theory Of Planned BehaviorTheory Of Reasoned Action

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter introduces the background of mobile content services in general and abasic description of mobile content services in particular Subsequently, the researchmotivation, research objectives, research scopes and methodology are mentioned

This research focuses on main factors affecting the behavioral intention to use mobilecontent services (MCS) among Vietnamese consumers The relevance of the topicrelates to important themes: the theme of continuous information technology (IT)development and the theme of information technology acceptance and use Thesethemes are extremely meaningful to the business sector because business processunder information technology revolution is transforming the way we do business(Mahabir & Geeta, 2013)

Over the last few years, the developments of IT have pushed strong motivation forces

on mobile technology Therefore, mobile technology has grown up rapidly andbrought a key impact on human life, as the number of mobile devices has reached 4.6billion in the world (CBSnews, 2010) Gartner (2011) has reported that mobileapplications would not only generate $15.9 billion in expected end-user spending in

2012, but also drive other smartphone segments such as advertising spending, phonedevice sales and mobile technology innovation By offering context-aware featuresthat provide various function services to a user’s mobile environment, mobile contentservices have redefined the user experiences and shaped a highly competitivemarketplace, which enchants the interest of a number of stakeholders includingdevice vendors, merchants, mobile application developers and marketing firms

According to IDC’s Vietnam Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, a total 5.8 millionmobile phones have been shipped to Vietnam in the second quarter of 2013 In

addition to the huge smartphone devices used, the internet users and mobilesubscriber penetration of Vietnam are rated highly compared to others in SoutheastAsia The proportion of mobile subscribers sways the sceptre with 174% and internetusages are just lower than Singapore and Thailand (IMF, 2010) Compared to othercountries in ASEAN, the Vietnamese market is at the maturity state of laptop productlife cycle with the highest demand when it has reached a state of equilibrium, whilesmartphones and tablets are potential with low start Regarding the data usage, thereare 2.1 billion advertisements served to mobile devices in Vietnam every month; that

is more than 805 advertisements every second passing through mobile devices (ITU,2012), 62% of Vietnam’s internet users accessed via mobile devices and mobileinternet user in Vietnam reached 19 million – according to Mobile Day Vietnam(2012) Ernst and Young’s Advisory Services (2013) state regarding the mobilemoney, a part of mobile content services, as follows:

We are convinced that the growth of mobile money services will be one of themost significant trends of the coming years It promises many new benefits forusers around the world and is undoubtedly going to shape thetelecommunications, technology and financial services industries (p 5)

The increasing roles of mobile devices and mobile content services in Vietnam based

on the facts presented above have explained the reason why it is significant toinvestigate mobile content services

Technology is one of the important factors profoundly changing the nature ofservices and the way in which firms interact with their customers (Bitner, 2001).Customers with their complex behaviors involve the use and disposal of products andservices However, “how to know” the consumer behaviors is difficult and complex

to research, especially in technology market segment Accordingly, explainingconsumer acceptance of new technology such as mobile data content services hasbeen a longstanding research Since the financial cost for mobile technologyinfrastructure has often been invested at high budget, it is wasted for

companies if they do not get enough mobile clients for their profit Currently, thereare dramatically successful Vietnamese mobile content services providers such asMobifone, VinaPhone, Viettel, nhacuatui.com, and Zing However, many othercompanies got failure and withdrew their businesses such as Beeline and HanoiMobile Over the past two years, the mobile market in Vietnam has taken major stepsforward but mobile content services have not matched potential Despite the rapidgrowth in the mobile content services, research towards consumers’ intentionbehavior is scarce.

Hence, this study focuses on the factors affecting the behavioral intention of mobilecontent services and tries to clarify the factors influence the consumers’ behavioralintention in the context of Vietnam mobile market’s development

1.2 Research Motivation

As numerous mobile devices are used for multi purposes, mobile content servicesprovide many convenient ways for mobile clients to easily access information bymobile devices Huge new mobile services are provided but the acceptance of theseservices has always been the big question and needs to be answered Regarding theacceptance of mobile technology research, many studies have been conducted(Suoranta, 2003; Cheong & Park, 2005; Kaasinen, 2005; Lu, Yao & Yu, 2005) Since

a lot of studies focused on mobile banking such as research done by Sripalawat,Thongmak, and Ngramyarn (2011), Suoranta and Mattila (2004), Yang (2009) or onmobile internet (Ying & Shieh, 2009), “Mobile Content Services” is the new conceptthat covers a set of “mobile communication services”, “mobile commercial services”,

“mobile entertainment services”, and “mobile information services” However, thereare limited studies pertaining to what are the factors that affect customers’ behaviorintention to use mobile content services, especially in Vietnam market

