PreMaster Assignment

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Sen|or C|t|zens' ercept|ons towards L-commerce

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Margareta Citra Kusumadewi
S1176846
20
th
August 2012
Supervisor : Guido Ongena

2

Summary

The lack of use of e-commerce by Dutch seniors is the topic of this research. Although Dutch
seniors are perceived to be more active on the Internet nowadays, this group still shows less
interest in e-commerce compared to other activities in the Internet. A group called Beweging
3.0 has requested to understand the factors that can influence the seniors intention to use e-
commerce. The desire to understand the factors that influence the use of e-commerce is due to
the fact that the company is interested to create an e-commerce website intended for seniors.

On the basis of a literature review on e-commerce and its adoption, it was found that
technology adoption, social influence and trust are the variables that are discussed most
frequently when it comes to e-commerce.

For this research the survey method was applied and the items were borrowed from the
original items defined by the inventors of the relevant theories. The respondents in the sample
were given a set of questions in the survey in order to measure their acceptance of e-
commerce, the social influence variable, and also the institution-based trust variable. In this
research, the users acceptance towards e-commerce was tested by a sample of 125 Dutch
seniors, aged above 55 years old who had experience in using e-commerce.

The collected data from the research was identified the factors that influence the users
attitude and intention to use e-commerce. The Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease-of-
Use are found to have a significant relationship with attitude. Perceived Usefulness is strongly
related with Perceived Ease-of-Use. In addition to the Technology Adoption Model variables,
social influence was found to be an important predictor for behavioral intention and for
institution-based trust. Compared to other variables of institution-based trust, situational
normality integrity is the strongest predictors of behavioral intention.

Besides finding the important factors that determine users acceptance of e-commerce, the
risk reduction items were also tested and correlated with the institution-based trust variable. It
was found that a third party logo, protection of privacy policy, the use of a high quality brand,
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and a money back warranty are the most important strategies to reduce the anxiety and also to
increase trust from the Dutch seniors.

Finally, this research has not only an added value to scientific theory, as also
recommendations on how to increase the behavioral intention of seniors in using e-commerce
are provided.

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1 Introduction and Problem Analysis

Technology has a great role in peoples lives nowadays and it changes the way people live.
One the products of technology is the Internet. The Internet has been a useful and popular
media among people from different age groups. One of the demographic groups is the seniors
or mature group. In The Netherlands, the seniors engage in online activities through the
Internet such as ordering or buying goods or services, filling in important forms, reading or
downloading newspapers, utilizing the services from transport companies, searching for
information, doing internet banking, searching for information around goods and services, and
sending and receiving email (Central Bureau of Statistic (CBS), 2011). In addition, accessing
the Internet has become more flexible than in the past. People are actively choosing the media
for example computer, mobile phone and tablet pc, to get the most convenient experience in
performing their online activities.

Various companies perceive that the growth of technology including the Internet to be one of
the factors that supports the expansion of the companys business, particularly to be generated
online. Different type of businesses can be found nowadays in the Internet, particularly
business-to-consumers (B2C). According to Thuiswinkel (2011) there are approximately
37,500 online shops in the Netherlands and the number will be growing in the upcoming
years. By performing online shopping, the presence of the customers in the shop is not as
necessary as in the past, since the global access of the Internet allows people all over the
world to be able to shop in the desired time and place. E-commerce offers great benefit for the
companies such as 1) allowing the company to reach a larger customer base and build closer
relationships with them more easily, 2) reducing the operations cost e.g. staff cost (Chaffey,
2004). In addition, the growth of technology has enabled the paying system to be simpler than
it used to be and this has been another added value of online shopping that attract more
customers to shop online.

Nowadays, customers are showing great interest in performing online shopping. For instance
in The Netherlands, the number of people who are interested in performing online shopping is
increasing over time. The central office of statistics from the Netherlands (CBS) shows that
9.3 million people age 12 until 74 years shopped online and in addition, the total numbers of
online shoppers is increasing compared to previous years (CBS, 2011).
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In general, the users of the Internet have different backgrounds and to be more specific, this
also applies to the users of online shopping websites. One imperative background
characteristic is age. The research from CBS shows that the age range of online shoppers in
the Netherlands is a mixture between the young and the old populations. CBS (2011) indicates
that seniors nowadays become more motivated to use digital media and also being active in
the Internet. Six out of 10 people aged 65 until 75 years old in The Netherlands use the
Internet frequently. This number has doubled compared to the rate in 2005. Although the
research conducted by CBS shows that the rate from the seniors being active in the Internet
has increased, the adoption of online shopping websites is still relatively small as only 30%
seniors out of the total population performs online shopping.

The seniors group or alternatively known as the mature group is a group that consists of
people aged above 55 years old. Nevertheless, the seniors itself can be grouped into different
segments and each segments holds different opinions and lifestyle.

1.1 Trust in E-commerce

The low rates of e-commerce adoption can be influenced by various factors. According to the
report from CBS (2010) on the perception of online shopping from the general population in
the Netherlands, factors such as lack of experience in doing online shopping, less trust in the
delivery, concerns with the privacy, concerns with the security, online shopping is not
necessary and preference to shop in a real shop, influence the customers attitude on online
shopping. In addition, a lack of transparency of the company offering online shopping can
also negatively impact the trust of the customers (Corbitt et al., 2003).

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Figure 1 Reasons of Dutch population for not using e-commerce (CBS, 2011)

Looking on the reasons mentioned before, it is necessary for online vendors to be able to
develop trust of the customers. Nevertheless, trust is hard to be built among the customers.
Therefore, the most fundamental aspect that the company should consider is how to build the
trust of the customers to the company.

Through this research, it is important to understand the perceptions of seniors in the
Netherlands, who are experienced with e-commerce, towards their trust in e-commerce.
People who have experience in e-commerce are more familiar with how e-commerce works.
Therefore their perceptions can be used as the basis to create a strategy to increase the trust of
seniors who are inexperienced with e-commerce.

