A STUDY ON DETERMINANTS OF CONSUMER ADOPTION OF MOBILE WALLETS

Abstract

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Acceptance and adoption of innovation by Indians is setting an example for others. Considering the penetration of cell phones and their extensive usage, it is evident that adoption of technology has been everywhere throughout the world. A large number of organizations are investing in finding new employment opportunities for utilizing the latest innovative technologies. Numerous organizations have thought of utilization of versatile innovation, mobile wallets. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) Model has been taken as a base for understanding the factors that influence the adoption of mobile wallets by Indian buyers. The global financial industry and banking system is transforming with the help of mobile technology by providing more convenience and accessibility to their customers. Over the years, the necessity of phone has evolved and it is estimated to have more cell phone users than the number of bank account holders worldwide. The cost of using traditional methods to connect to customer and the focus on innovative business that are customer centric led to the inevitable design of mobile based technologies. The most common among this is mobile commerce, mobile banking, mobile payment, and mobile wallet. Mobile payments or mobile wallets bring together payment system, mobile devices and services to enable users to initiate, authorize, and complete financial transaction over mobile network or wireless communication technology (Chandra, 2010; Lu,2011). Prior to the demonetization exercise, the number of users for this mobile wallet service were low even after having innumerable benefits for mobile wallet technology. The basic problem lies in the attitudes and intentions of the customers at the bottom of the pyramid whose adoption of mobile wallets would be capable of providing the required level of scale and profitability to this new technology (Shen, 2015). Since demonetization exercise the number of users is increasing and there is a change in customer behaviour. It is to be seen whether this change in attitude towards the usage of mobile wallet is temporary or permanent. In a nation such as India where larger part of consumers still favours Cash-on-Delivery, it is difficult to fasten the pace of process of innovation diffusion such as mobile wallets. So in the present time, there is a need to reexamine the effectiveness of the factors which drives customer intention to adopt/use mobile wallet.

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In this study, we intend to understand the factors that affect the consumer adoption of mobile wallet so that a strategic framework can be implemented to improve their adoption with the help of mobile wallet, mobile service, mobile device manufacturers and regulatory bodies. All respondents were volunteers while sharing their experience, personal interpretation and knowledge about the usefulness and intention of using the mobile wallet were truthful. The respondents were from pan India while most of them were either college going students or working professionals. It was prerequisite before obtaining the data that Internet enabled smartphone and bank accounts were imperative for the respondents. The data was collected using all the new social media methods like forwarding the response link via Whatsapp, Facebook, and also by sharing on LinkedIn. Apart from this traditional method of forwarding the link to questionnaire through e-mail was also used. Among the people across the country the most technologically savvy and which constitute the largest segment of modern technology users are youngsters (Davis 1989; Hanafizadeh et al., 2014; Yadav et al., 2016). Therefore the sample data collected were considered to be appropriate for the research study. There are around 5 construct variables considered for the research study of which one have been developed considering various factors from different studies and reports. Multi scale is used for the research study which consists of around 32 questions which were identified to measure the dependent variables. For knowing the customer demographics nominal scale was used. All items were measured using five point likert scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The research instrument consisted of two parts. In the first part information related to General demographic details like gender, age, education, income and the usage of mobile wallet were recorded. The respondent’s agreement or disagreements towards the selected items were recorded on the second part. the help of convenience sampling, data responses for the main survey were obtained which were later analysed so as to accept or reject the hypothesis. Around 124 respondents participated in the survey giving their valuable time and responses of which 81 were males and 43 were females. That is male respondents consisted of 65.3% of the total respondents and female respondents were around 34.7%. With the help of these responses from the respondents, the factors that affect the consumer adoption of mobile wallet were analysed. Also we would be able to find out the most preferred and least preferred wallet service. The final analysis is done with the help of Bar-graphs, Pie charts, Use of SPSS (Frequency analysis, Cross tabulation, Anova, Principal component analysis and Regression analysis) to understand what leads to a consumer’s adoption of mobile wallet.