According to the reviews above, this study tries to figure out how to pinpoint thesignificant factors that affect the behavioral intention to use mobile content servicesamong Vietnamese consumers This also provides solutions or implications toenhance opportunities for mobile services providers so that they can sustainablydevelop mobile content services market in Vietnam

1.3 Research Objectives

The main objective of this study is to examine the factors that affect customers’behavioral intention to use mobile content services, enhance our understanding ofVietnamese mobile consumers as clients of technology services In specific theobjectives are:

(1) To examine the causal factors that affect consumers’ behavioral intention to usemobile content services;

(2) To examine the important effects of cognitive and affective attitude on

behavioral intention to use mobile content services

1.4 Research Scopes

According to the research objectives, this study focuses on Vietnamese mobile users.Moreover, this research is conducted in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) – the biggest citylocated in the South of Vietnam Currently, HCMC is the economic, technology andfinancial hub of Vietnam, which attracts migrants from other provinces As a result ofthis, the city’s official population was 7,990,100 in 2013 (General Statistics Office,2013) Therefore, this place has more mobile users than other places or areas

Again, customers in this study are limited to individual mobile clients and notinstitutions or groups who are also customers of many mobile content servicesproviders in Vietnam Finally, the research only focuses on the factors affectingbehavioral intentions to use mobile content services, hence, the other dependent

factors such as “use behavior” and “actual use” are out of the contents of thisresearch.

1.5 Significance of the Research

This study contributes to the application of the attitude change process It is ameaningful outcome for researchers in analysis the process of attitude change It alsoembosses the important roles of other factors affect on behavioral intention to usemobile content services in Vietnam market Regarding the managerial implications,these finding help managers to control the attitudes change and next, improving theuser’s acceptance of technology It brings valuable practical implications for mobileoperators so that they can improve the usage of mobile content services

This study utilizes two forms of qualitative and quantitative research The researchincludes pilot study and main study Firstly, the pilot study is undertaken byqualitative and quantitative methods while the main study is used quantitativemethod Secondly, in the pilot study, a draft of questionnaires is created; after that, itstill needs a refining for the final questionnaire Next, in the main study, the finalquestionnaires are distributed via email, social network and in hardcopy torespondents In order to reduce time during sampling process, the conveniencesampling is used Finally, the analysis tools such as IBM SPSS 22, IBM AMOS 22and Microsoft Excel 2012 are used for data analysis process Chapter 3 providesmore details of research methodology

1.7 Structure of Research

The structure of research consists of five chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction

This chapter introduces the readers to the background of mobile content services ingeneral, as well as, research motivation and research objectives Subsequently,research scope, research methodology and research structure are outlined

Chapter 2: Literature Review and Research Model

In this chapter, the author provides the literature reviews that concern the mobilecontent services, theoretical models and competitive model Finally, the researchmodel is presented

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

This part presents brief description of the research methodology, which includes theresearch process, construct measurements, measurement refinement, main study anddata analysis methods

Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Results

Chapter 4 presents the sample specification and data analysis Based on the results,the author draws conclusions for the proposed hypotheses

Chapter 5: Conclusions, Implications and Limitations

This chapter presents the main conclusions, implications and limitations Moreover,the recommendations for future research are also provided

The research begins with the introduction, which discusses the research background

of mobile content services in general Then the research motivation explains whythere is a need for this research It summaries the status and gaps of mobile contentservices, since a lot of study focused on mobile application; however, there arelimited studies pertaining to what the factors affect consumer’s behavioral intention

to use mobile content services, especially in Vietnam Based on the researchobjectives and resources, the scope of research is the examination of the individualmobile clients who use the mobile devices and data content services in Ho Chi MinhCity Finally, the overviews of research methodology and research structure arepresented The next chapter presents the literature review, research model andhypothesis development

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND RESEARCH MODEL

This chapter focuses on five important contents: (1) Mobile content servicesdefinitions; (2) the major theories built from belief, attitude, intention and technologyacceptance model (TAM); (3) Attitude with separated cognitive and affectiveconstructs; (4) Perceived convenience and (5) Perceived mobility characteristicsreviews After theoretical reviews, the research model and hypotheses are proposedaccordingly

2.1 Mobile Content Services

Mobile Content Services are services process in which customers participate withtheir mobile devices to get multifarious contents These contents are provided by theservice providers as an outcome and delivered to the customer’s mobile device or tothe customer in any other forms (Niemela, 2006) Mobile content services aredelivered to or used with mobile phone via public telecommunications network.Payment for these services may occur immediately by card or other ways such as postpayment through user’s phone bill, deducing mobile prepaid account