In addition, the vendors should be able to present an e-commerce website that is secure.
Although the growth of technology has helped to overcome the barriers in e-commerce that
happen over time e.g. the payment systems, nevertheless, internet crime is also increasing
eventually because of technology e.g. stealing the data from the users, which also impacts the
trust of people in using e-commerce.

In using e-commerce, customers might experience some negative impacts from using e-
commerce websites that may affect their trust. Therefore the research will be related to
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institution based trust which relates to the trust of the customers towards the Internet
environment, which in turn can be related to the security of the website (Pavlou, 2003).

1.2 Social Influence

The second aspect that this research focuses on is the influence of people around the person
e.g. family and friends. This can be related to social system variables such as social influence.
In traditional shopping, some customers require another persons opinions prior to purchasing
the products. In addition, the peer pressure of people around the customers also influences the
adoption of a new innovation. Nowadays the Internet offers various channels that can be used
to influence users to purchase a certain product or innovations and to make the customers
more convinced before the products are being purchased. These channels for instance can be
social media or forum. Therefore, this research will also focus on understanding the social
influence that comes from the people around of the seniors.

1.3 Context of the Research

This research is conducted in corporation with Beweging 3.0.Beweging 3.0 is a company
centered in the region Eemland, The Netherlands. It is active in the field of housing, care, and
welfare with the main client group being seniors with age older than 55 (Beweging 3.0, 2012).
The mission of Beweging 3.0 is to provide good care to the customers as well as providing a
comfortable life for its customers. In addition, the company is also active in providing suitable
care, social support and assistance, and providing services to its customers (Beweging 3.0,
2012).

Within Beweging 3.0, a department called the membership service (ledenservices) department
has been created to focus on the external members and raising profit from these members as
up to now the organization only receives financial support from the government. Over time
the financial support of the government for the care sector is decreasing. To secure its
existence, the organization would like to expand its business through e-commerce. At this
moment, Beweging 3.0 has created a section in their corporate website that promotes services
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as well as products for their members and also for non-members. This website section is
called http://www.uwthuiszorgwinkel.nl/.

In the current website, the customers will not be able to process the payment by themselves as
the customers are first required to fill in their details and the membership services department
will call and help the customers to order the desired product. Therefore, in the future,
Beweging 3.0 is interested to create an automatic system that allows the customers to order
the desired product and pay the product themselves without the help from the membership
services department. Although the ordering process will be automated, the customers are still
able to get assistance from the membership services departments when they are facing
problems in ordering.

By providing an automated ordering process, Beweging 3.0 wishes to reduce the cost of
deploying the membership services. In addition, the ordering process of the products will be
faster as the customers are able to order without having the membership services department
to call the customers to help with purchasing the products.

Beweging 3.0 also wishes to understand whether the organization is able to approach senior
citizens through people who are important for them, e.g. family members, friends. As
previously mentioned, this can be related to the social influence variable.

1.4 Research Questions

In order to attract more users of an e-commerce website, understanding the target group is one
of the key important aspects in this business. The vendor can use the result of this research to
create a website that is tailored for its target group(s) and that suits their needs. Consequently,
the main goal of this research is to understand the needs on e-commerce of the Dutch
population with a focus on seniors. It is necessary to understand the desires, wishes and
factors that motivate seniors in using e-commerce. Knowing the desires of the customers will
increase the level of trust from the customers towards the vendor (Corbitt et al., 2003).

Two important factors that can improve the use of e-commerce, trust and social influence,
will be the focus of this research. Therefore, the result of this needs analysis can be used by
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companies that desire to extend their business online with seniors as a target group. Based
upon the results of this research, these companies can improve their marketing strategies.

Beweging 3.0 is interested to have the results implemented in its strategy. The organization
has indicated that seniors nowadays are into technology and are becoming more active
participants in the Internet. The organization wishes in the future to create a specific e-
commerce website which targets people older than 55 years of age. Nevertheless, before
developing the website, the organization would like to understand whether the seniors wish to
purchase products in the Internet and furthermore, the organization would like to gather the
perceptions of seniors about the use of e-commerce so that the organization is able to see the
prospect of the online business in the future.

Moreover, this research projects will also bring an added value for scientific research. This
research is advancing the successful theories of Technology Acceptance Model, social
influence and trust - which have been previously tested. Furthermore, it combines these
theories into one research design and tests it into a persons usage behavior on e-commerce.
In summary, this research project is not only focusing on practical results but is also
contributing to science.

In order to achieve the goals of this research, the following research questions are proposed.

1. Which factors influence the use of e-commerce of Dutch seniors?
a. How does social influence affect the use of e-commerce by Dutch seniors?
b. How does institution-based trust affect the use of e-commerce by Dutch seniors?
c. How can we reduce the risks in using e-commerce by Dutch seniors?

In the next chapter the theories that will be used as the basis of this research will be discussed
further.

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2 Literature Review

The research will focus on the perceptions of seniors towards e-commerce. Theories that will
be used as the basis of this research will be discussed in-depth in this section. The discussion
in this section will be focused on the general information about adoption, user acceptance,
trust and social influence in e-commerce. Furthermore, the Technology Acceptance Model
(TAM) from Davis (1989) will be the foundation of this research. This theory has been
selected to be the basis of this research following up on earlier research on the adoption and
acceptance towards e-commerce that has been based upon TAM (Gefen et al., 2003;
Klopping, 2004; Shish, 2003; Smith, 2008; Suhendra, Hermanaand Sugiharto, 2007)

2.1 What is e-commerce?

To begin with this literature review, a short introduction about e-commerce will be provided.
E-commerce is described as all business activities that are conducted electronically in order
to raise efficiency and the effectiveness of both market and business processes (Bouwman,
Hartog and Holland, 2000, p. 15). Additionally, Tsai and Cheng (2011) see e-commerce as a
combination of innovation, virtual applications and Internet-based business operations.

There are three main markets in e-commerce, Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-
Consumers (B2C), and Business-to-Government (Chaffey, 2003). B2C is considered as
transactions that are done by consumers online, such as buying products and services (Olson
and Olson, 2000). The main focus on this research is on B2C, since the e-commerce website
that will be implemented in the company is designed for individuals rather than for
organizations.

