Mobile phone: who wants to buy it, and why?

Abstract

Individual adoption of technology has been studied extensively in the workplace (Brown and Venkatesh 2005). Far less attention has been paid to adoption of technology in the household (Brown and Venkatesh 2005). Obviously, mobile phone is now integrated into our daily life. Indeed, according to the more recent forecast of Gartner Research, 986 millions of mobile phones have been sold throughout the world in 2006 (Ouellet 2006). And, as the tendency is showing up, mobile phone use will be continuously increasing in the future. The purpose of this study is then to investigate who has the intention to adopt a mobile phone, and why? In other words, we try to identify who really wants to buy a mobile phone and what are the determining factors who will make such that he/she will buy it? On the basis of the theoretical foundations developed by Brown and Venkatesh (2005) to verify the determining factors in intention to adopt a computer in household by American people, this study examines the determining factors in intention to buy a mobile phone in household by Canadian people. Data were gathered from 307 Atlantic Canadian people who do not yet own a mobile phone. Data analysis was performed using the structural equation modeling software Partial Least Squares (PLS). The results revealed that only one third of the variables examined in the study showed to be determining factors in intention to buy a mobile phone for household use.