Mobile content services are results of technological innovations as outcome ofinformation technology revolution Mobile content services and mobile applications

do not exist separately; they merged and quickly emerged together due to theconvergence of Internet, Media, Social Media, Information technology andtelecommunications technology Mobile content services consist of digital serviceswhich are added to mobile networks or integrated into mobile devices other thantraditional voice services; hence, it is postulated that the benefit offered by theseservices are highly diverse (Bouwman, López-Nicolás, Molina-Castillo & VanHattum, 2012)

Because of the convergence of technology as discussed above, the terms MobileContent Services, Mobile Data Services and Mobile Applications have often been

used interchangeably by various studies Fang and colleagues (2006) categorize thetype of mobile services based on their objectives into three types:

mobile email, mobile SMS, browse website, map and search location services

(2) Transaction tasks: These tasks include mobile banking, mobile money and online purchase via internet-store

(3) Entertainment tasks: These tasks include gaming and entertainment dataservices such as mobile game, vote/contest via value added public number, polyphonic ringtones, downloading logo, wallpapers, listening music via mobile network and standbybackground music

These three types of tasks differ in their objectives The objective of general tasks is

to search information or communicate with other parties whereas the goal oftransaction tasks is to commit financial transactions The purpose of entertainmenttasks is to entertain their performers All of the three tasks above can be found inVietnam

Besides, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) classifies mobile dataservices into four categories: communication services, information content services,entertainment services and commercial services (ITU, 2002; Sadeh, 2002) Mobilecommunication services, which are the most widely used form of mobile contentservices, include short message service (SMS), multimedia message service (MMS),e-mails and mobile chatting (ITU, 2002) Mobile entertainment services include ring-tones, digital characters, horoscope, mobile gamming, mobile video, and mobilemusic Information content services deliver information contents such as weathernews, maps, sport news, traffic information, location based information and newsheadlines Finally, commercial services enable consumer to purchase financialtransactions, booking online, shopping and payment online All of four categories can

be found in Vietnam

2.2 Theory of Reasoned Action

Figure 2.1 shows a model of the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), which is

proposed by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975)

Figure 2.1 The Theory of Reasoned Action model (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980)

The ultimate objective of TRA is to predict and discover an individual’s behavior

(Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) Ajezen and Fishbein recommend that individual’s actual

behavior can be determined by considering his or her prior intention along with the

beliefs that a person have for the given behavior According to TRA, individual’s

intention consists of two basic determinants: attitude that a person has toward the

actual behavior and subjective norm associates with the behavior in question

Suggesting that attitude of a person toward behavior (A) can be measured by

calculating the sum of the product of all salient beliefs ( : consequences of performing

that behavior) and an evaluation ( ) of those consequences, we have the

formula as below:

A =The subjective norm (SN) can be

determined by considering the sum of the product

∑

of a person’s normative beliefs (n ) which is the perceived expectation of other

measuring the subjective norm along with an actual behavior:

SN =Hence, the individual behavior

intention (BI) can be determined by one formula as

∑

below:

BI=A+SN

TRA provides a useful model that can explains and predicts the actual behavior of anindividual fairy well

2.3 Theory of Planned Behavior

Ajzen (1985) has extended TRA model by proposing the Theory of Planned Behavior(TPB) Actually, the TPB model is not different from TRA model In addition, ittakes into account one new construct: perceived behavioral control (PBC) PBCrefers to the perception of control over performance of a given behavior PBC ispredicted by the effect of two beliefs: control belief and perceived facilitation.Control beliefs include perceived availability of skills, resources and opportunities,whereas perceived facilitation is the personal assessment of available resources to theachievement of a given set of outcomes (Mathieson, 1991) Figure 2.2 shows themodel for the TPB

Figure 2.2 Theory of Planned Behavioral (Matheison, 1991)

2.4 Technology Acceptance Model

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) applies Fishbein and Ajen’s Theory ofReasoned Action (TRA) as theoretical basic to explain causal relationship betweenthe variables in the model (Davis, Bagozzi & Warshaw, 1989) See Figure 2.3 for thefirst modified version of TAM

Figure 2.3 First modified version of TAM (Davis et al, 1989)

This version posits that technology acceptance can be explicated by two variables:

“perceived usefulness” and “perceived ease of use” Perceived usefulness is defined

as “the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system wouldenhance his or her job performance” Perceived ease of use is defined as “the degree

to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of effort”.Although perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are not only variablesaffecting acceptance, they seem to hold a central role (Davis, 1989) This model alsoshows that there is case when given system, perceived usefulness and one person mayhave a strong behavior intention to use the system without pass through any attitude.That means there is a direct link between perceived usefulness and behavioralintention bypass the attitude variable