2.2 The Individual Adoption Process

According to Roger (1995) the individual adoption process is defined as the process through
which an individual or other decision-making unit passes from first knowledge of an
innovation, to forming an attitude toward the innovation, to a decision to adopt or reject, to
implementation of the new idea, and to confirmation of this decision (p. 21). Roger (1995)
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proposes five stages that will be faced by an individual after a new innovation has been
introduced to the market and these stages are (1) knowledge, (2) persuasion, (3) decision, (4)
implementation, and (5) confirmation.

During these phases, people show certain attention to the innovation. As people show
attention to the innovation, the person develops an attitude towards this innovation, which can
be positive or negative. These attitudes are followed by the decision-making in which the
person will continue to adopt the innovation or not. If the individual decides to adopt the
innovation, (s) he will continue to implement the innovation and follows with confirmation
(Roger, 1995). Furthermore, Roger (1995) also added persuasion in the above steps and the
purpose of persuasion is to change the attitude of the customers to be positive towards the
innovation.

Furthermore, besides proposing the stages that characterize on how the process of innovation
is adopted by the customers, Rogers (1995) also stressed five characteristics of innovation,
which he refers to
Relative advantage: that is related with the surplus value of the innovation;
Compatibility: in which the innovation should be consistent with the existing needs,
values and expectations;
Complexity: the innovation should have an image that it is easy to use;
Trialability: people should be able to try out the innovation before it is fully launched
on the market; and
Observability: people should be able to observe the positive effect of the product.

According to Roger (1995), when innovations fit the need of the users and match the above
characteristics, the users will adopt the innovation undoubtedly.

Each individual displays different levels of adoption when adopting a new product or
technology. The different levels of adoption are related to the personal innovativeness. Rogers
(1995) argues that the factor of adoption also comes from the personal innovativeness. He
defines the personal innovativeness as the degree to which an individual or other unit of
adoption is relatively earlier in adopting new ideas than the other members of a system (p.
22). The personal innovativeness contains of five categories of adopters. The first two groups,
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the innovators and the early adopters tend to take risks in using a new innovation. In addition,
the early and late majority is much slower than the first two groups. The last group is called
laggards that are the last decision makers to adopt an innovation (Rogers, 1995). According to
Corbitt et al. (2003) those who are active in the Internet might be more acquainted with e-
commerce. In this research, the focus will be on the perceptions of Dutch seniors who are
active on the Internet and who (may) have experience with e-commerce. This group can be
categorized as early adopters as they have tried to use the e-commerce previously.

In the next section, the discussion will focus on TAM. As it has been mentioned in the
previous section, two variables such as social influence and trust will also be discussed in the
next section.

2.3 The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) developed the Theory Reasoned Action (TRA) model, which
includes variables such as Attitude (A), Behavioral Intention (BI), and Behavior (B) (see
Figure 2).

Figure 2 Theory Reasoned Action TRA (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975)
In order to explain the factors that influence users in using technology, Fred D. Davis (1989)
redesigned the TRA model (see Figure 3) and named it the Technology Acceptance Model
(TAM) Davis (1989) added two determinants to his TAM model, perceived usefulness (PU)
and perceived ease of use (PEOU). He also replaced Behavior (B) by Actual System Use
(AU). Based upon earlier research on e-commerce that has implemented this model, the
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integration of this theory is expected to be useful for this research on e-commerce adoption of
Dutch seniors.

Figure 3 Technology Acceptance Model TAM (Davis, 1989)
According to Davis (1989) PU and PEoU are the determinants of attitude towards use (A).
This attitude variable together with PU predicts the Behavioral Intention (BI). When the users
have an intention to use the technology (BI), actual usage (AU) will follow.

As mentioned before Roger (1995) purposed five characteristics of innovations. Regarding
PU and PEoU, the complexity of the product or innovation can be related to PEoU and the
relative advantage in which can be related with the PU from the model of TAM model from
Davis. Rogers (1995) also stated that the intention to use the innovation would be higher if it
is suitable with the need of the users.

Each variable from the TAM model that will be included in this research will be discussed
further in the next section.

Perceived Usefulness (PU)
In this model, perceived usefulness is related to how people tend to use or not to use an
information system that leads to a better performance for them for example in job
performance (Davis, 1989). Davis (1989) defines perceived usefulness as the degree to
which a person beliefs that using a particular system would enhance his or her job
performance (p. 320). As the model was tested in the working environment, therefore the
model was developed on the basis of increasing job performance. For this research, term job
performance is defined as the daily performance as experienced by seniors doing online
shopping and the term system can be related to the e-commerce website.
15

Davis (1989) also added that the perceived usefulness has strong correlation with the
behavioral intention. Gefen et al. (2003) also concluded in their research that repeat customers
or loyal customers have a stronger intention to use the website as they perceive the website as
useful, by having good experience in using the website and havingtrust in the online shop.
Nevertheless, Gefen et al. (2003) argued that those who are inexperienced in using e-
commerce require a belief behavior. When a customer develops a belief, this will lead to
attitude and intention, in which attitude can be trusting the site and having an intention to
buy, as described in the model of TRA. In addition, Klopping and McKinney (2004) also
confirmed that PU also predicts the intention to use e-commerce. Hence, it can be
hypothesized that:

H1 Perceived Usefulness is positively related to attitude towards e-commerce
H2 Perceived Usefulness is positively related to behavioral intention towards e-
commerce

Aforementioned, another determinant that was created by Davis is the perceived ease of use
(PEoU). Further information on PeOU will be described in the next section.

Perceived Ease-of-Use (PEoU)
Perceived ease-of-use is the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system
would be free of effort (Davis, 1989, pg. 320) and this variable is mentioned as the second
determinant of the intention from an individual in using a technology or information system
(IS). According to Davis (1989) PEoU is related to the channel dispositions model of
Swanson (1987) who mentioned items such as convenient, controllable, easy, and
unburdensome having influence on users choice and use of information.