Davis et al (1989) use above model to deploy a study with 107 users to measure theirintention to use system after one-hour introduction about the system and repeat 14weeks later Their results show that both “perceived usefulness” and “perceived ease

of use” influence directly on behavior intention to use, thus they eliminate the role ofattitude construct from the model See Figure 2.4 for the final version of TAM

Figure 2.4 Final version of TAM (Venkatesh & Davis, 1996)

2.4.1 Revised Original TAM with Separate Affective and Cognitive Attitude

As previous review, attitude is one construct of first version of TAM It uses Fishbeinand Ajen’s Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) as theoretical basic to explain thecausal relationship between the variables in model (Davis et al., 1989) However, inthe last version, Davis and his colleagues eliminate attitude construct out of model(Figure 2.4) Although Davis and his colleagues omit attitude from TAM, many otherstudies have used the original TAM (included attitude), for instance, Agarwal andPrasad (1999); Lu, Yao, and Yu (2005); Curran and Meuter (2005) Thus, it isextremely difficult to compare these studies with contradictory findings about attitudesince consistent measures of attitudes are not used across studies

Based on TRA, TAM conceptualizes attitude as an affective unidimensionalconstruct Contrary to TAM, Cacioppo, Petty, and Crites (1994) have argued: “themost common classification for the basis of attitude is affect and cognition” Theaffective dimension of attitude focuses on how much the person likes the object ofthought and measures the degree of emotional attraction toward the object On theother hand, the cognitive dimension of attitude refers to an individual’s specificbeliefs related to the object and consists of the evaluation, judgment, reception orperception of the object of thought based on values

Yang and Yoo (2004) believe that attitude might have important effects oninformation system use so that it needs to be reconsidered in the TAM They also

propose that instead of eliminating the attitude construct as Davis et al (1989)

worked, two cognitive and affective attitude dimensions are considered (Figure 2.5)

In there, “the cognitive dimension of attitude directly influences individualinformation system use, while the affective dimension needs to be treated as anovercome variable of its own” Consistent with this perspective, the cognitive attitudedescribes the expected performance of the system and the affective attitude is closelyrelated to the appeal and usability of the system (Zaad & Allouch, 2008)

Figure 2.5 TAM with Affective and Cognitive Attitude (Yang & Yoo, 2004)

Based on the TAM from Davis et al (1989), Yang and You’s (2004) research, withthe addition of behavioral intention back as mediator between attitude and usage,Wang and Liu (2009) develop a conceptual model of cognitive and affective attitudetoward behavioral intentions to use Railway’s Internet Ticket System in Taiwan Theresults of their case studies show that both affective and cognitive attitudes positivelyinfluence behavioral intention (Figure 2.6)

Figure 2.6 Revised TAM with Behavioral Intention, Affective and

Cognitive Attitude (Wang & Liu, 2009)

According to Yang and Yoo (2004), the affective dimension of attitude is influenced

by beliefs and the beliefs can be evaluative or non-evaluative (true or false) Thecognitive attitude can be assigned as an evaluative belief and developed from non-evaluative beliefs and values, whereas, evaluative beliefs in turn develop intoaffective attitude (like or hate) Therefore, Yang and Yoo (2004) point out that “there

is a hierarchical relationship among these four constructs: affective attitude isinfluence by cognitive attitude, which is affected by non-evaluative beliefs, which is

2.4.2 Perceived Convenience – An External Variable of TAM

To consumers who use products or services, convenience depends on effort and time(Berry, Seiders & Grewal, 2002) Therefore, when a product or service saves timeand effort for a user, it is considered convenient Some researchers posit that product

or service is convenient when it lowers the emotional, cognitive and physical burdensfor a user (Chang, Yan & Tsen, 2012) Another researcher defines the convenience ofproduct or service by five elements: time, acquisition, use, execution and place(Brown, 1990) According to the definition of Brown (1990), the perceivedconvenience of the wireless network is measured in set of three elements: time, placeand execution (Yoo & Kim, 2007) Yoo and Kim (2007) have defined perceivedconvenience as a level of convenience toward time, place and execution that userperceives when using the wireless network to complete a task Moreover, whenexamining the extended TAM with perceived convenience, they found that perceivedconvenience do not affect intention to use directly while perceived ease of usepositively affects perceived convenience and perceived convenience positivelyaffects perceived usefulness