Urban et al. (2009) argue that layout, typography, white space, images, and color schemes are
important in a site design. Urban et al. (2009) added that there are two design aspects that are
necessary for an e-commerce. First, a good looking-website e.g. no errors spotted on the links
and the text, right color preference, clear and well structured, right amount of information, can
make the users feel that they are dealing with a professional website. The second aspect is the
attractiveness and the usability of the website in which allowing the users to feel comfortable
16

and confident in using the website and this will lead to a higher chance to perform more
online shopping. In order to convince the customers to use the website, the first impression
such as clear and well-structured presentation is important to be presented.

Furthermore, Davis (1989) also mentioned that self-efficacy theory, which is described as
judgments of how well one can execute a course of action that is required to deal with
prospective situations (Bandura, 1982, p. 122), is considered to be comparable to PEoU,
which also determines the behavior towards using an information system. Hence, users have
to have a certain level of self-efficacy in using a technology in order to be able to use an e-
commerce website.

Gefen et al. (2003) also stressed the perceived ease-of-use of an e-commerce website. The
more users are familiar with operation of the website, the more users will have an intention to
stay as a repeat customer. Customers feel comfortable when they enjoy using the website that
has a good usability and also a good look, which creates an intention of purchasing more
products in the website. Although Gefen et al. (2003) stated that PEoU is positively related to
the intention to use e-commerce, Pavlou (2003) stressed that the PEoU is not significantly
influencing the customers intention to transact.

In relation to attitude, Heijden (2002), in his research about the factors that influence the use
of generic portals in the Netherlands, stated that PEoU is positively related with the attitude of
Dutch population towards the use of a portal website. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that:

H3 Perceived Ease-of-Use is positively related with the attitude towards e-commerce
H4 Perceived Ease-of-Use is positively related with the intention to use e-commerce
H5 Perceived Ease-of-Use is positively related with Perceived Usefulness

Attitude (A)
According to Fishbein and Azjen (1975), the attitude is the first important variable in the
Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and this attitude can be positive or negative. Venkatesh et
al. (2003) describe attitude toward using technology as an individuals overall affective
reaction to using a system (p. 455). In the TAM model, Davis (1989) applies the attitude that
becomes one of the determinants of the behavioral intention to use the technology, which is
17

related to the desire of people to use the system. Lu et al. (2003) also confirmed that the
attitude is influencing the behavior intention towards using an information system (IS).

Although most of the previous research mentions that attitude directly influences the
behavioral intention, Venkatesh et al. (2003) argued that attitude is not necessarily a direct
determinant of the intention to use an information system (IS). The attitude does not always
directly influence the intention to use the product as users with no positive attitude towards
the IS may still use the technology to help them to perform their job better (Davis, 1989). As
the research from Venkantesh et al. (2003) was also conducted in a working related
environment, the results may be different when it is applied in daily life.

Aforementioned, attitude has been mentioned to be not a direct determinant of Behavior
Intention (BI). Hence Venkatesh et al. (2003) in their research about User Acceptance of IT
also mentioned that a specific attitude e.g. positive attitude towards an innovation could be
determinant of motivation and behavior intention. These attitudes are followed by the
decision-making of the customers whether the innovation will be adopted or not.

Behavioral Intention (BI)
This intention to use can come from the Perceived Use (PU) or from the Attitude (A) of the
users. Regarding this variable, Fishbein and Azjen (1975) also argue in their Theory Reasoned
Action model that behavioral intention will only happen when the attitude of the person
towards an object is there. This attitude can be related to evaluation of the object and also the
belief strength towards the object. Therefore, for attitude and behavioral intention, the
hypothesis that can be proposed is:

H13: Attitude positively influences behavioral intention

2.4 Social Influences (SF)

An individuals choice to adopt a product is not only determined by the experience that the
individual has, as it can also be determined by social influence. The interaction between the
users with their social network can enhance other users to adopt the e-commerce. As one will
18

influence another to use the product that one considers as good. Moreover, the peer pressure
from the users can also influence the users to start adopting an innovation.

Roger (1995) mentioned that early adopters tend to use a product after other people
recommend a product that they have used. It can be perceived that there is a communication
process between the individuals. According to Dainton and Zelley (2011), the communication
process refers to the flow of information from one person to another (p. 2). This flow of
information can also be seen as a word of mouth.

Roger (1995) also argues that the transfer of a new idea can be developed through mass media
channels and interpersonal channels. By using mass media channels, the new idea is
transferred by mass media, for example newspaper, television, and radio. In addition,
interpersonal channels also play a role in transferring the new idea, through face-to-face
contacts. Roger also added that the Internet has also a role in transferring new innovations
nowadays. Although mass media play a great role in creating knowledge about an innovation,
nevertheless, interpersonal communication also plays important role on transferring the
information on the experience of using the innovation.

Venkatest et al. (2003) developed an extension model of TAM that was named as UTAUT. In
this model, the social influence variable was added. According to Venkatesh et al. (2003)
social influence is described as the degree to which an individual perceives that important
others believe he or she should use the new system (p. 451).
Venkatesh et al. (2003) also mentioned that social influence has a direct impact on the
behavioral intention to adopt a technology without attitude as the mediator.
Nevertheless, Malhotra and Galleta (1999) found that social influence did not have any
significant relation with the behavioral intention when they tested the variable with TAM
model. Moreover, Kulviwat, Bruner and Shuridah (2009) have also proved on their research
that social influence has become one factor that motivates the intention from the users to
adopt a high-technology product. Nevertheless, Kulviwat, Bruner, and Shuridah (2009)
considered attitude to be the mediator of social influence and intention, nevertheless it has a
weak direct link compare to the direct correlation between the social influence and intention
to use.