In Cheolho and Sanghoon’s (2007) study, a set of four constructs (perceivedusefulness, perceived ease of use, behavioral intention and perceived convenience)are used to examine a ubiquitous wireless LAN environment The results haveshowed that perceived ease of use positively affects perceived convenience;perceived convenience positively affects perceived usefulness

More recent research on investigating English learning through “personal digitalassistant (PDA)” (Chang et al., 2012), which indicates a significantly positive effect

of perceived ease of use on perceived convenience, perceived convenience onperceived usefulness and perceived convenience on attitude toward using PDAs

2.5 Perceived Mobility

Since the mobile technology has rapidly grown, mobile content services are uniquebecause of the mobility We can access the content services anytime and anywhere sothat we also control our works and entertainments in different ways Perceivedmobility in this study is the extent to which mobile content services are perceived asbeing able to provide pervasive and timely connections This factor might resist orfacilitate usage of mobile content services Hong, Thong, Moon, and Tam (2008) alsobelieve that perceived mobility might have a positive relationship with consumers’intention to continue use the mobile content services Ajzen (1991, 2002) theorizesthat mobility such a factor is likely to affect the formulation of behavior intention.Amberg, Hirschmeier, and Wehrmann (2003) propose that perceived mobility is aconstruct specific to mobile services

Mobility may not be satisfied if there are not enough network signal coverage areas,the device battery is so weak or there is not enough mobile operators offering themobile data services Hence, Krueger (2001) has predicted a demand for “paymentroaming” and the pressure from users for co-operative solutions Such paymentroaming includes both the mobile users wanting to process payments while travellingoutside of network coverage or to make payments to other networks Buhan, Cheong,and Tan (2002) forecast that the good solutions would be able to interact with othersolutions to create a global payment network

2.6 Research Model and Hypothesis Development

2.6.1 Theoretical Model

Taking into consideration the combined models of revised TAM with separatecognitive and affective attitudes , perceived convenience and perceived mobility, thespecific relationships among the TAM constructs and identified variables - thetheoretical model for this research are proposed (See Figure 2.7)

Figure 2.7 The proposed theoretical model

TAM explains the relationships between perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness,attitude toward using technology and behavioral intention as the followings: (1)perceived ease of use positively affects perceived usefulness; (2) perceived ease ofuse and perceived usefulness positively affect attitude toward using technology; (3)attitude toward using technology positively affects behavioral intention (Davis,1986)

Regarding perceived ease of use positively affects perceived usefulness; there aremany empirical tests, such as Davis (1986), Yang and Yoo (2004), Wang and Liu(2009), which prove that users perform well in tasks when they do not need to paymuch effort Therefore, hypothesis H1 is proposed as follows:

H1: Perceived ease of use positively affects perceived usefulness

Back to research of Yang and Yoo (2004), the attitude toward using technology isdeveloped to affective and cognitive attitude In there, attitude has both affective andcognitive components Zaad and Allouch (2008), Petty et al (1994) have argued: “themost common classification for the basic of attitude is affective and cognitive” Asattitude has already been explained in the literature review of this chapter, manystudies point out the different mediating role of two attitudes between

perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and behavioral intention, such as Yangand Yoo (2004), Wang and Liu (2009), Alhabahba and colleagues (2012) As a result,this study attempts to answer the question “what is the causal relationship betweentwo belief constructs in TAM (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) andtwo attitude constructs (affective and cognitive attitude) leading to behavioralintention?” (Yang & Yoo, 2004) Therefore, based on the changes in the attitudes andthe original TAM framework, these following hypotheses are proposed to reflect therelationships between the addition of the two construct of attitudes and othervariables:

H2: Perceived usefulness positively influences cognitive attitude

H3: Perceived usefulness positively influences affective attitude

H4: Perceived ease of use positively influences cognitive attitude

H5: Perceived ease of use positively influences affective attitude

In addition, there are many studies confirmed attitudes have a positively influencesbehavioral intention, such as Taylor and Todd (1995a), Morris and Dillon (1997), andDavis (1986) According to Yang and You (2004), “The dyadic view presumes theaffective and cognitive to be independent variables that affect behavioral intention”.Other recent research on the Railway’s Internet Ticket System (Wang & Liu, 2009),which demonstrates that both cognitive and affective attitudes positively influencebehavioral intention In their research, the beta coefficient from cognitive attitude tobehavioral intention is stronger than the beta coefficient from affective attitude tobehavioral intention Thus, using cognitive and affective attitude constructs instead ofsingle attitude leads to the following hypotheses:

H6: Cognitive attitude positively influences behavioral intention to use mobile content services

H7: Affective attitude positively influences behavioral intention to use mobile content services