19

Social influence factors can be useful in many areas. Various researches recommend to
companies to focus on social influence variables to convince the potential customers that
other customers have satisfaction in using the product (Kim & Srivastava, 2007; Kulviwat,
Bruner, and Shuridah, 2009). Kim and Srivastava (2007) recommend website vendors to
focus on social influence. The customers can obtain this influence from their social network,
which can have impact on the customer decision-making before buying a product from a
vendor. In addition, Urban et al. (2009) also relate the social influence factor as word-of-
mouth that can increase the trust of other users, which will increase ones motivation to use e-
commerce. Hence, it can be hypothesized that:

H6: Social Influence is positively related with attitude towards e-commerce
H7: Social Influence is positively related with behavioral intention

2.5 Trust

Trust is the foundation of a business, particularly of an online business. When the trust from
customers has been vested into the company including its website, there is a chance that
customers will remain loyal to the company. In general, trust itself has been described as a
generalized expectancy held by an individual that the word of another can be relied on
(Farhoomand and Lovelock, 2001, p. 337). Gefen et al. (2003) also argued that trust is about
the expectation from an individual to others, either individuals or businesses, that there will be
no advantage taken from them. Therefore, building trust is the first step that the e-commerce
vendors need to perform.

Building trust with customers is an important factor for an e-commerce vendor, as face-to-
face interaction with the sellers is less applicable and moreover, judging the quality of the
product is more difficult in e-commerce. This can lead to uncertainty, vulnerability and
dependence, which according Corbitt et al. (2003) is the characteristics of distrust.

Trust in e-commerce can be related to online trust. Online trust is the trust that the consumers
have in an e-commerce business, particularly on how e-commerce websites would deliver the
product as promised, the trustworthiness of the information that they provide, and how
confident the site commands are (Bart et al., 2005; Wang and Emurian, 2003). When the
20

customers trust the company, this will lead into a purchase intention and it will also help the
company to develop the relationship with their customers (Corbitt et al., 2003; Gefen, 2003;
Salam et al. 2005; Olson and Olson, 2000; Wang and Emurian, 2005).

Various researches related to the topic of e-commerce involve variables such as trust (Corbitt
et al, 2003; Gefen et al., 2003, Salam et al. 2005; Olson and Olson, 2000; Wang and Emurian,
2005). Gefen et al. (2003) extends the TAM model with trust, disposition and familiarity on
the business. The model was tested to potential or new customers and to repeat or current
customers of an online shopping website, Amazon.com. Gefen et al. (2003) concluded in the
research that both groups had different intentions in using online shopping. The trust is
strongly correlated with the intention to purchase for the potential customers. In addition,
Farhoomand and Lovelock (2001) relate trust with the model of TRA from Fizbein and Azjen
(1975). Farhoomand and Lovelock (2001) mentioned that trust can be divided into five
dimensions, 1) trusting beliefs which refers to the individual belief that other institutes which
the person is dealing with are trustworthy, 2) trusting attitude is when the evaluation process
towards something take place, 3) trusting intention is when the individual is willing to use the
service from the company as the individual feels relative secure although there might be
consequences followed. 4) Trusting based behavior is the behavior that is derived from the
trusting intentions that originated from the trusting attitude.

Institution-Based Trust

It is necessary that the customers have trust in the company on the first time arriving in the
website. According to Farhoomand and Lovelock (2001) trust begins when the individual
perceives indications (or beliefs) that suggest a firm may be trustworthy (p. 347). In order to
build trust, the customer should have a certain belief in the company. In addition, Farhoomand
and Lovelock (2001) also mentioned that various items can communicate trust and could
provoke the customers belief, such as 1) Seals of approval, such as VeriSign that shows the
company is secured; 2) Brand, the promise to deliver specific attributes and its credibility
based on the reputation, word-of-mouth or a visitors previous experience; 3) Navigation, the
ease of finding the information that the visitors seeks; 4) Presentation, the design attributes
which show quality and professionalism. Moreover, Farhoomand and Lovelock (2001) also
21

added that a clear privacy policy and clear general information in the website is important to
build and maintain trust from the customers.

Gefen et al. (2003) define the factors that have been mentioned by Farhoomand and Lovelock
(2001) as institution-based trust. According to Gefen (2003), trust can be generated from
institution-based trust and it refers to trust emanating from the security, one feels about the
situation because of guarantees, safety nets, or other structures (p. 318) and this can be
related to the trust logo, privacy policies, guarantees, affiliations with respected companies
and contact us buttons (Gefen, 2002; Luo, 2002).

McKnight et al. (2002) mentioned institution-based-trust as the belief that the structural
conditions are present (e.g., in the Internet) to enhance the probability of achieving a
successful outcome in an endeavor like e-commerce (pg.339). In addition, institution-based
trust is considered to consist of two factors such as 1) structural assurance and 2) situational
normality. According to McKnight et al. (2002), quoting from Shapiro (1987) and Zucker
(1986), defines structural assurance by stating that in order to reach success, there should be a
structure such as guarantees, regulations, promises, legal recourses or other procedures. This
can be achieved by providing data encryption that safeguard one from loss of privacy,
identity, or money. Moreover, situational normality is considered to be the belief that the
environment - which can be defined as the Internet - is in good order and considered as a
normal or favorable situation for customers (McKnight, 2002). Therefore, institution-based
trust elements need to be implemented in the website to increase the trust of the customers.

In addition to the two factors structural assurance and situational normality, trust itself can be
based on three components: 1) an ability or competency that the vendor is performing well on
the business, e.g. providing quality products and service; 2) benevolence, that is whether the
organization also takes the customer interest into account, not only the company interest; and
3) integrity or confidence as the vendor ensures to perform what the vendor should do (Salam
et al., 2005; Urban et al., 2009; McKnight et al., 2002). These three components that construct
trust are important to be considered by the companies who are willing to keep their customers.