Reviewed the literature, cognitive attitude also positively influences affective attitude(Yang & You, 2004) The empirical study of Wang and Liu (2009) shows a positiveinfluence of cognitive attitude on affective attitude Thus, there is likely suchevaluative beliefs (cognitive attitude) in turn develop into clients’ affective attitude.Hence, it hypothesizes that:

H8: Cognitive attitude positively influences affective attitude

The literature in this chapter shows that perceived convenience is an external variable

of TAM Yoon and Kim (2007), Chang et al (2012) found that the perceived ease ofuse positively affects perceived convenience and perceived convenience positivelyaffects perceived usefulness Namely, the easier the use of mobile system, the moreconvenient a user perceives it and the more convenient the user feels the mobilesystem is, the more useful one perceives it to be Based on these empirical results,this research defines three dimensions of perceived conveniences are place, time,execution, and then proposes the hypotheses:

H9: Perceived ease of use positively affects on perceived convenience

H10: Perceived convenience positively affects on perceived usefulness

Finally, back to the review of perceived mobility, perceived mobility is an additionvariable to TAM, since the perceived mobility has been assigned as important factorthat makes user accept the system (Hong et al., 2008; Amberg et al., 2003; Ajzen,2002) Therefore, this study hypothesizes that perceived mobility might have apositive relationship with user’s behavioral intention to use mobile content services

H11: Perceived mobility has a positive influence on consumers’ behavioral intention to use mobile content services

The summary of supporting works for research proposition and theoretical model are presented on Table 2.1 and Figure 2.7, respectively

Table 2.1

Summary of Supporting Works for Research Proposition

Perceived The degree to which a person believes that using a Davis et al Usefulness particular system would enhance his or her job (1989)

performance Perceived The degree to which a person believes that using a particular Davis et al.

Cognitive

The degree of attitude that an individual’s specific beliefs

Yang and Yoo related to the object and consists of the evaluation, judgment,

reception or perception of the object of thought based on value

Affective

The extent to which an individual likes the object of thought

Yang and Yoo and measures the degree of emotional attraction toward the

object Perceived

The level of convenience toward time, place and execution

Yoon, C and that one perceives when using the wireless network to

complete a task Perceived The extent to which "mobile services" are perceived as being Hong et al Mobility able to provide pervasive and timely connections (2008) Behavioral Behavioral intention toward system usage Venkatesh et al.

2.6.2 The Competitive Model

Beside the theoretical model, the competitive model takes an important role in

creating scientific theory (Nguyen Dinh Tho & Nguyen Thi Mai Trang, 2011b)

Zaltman, Lemasters, and Heffering (1982) (as cited in Nguyen Dinh Tho & Nguyen

Thi Mai Trang, 2011b) recommend that the researcher should check for both the

theoretical model and the competitive model instead of only focusing on theoretical

model Bagozzi (1984) (as cited in Nguyen Dinh Tho & Nguyen Thi Mai Trang,

2011b) also suggests that the researcher must compare competitive and theoretical

models in their current research rather than they do this in another research Bollen

and Long (1993) (as cited in Nguyen Dinh Tho & Nguyen Thi Mai Trang, 2011b)

claim the important role of checking the competitive model instead of testing onlyone theoretical model.

According to previous researches regarding the necessary of building competitivemodel beside the existing theoretical model, this study suggests one competitive

model for the theoretical model Based on many researches relate to perceivedconvenience directly effect on behavioral intention to use services, for instance, Liao,Tsu, and Huang (2007) found that convenience value affects shopping motivation,which is a determinant of consumers’ intention to shop on the Internet Studies onRadio Frequency Identification (RFID) (Hossain & Prybutok, 2008) and onlineshopping (Gupta & Kim, 2007) reveal that perceived convenience is an antecedentfactor that affects intention to use a mobile technology or system Gupta and Kim(2006) found that convenience has a positive impact on online shopping intention aswell Therefore, the competitive hypothesis is proposed:

Hc: Perceived convenience positively effect on behavioral intention to use mobile content services

Based on the competitive hypothesis, the competitive model is formed (Figure 2.8).This competitive model is used to compare with the theoretical model to select thefinal research model

Figure 2.8 The competitive model

This chapter focuses on definitions and theoretical background of each conceptwithin model The research model is formed by applying original TAM (Davis, 1986)and the revised attitude by Yang and Yoo (2004) In this study, the theoretical modeland competitive model are proposed and then tested There are eleven hypotheses forthe theoretical model and one addition competitive hypothesis for competitive model.The next chapter discusses about the research methodology