22

Figure 4 Website Trust Model (McKnight et al., 2002)

From Figure 3, it can be seen that institution-based trust is related to disposition to trust,
which can be related to general trust characteristics of the individual (McKnight et al., 2002;
Gefen et al., 2003). Nevertheless, this research is focused on the characteristics of external
factors, with other words every aspect that is institutionalized, e.g. the existence of a privacy
statement, a secure logo, etc., which can influence the trust belief from the seniors which can
influence their behavioral intention to use the e-commerce website. In the trust architect from
Urban et al. (2003) the institution-based trust can be categorized in the Internet block and it
contains of the perception from an individual towards the Internet environment. This will
create trust to vendors that consist of confidence or integrity, competence, and benevolence.
When there is trust, this will lead into the intention to buy. Figure 4 explains the trust
architecture according to Urban et al. (2003):

23

Figure 5 Trust Architect (Urban et al., 2003)

McKnight et al. (2002) combined the variables of institution-based trust and basics of trust
that consist of benevolence, integrity and competence into five variables, which are
Situational Normality-General (IG), Situational Normality-Benevolence (IB), Situational
Normality-Integrity (II), Situational Normality-Competence (IC), and Structural Assurance
(ISA). Each of these variables will be related to the behavioral intention to use e-commerce
which can be interpreted as how Dutch seniors see the Internet environment and whether this
influences their intention to use e-commerce. Hence, the hypotheses that can be proposed are:

H8: Situational Normality-General (IG) is positively related with behavior intention
H9: Situational Normality-Benevolence (IB) is positively related with behavioral
intention
H10: Situational Normality-Integrity (II) is positively related with behavioral intention
H11: Situational Normality-Competence (IC) is positively related with behavioral
intention
H12: Structural Assurance (ISA) is positively related with behavioral intention

Risk Reduction Strategies

24

Consequently, in order to increase the trust from the customers, there should also be a strategy
to reduce the risk from using e-commerce. Corbitt et al. (2003) mentioned several risk
reduction strategies that can be implemented to reduce the fear of using e-commerce that can
be faced by the users. Sheth and Venkatesan (1968) mentioned that as the customers
perceived some risk in buying or adopting an innovation, they would try to reduce it by
having references from people around them. Corbitt et al. (2003) added that positive word of
mouth, money back warranty and partnerships with well-known business partners are the
most needed by the customers in order to decrease the perceived risk and create more trust in
the vendor.

Pavlouv (2003) mentioned that trust and risk have influence in the customers acceptance
towards e-commerce. Pavlouv (2003) also added that risk reduction would increase the
acceptance of the customers on e-commerce. Therefore, in this research the institution-based
trust, consist of five variables, Situational Normality-General (IG), Situational Normality-
Benevolence (IB), Situational Normality-Integrity (II), Situational Normality-Competence
(IC), and Structural Assurance (ISA) will be related with the risk reduction items that have
been created by Corbitt et al. (2003).

This literature review will be used as a basis of conducting the research targeted to the Dutch
seniors population. Moreover, by applying these theories, the research will be more structured
and will also be able to provide a recommendation for the organization that is strongly based
on theory.

25

3 Research Methodology and Research Design
3.1 Model

To be able to answer the research questions, some hypotheses have been created and in this
section, a model is presented that visualizes the research work.

As mentioned before, the research is focusing on the TAM model from Davis (1989), on trust
with a focus on institution-based trust, and on social influence variables. The TAM model was
originally developed to test the perceptions of workers towards the use of computers in the
work settings (Davis, 1989). The purpose of this research is to analyze the use of e-commerce
in daily live. For this purpose the items that will be applied in this research will be related to
the TAM, whereby the use of e-commerce is related to the use of computers in the original
TAM research, and whereby seniors in daily life are related to workers in an organizational
setting in the original TAM research.

In addition to TAM, institution-based trust and social influence variables, the items used in
the survey also included risk reduction items. Besides understanding Dutch seniors actual
26

perceptions towards e-commerce, in this research, some questions about their preferences on
an e-commerce website are also presented. Hence the result of this research will lead not only
to theoretical results but also to practical results.

3.2 Instrument

The instrument of this research is the survey method. The survey method offers several
advantages; such as (1) it can be filled in at a convenient time for the respondents, (2) the
respondents can take their time to fill in the survey, (3) as the respondents are informed that
the survey is anonymous, sensitive questions can be provided to the respondents which might
be difficult to explore in other methods such as interviews and focus groups (Downs and
Adrian, 2004).

An additional benefit of choosing the survey method for this research is that it can be used to
measure the needs of the users and also their attitude to new system ideas. In addition, by
using the survey method, the researcher can obtain a large number of respondents in a short
time (Maguire, 2001).

According to Downs and Adrian (2004), there are two types of survey, 1) a newly designed
survey, and 2) using the survey that has been created by another author. The items that are
used for this research are original items from the creators of the theories or models and are
related to the context of e-commerce.

The self-administrated survey contains 56 items that measure the opinions of Dutch seniors
toward e-commerce. With the objective of creating a more focused research, items related to
actual use and website appearance were removed from the analysis and these items are no
longer important for this research. Therefore, at the end the focus of this research is only on
the TAM items created by Davis (1989) with two variables such as Perceived Usefulness
(PU) and Perceived Ease-of-Use (PEoU). In addition, items on social influence, attitude and
behavioral intention as created by Venkatesh (2003) were added. Next to these items, the
items for institution-based trust are borrowed from McKnight et al. (2002). For the risk
reduction items have been obtained from Corbitt et al. (2003). The reliability and validity of
these items has been previously tested. Nevertheless, as the items are now tested to a different
27

population, the items wording has been adjusted so that these are more related to the topic of
this research.

The items in the survey implement the self-report survey that measures the respondents
attitude, feeling, and belief toward e-commerce and it uses Likert style questions on a 5 point
scale (1= strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=neutral, 4=agree 5=strongly disagree). The self-
report survey has been used in various adoption researches particularly in the field of e-
commerce (Corbitt et al. 2003; Gefen et al, 2003). Moreover, the respondents filled in the
survey based on their previous experience in using e-commerce in general.

As the survey was distributed to the Dutch population and in order to reach higher response,
therefore the survey was created in Dutch. The Dutch version of the survey can be found in
the appendix section.

3.3 Procedure

The first step of this research was to conduct a small pilot study. The purpose of conducting
this pilot research is to make sure that the respondents were able to answer the questions
provided and also to increase its reliability. The pilot research that was conducted before the
main distribution of the survey was first tested to three experts in social research and followed
by testing it to three representatives from the sample. The feedback that was retrieved from
the pilot research was mostly related to the structure of the language as Dutch is not the first
language from the researcher.
After the survey was reviewed, the survey was distributed to respondents starting from 15
th
of
June 2012 until 31
st
of July 2012. In order to generate a high response rate, the survey was
administrated both online and offline. In the online administration, the link to the survey was
attached in the email and the email was sent out to the potential respondents. Hence, the
respondents were able to fill in the survey online. Additionally, the survey was also
distributed offline in which the respondents were able to fill in a paper-and-pencil type of
survey.