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The previous chapter reviewed the literature and proposed the theoretical model aswell as hypotheses Chapter 3 briefly presents a description of the research methodand clarifies how to develop the research measurement Both qualitative andquantitative approaches are employed in the study This chapter includes five parts:(1) the research process; (2) construct measurement; (3) measurement refinement;(4) main study and (5) data analysis methods for main study

3.1 Research Process

Two phases of study were conducted in this research: pilot study and main study Thepilot study aims to explore certain issues before undertaking the main study The pilotstudy in this research was undertaken by qualitative and quantitative method whilethe main study used quantitative method This research focused on the factorsaffecting on the behavioral intention toward using mobile content services, especiallythe role of the cognitive and affective bases of attitudes in the behavior of mobileusers Therefore, the unit of analysis was an individual mobile user The research sitewas Ho Chi Minh City, the principal business and technology center in Vietnam.Most of respondents of this study were individuals who had experience in usingmobile devices

The qualitative pilot phase employed three focus group discussion while thequantitative pilot phase adjusted and refined the final draft measurement Thequalitative pilot study involved three focus groups who were skillful in mobilecontent services and professional in English Its purpose was to investigate the issuesregarding the contents, number, structure and meaning of the measurement scalesbefore the quantitative pilot study was conducted Next, in the pilot quantitativephase, the final draft questionnaires were sent to 150 mobile users who lived inDistrict 1 and District 7, Ho Chi Minh City; however, only 130

questionnaires were valid Simultaneously, Cronbach alpha and exploratory factoranalysis (EFA) were used to test the final draft measurement scales.

The main study was conducted by quantitative method This research selected asample size at 500 (n = 500) and the sampling was based on convenience sampling.That mean all respondents were required to have enough information about the

“mobile content services” before he/she agreed to join the main survey The purpose

of main study was to test the measurement and structural models Hence, themeasurement scales had been deeply test by composite reliability and confirmatoryfactor analysis (CFA) before the theoretical model with its hypotheses were tested bystructural equation modeling (SEM) Figure 3.1 presents the research process for thestudy

Figure 3.1 Research process

Based on the literature review, this study designed the measurement scales fromprevious researches (See Table A.1, Appendix A) for the model’s constructs andrephrased them to adapt the context of the current research All of measurement itemsused a 7-point Likert-type scale, anchored from 1 (completely disagree) to 7(completely agree) The preliminary scales (Table A.2, Appendix A) were shown asfollows:

· Cognitive and affective attitudes were measured by three items for each construct,

which were borrowed from the scales of Yang and You (2004): Cognitive attitude (CA)

- Mobile content services is a wise instrument for work/entertainment over mobile network (CA1)

- Mobile content services is a beneficial instrument for work/entertainment over mobile network (CA2)

- Mobile content services is a valuable instrument for work/entertainment over mobile network (CA3)

· Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use were adapted from Davis

(1989):

Perceived usefulness (PU)

- I would find mobile content services to be useful in my daily life (PU1)

quickly (PU2)

(PU3)

- Using mobile content services would enhance my effectiveness on my tasks (PU4).

- Using mobile content services in my task would improve my task

- It would find it easy to get mobile content services to do what I want it to do (PEU5)

- It would find mobile content services to be flexible to interact with my tasks (PEU6)

· Perceived convenience (PC) was measured by four items borrowed from the scale

of Yoo and Kim (2007):

services (PM1)

- I would find mobile content services to be easily accessible and portable (PM2)

- I expect that mobile content service would be available for use whenever I need

it (PM3)

- In general, I expect that I would have control over using mobile content servicesanytime and anywhere (PM4)

· The behavioral intention to use mobile content services was measured by three items according to Venkatesh, Thong and Xu (2012):

- I intend to use mobile content services in the future (BI1)

- I will always try to use mobile content services in my daily life (BI2)

- I plan to keep using mobile content services as regularly as I do now (BI3)

3.3.1 Qualitative Pilot Study

Based on the literature review, the author built the draft measurement scales for thestudy (See Table A.2, Appendix A) After that, the researcher started up the

“qualitative pilot study”, which involved three focused groups Two “mini groups”(Group A, Group B) were skillful in mobile content services and professional inEnglish In there, five professional mobile application developers were selected for

“Group A”, while “Group B” included five experienced mobile users After “minigroup discussion” and “in-depth interview” were conducted (Nguyen Dinh Tho &Nguyen Thi Mai Trang, 2011a), the author received some significant feedbacks andsuggestions from the participants Next, the “full group” (Group C, 8 participants)was added to the other group discussion in Vietnamese to deeply investigate theissues regarding the contents, number, structure and meaning of the Vietnamesequestionnaire After group discussions, five items were removed out of thepreliminary scales:

- Perceived usefulness:

Removed “Using mobile content services would make it easier to do my tasks(PU5)”, due to all of the participants selected “PU5” belong to “Perceived ease

of use”

Removed “Using mobile content services in my tasks would improve my

tasks performance (PU6)”, due to it made confusions among “accomplish tasks more quickly (PU2), “increase my productivity (PU3)” and “enhance my effectiveness (PU4)” in this study context.

Removed “I would find it easy to get mobile content services to do what I want to do (PEU5)” due to all of interviewees got confusions with this item Removed “I would find mobile content services to be flexible to interact with

my tasks (PEU6)” due to “flexible characteristic” would be measured in perceived convenience (PC) scale

Removed “I am able to use mobile content services anytime and anywhere(PM5)”, because “PC1” and “PC2” already measured the “time and place”characteristics

Lastly, the final draft questionnaire was formed and continued to use for quantitative pilot step (Table A3, Appendix A)

3.3.2 Quantitative Pilot Study

Cronbach‘s alpha is a measure of internal consistency, that is, how closely related aset of items is as a group (UCLA, 2012) In this study, Cronbach‘s Alpha was used toexamine the reliability Nunnally (1967) defines reliability as the extent to whichmeasurements are repeatable and that any random influence, which tends to makemeasurements different from occasion to occasion is a source of measurement error

In the reliability analysis, high coefficient reliability means high consistency WhenCronbach‘s Alpha is less than 35 means low reliability and Cronbach‘s Alpha is

According to Leech, Barrett, and Morgan (2005), the acceptable value of Cronbach’salpha for reliability is greater than 70 However, it can reduce to 60-

.69, especially if there is only a handful of an item in the scale However, if theCronbach’s alpha is considerable high (greater than 90), it probably means that theitems are repetitious or there are more items in the scale than are necessary for areliable measure of the concept

Besides evaluating the value of the Cronbach’s alpha, the “Corrected Item–TotalCorrelation” needs to be considered Leech et al (2005) suggested that, if the

“corrected item-total correlation” is high (equal 40 or above), the item is probablycorrelated with most of the other items and make a good component of this summatedrating scale If the “corrected item-total correlation” is negative or too low (lessthan 30), it is necessary to consider the item for wording problems and conceptual fit

by modifying or deleting such items

This pilot study applied the acceptable threshold for Cronbach alpha should be equal

or above .6 and the “corrected item-total correlation” exceeds .30, according toNunnally and Berstein (1994) (as cited in Nguyen Dinh Tho & Nguyen Thi MaiTrang, 2011b) The results showed that all seven scales had Cronbach’s alpha above.60 (the highest was 928 and the lowest was 835) and in addition, the “correcteditem-total correlation” of each item exceeded 30 (the highest was 867 and the lowestwas 647) The reliability of all scales was in the reasonable range Hence, all

observation variables in the final draft measurement scales were used for the next

step (EFA) The results of Cronbach’s alpha test are presented in Table 3.1

BI2 10.24 5.067 687 758

· Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

The primary objectives of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) are to determine thenumber of factors affecting the measures and the strength of the relationship betweeneach factor and each observed measure (DeCoster & Claypool, 2004) According toByrne (2010):

EFA is designed for the situation where links between the observed and latentvariables are unknown or uncertain The analysis thus proceeds in anexploratory mode to determine how and to what extent, the observed variablesare linked to their underlying factors Typically, the researcher wishes toidentify the minimum number of factor that underlie (or account for)covariation among the observed variables (p 5)

In this quantitative pilot study, the procedures of EFA were conducted by thesoftware package IBM SPSS 22.0 This software provided two basic methods forextracting factors during EFA, they are principal component analysis (PCA) andPrincipal Axis Factoring (PAF) with promax rotation However, PAF with obliquerotation such as promax (Hendrickson & White, 1964) was suggested for processbecause PAF reflects the underlying data structure more accurately than PCA(Gerbing & Anderson 1988)

The results of EFA showed that seven factors were extracted at eigenvalue equal1.082 and variance extracted at 70.77% (Table 3.2) Besides, EFA is appropriate todata if the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value (KMO) is 60 or greater and the Barlett’s test ofsphericity is statistically significant at p < 5% (Pallant, 2005) In this study, the KMOwas 878 and the Barlett’s test indicated significant at p = 000 (See Table D1,Appendix D)

Table 3.2 showed that all factors loading after rotation exceeded .50 that wereacceptable as requirements (no item was deleted from scales) Therefore, the finaldraft questionnaire was accepted as the final questionnaire for the main study