It is necessary to obtain response from a large number of respondents in order to be able to
adequately generalize the result. Therefore, the selection of the sample was based on
28

convenience sampling, snowball sampling and also from the panel provided by Thesistools.
As there was initial difficulty to find respondents online, the convenience sampling was the
first method that was applied. The convenience sample is defined as a nonprobability
sampling method that depends on self-selection and it depends on the availability of the
respondents (Dooley, 2008). This sample was selected from the public space, in Zandvoort
beach boulevard, the Netherlands. Before distributing the paper-and-pencil survey, the
potential respondents were asked whether they had experience with e-commerce. When the
respondents confirmed and were also willing to fill-in the survey, they could fill the survey
immediately on the place. The advantage from getting the respondents in this location is that
the respondents could take their time to fill in the survey. The disadvantage of implementing
this method in this location is that it is labor intensive and there might be some potential
respondents missed because of lack of interest in being surveyed in this way or because they
do not have experience in using e-commerce. In total 10 respondents filled in the survey.

In order to enlarge the sample, snowball sampling method was also implemented. Snowball
sampling is a technique of getting respondents from the acquaintances of the respondents of
the research. In this way, the online survey was distributed to acquaintances and these were
requested to forward link to the survey to their acquaintances that have the same demographic
characteristics as them.

The sample that filled in the survey online was also selected from a panel provided by
Thesistools. To obtain a sample, the email that was sent to the panel stated that the
respondents were required to have experience in performing online shopping. Furthermore,
the panel from Thesistools enables the user to make a preselection on ageand the residence of
the respondents. In this case people aged above 55 years old and living in The Netherlands
were selected. Therefore, the respondents fit the requirements that have been developed for
this research. The sample that completed filled the survey was rewarded with 1 euro. From
this panel, 100 people were invited by email to fill in the survey.

The panel offers different kind of benefits. Firstly, by using the panel, various types of
participants from the population with for instance different ages, genders, and backgrounds,
can be obtained in a short time. Second benefit is that the respondents are spread throughout
the Netherlands. Third benefit is that by using this panel, the author is able to generate
29

response from the population without experiencing response bias which can occur when the
respondents know the background of the researcher (Downs & Adrian, 2004).

As the data collection was administrated online and offline, therefore in order to avoid errors
in the dataset, all records from the survey were collected in one database provided by
Thesistools. By using the database from Thesistool, the resulting data could be analyzed
easily.

In order to get more significant results, the respondents, which entered a meaningless survey
response were not taken into account and at the end of the survey, 125 respondents were
collected that had fully completed the survey.

3.4 Population and sampling

The sample of this research was collected in The Netherlands. The respondents consisted of
Dutch seniors who are active in the Internet, who are able to operate media such as a
computer, laptop or tablet pc, and who also had experience with e-commerce.

The sample of this research is the senior population which is widely spread in The
Netherlands having various genders, ethnical backgrounds, income situations, and educational
backgrounds. According to CBS (2012), the total population of the seniors in the Netherlands
is about 4.891.400 people and this is around 29% of the total population in the Netherlands.

In addition, the respondents in this research were aged 55 years and above. From this age
selection, there will be 3 groups generated with age range between 56 until 64, age range
between 65 until 73, and age range above 74 years old. The age grouping is based on the
grouping that has been done by Pew Research Centre (2010) that segments the mature group
into three groups.
This research has been able to generate 125 respondents, with male (n=77) and female (n=46).
The description of the respondents related to their gender, age, educational background,
income, Internet use, and e-commerce use are shown below

30

Table 1 Descriptive statistic of respondents characteristic (N=125)
Frequency Percentage
Age
56-64 40 32%
65-73 75 60%
74 or older 10 8%

Gender
Male 77 61.6%
Female 46 36.8%
Unknown 2 1.6%

Education
Lower Education 13 10.4%
High School Education 27 21.6%
Higher Education 85 68.0%

Internet Use
Less than 1 hour per day 9 7.2%
Between 1 until 3 hours per day 79 63.2%
More than 15 hours per day 2 1.6%
Missing 1 0.8%

Income per month (gross)
2000 Euro or less 17 13.6%
2001 Euro - 2500 Euro 15 12.0%
2501 Euro - 3000 Euro 18 14.4%
3001 Euro - 4000 Euro 24 19.2%
4001 Euro or more 36 28.8%
Unknown 15 12.0%

Frequency of doing online shopping
Less than 1 time per month 75 60%
Between 1 until 3 times per month 35 28%
Between 3 until 5 times per month 13 10.4%
More than 10 times per month 2 1.6%

In general, the average the sample of this research was mostly male, from the age groups of
65 until 73, mostly well educated as most of them obtained higher education degree and earn
about more than 4000 euros per month/gross.
31

In relation to gender, according to CBS on 1 January 2012 the Dutch female senior population
was 2.6 million (53%) and the Dutch male senior population was 2.3 million (47%). The
sample here has 61.6% male and 36.8% female.

In relation to education, according to CBS in 2011 the Dutch population aged 55 65 years
had lower education background 13%, high school education 60% and higher education
background 26%. In this sample, the majority of the sample has a higher education
background (68.0%), followed by high school education (21.6%) and lower education
(10.4%). While according CBS in the population the Dutch seniors are mostly only obtained
lower education background rather than the higher education background. Hence, the data is
skewed towards people with higher education background.

In summary, it can be seen that the dataset is skewed by gender towards male and skewed by
education towards people with a higher education background.

In relation to income, 28.8% of the respondents received more than 4000 euros gross/month
followed by 3000-4000 euro gross/month, in which is received by 19.2% of the sample.

In relation to the use of the Internet and online shops, 63.2% of the samples are active in the
Internet for one until three hours per day and followed by three until five hours per day. In
relation with the use online shops, the samples mostly makes less than one time per month use
of an online shop (60.0%), followed by one until three times per month (28.0%). It can be
concluded that these sample are quite moderate users of the Internet and also moderate users
of e-commerce.

32

4 Results

In this chapter the result of the survey that has been distributed will be discussed. The data has
been processed using SPSS. There are several methods that will be used to analyze the data.
Cronbachs alpha will be applied to analyse the reliability of the items used, Pearson
Correlation Coefficient will be applied to analyse the strength and the direction of one
variable to another variable, or between each item to a variable and Regression lines will be
used to analyse which variables become the most important predictors of the dependent
variables.
4.1 Reliability Analysis

The first step of the data analysis is to measure the internal-consistency reliability of the items
and also to measure the power of each variable that will be included on the model test. The
items that were used for this research and the total score for Cronbachs alpha are described
below:

Table 2 Cronbachs alpha for each variable of the model
Variable Total Items
Cronbachs
alpha
Perceived Usefulness (PU) 3 0.683
Perceived Ease of Use (PEoU) 3 0.796
Social Influence (SF) 5 0.833
Situational Normality-General (IG) 2 0.850
Situational Normality-Benevolence (IB) 2 0.732
Situational Normality-Integrity (II) 3 0.791
Situational Normality-Competence (IC) 3 0.860
Structural Assurance (ISA) 4 0.830
Attitude (A) 3 0.902
Behavior Intention (BI) 2 0.740

It can be seen in Table 2 that the alpha from each variable is above 0.60, which implies that
each item that is used in this research is internally consistent. This means that the items are
measuring the same construct.

33

4.2 Descriptive Statistics

Following the reliability analysis, the next step is to understand the means, standard
deviations, and minimum and maximum from the items and variables that have been
measured with the five points scale. Table 3 presents the variables that are important for the
model

Table 3 The Main Variables for the model, descriptive (N=125)

Variable N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
Perceived Usefulness 125 1.00 5.00 3.3387 .86238
Perceived Ease of Use 125 1.00 5.00 4.0933 .83666
Social Influence 125 1.00 4.60 2.0704 .77595
Situational Normality General 125 1.00 5.00 3.1440 .86326
Situational Normality
Benevolence
125 1.00 4.00 2.6400 .71165
Situational Normality Integrity 125 1.00 5.00 3.5653 .70866
Competence
125 1.00 5.00 3.3547 .69913
Assurance
125 1.00 4.25 2.8760 .72026
Attitude 125 1.00 5.00 3.3893 .90868
Behavioral Intention 125 1.00 5.00 3.2600 .93671

From Table 3, it can be seen that PEoU has the highest mean in comparison to the rest of the
variables (M = 4.0933, SD = 0.83666). Situational Normality Integrity has the second highest
mean in here (M =3.5653, SD= 0.70866). The smallest number can be found on the mean
from Social Influence (M= 2.0704, SD=0.77595).
The Social Normality Competence has the lowest standard deviation (M = 3.3547, SD =
.69913). This can be because there is not a big difference in the score between the respondents
in this sample and the data is spread around the mean.

4.3 The Correlations Matrix for the Model

Prior to the regression analysis, the next step after the descriptive statistic analysis is to check
on the strength and the direction of the variables and also of the items using Pearson product-
34

moment correlation coefficient. Table 4 provides a summary of the correlation coefficients
between the variables that based on the hypothesis have been related and Table 5 provides the
correlation matrix of each variable. The numbers that are marked in bold are important for
this research.

Table 4 The hypothesis and correlations from each variable
Hypothesis Correlation
H1 PU Attitude
H2 PU - Behavior Intention
H3 PEoU Attitude
H4 PEoU - Behavior Intention
H5 PEoU - Perceived Usefulness
H6 Social Influence Attitude
H7 Social Influence - Behavior Intention
H8 IG - Behavior Intention
H9 IB - Behavior Intention
H10 II - Behavior Intention
H11 IC - Behavior Intention
H12 ISA - Behavior Intention
H13 Attitude - Behavior Intention

Table 5 The correlations between models variables
Variable number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
(1) Behavior Intention 1
(2) Attitude .594
**
1
(3) Perceived Usefulness .474
**
.646
**
1
(4) Perceived Ease-of-Use .384
**
.422
**
.441
**
1
(5) Social Influence .066 -.015 .073 -.204
*
1
(6) Situational Normality General .477
**
.536
**
.508
**
.420
**
.082 1
(7) Situational Normality Benevolence .293
**
.289
**
.386
**
.057 .114 .448
**
1
(8) Situational Normality Integrity .487
**
.414
**
.407
**
.492
**
-.193
*
.499
**
.410
**
1
(9) Situational Normality Competence .398
**
.441
**
.330
**
.380
**
-.228
*
.509
**
.478
**
.601
**
1
(10) Situational Normality Assurance .329
**
.466
**
.408
**
.222
*
.055 .444
**
.573
**
.531
**
.476
**
1

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
35

The first relation is between Perceived Usefulness (PU) with Attitude (A) (r = .646, P <
0.01). The relation is significant and there is a strong positive correlation between PU and
Attitude. Moreover, between PU and Behavior Intention (BI), there is a significant and
positive correlation between the variables (r = 0.474, P<0.01).

According to Pearson Correlation Coefficient analysis, perceived ease-of-use (PEoU) is
positively related with attitude variables and also has a significant correlation coefficient (r=
.422, P<0.01). The relation between PEoU and Behavior Intention (BI) also shows that there
is a positive significant relation between the variables (r= .384, P<0.01). The correlation
coefficient between PEoU and PU is also significantly and positively correlated (r = .441,
P<0.01).

According to the data, the correlation between Social Influence and Attitude and also the
correlation between Social Influence and Behavioral Intention (BI) were not statistically
supported by the data and also have a low correlation. Although social influence is positively
correlated with intention, nevertheless social influence is negatively correlated with the
attitude to use e-commerce.

The variables from Institution-Based trust mostly show positive correlation. The data
suggested that the Situation Normality General (IG) is there is a significant correlation and
positive correlation with the behavioral intention (BI) (r = .477, P<0.01). Data from the
research also suggested that there is a significant, positive relation between Situation-
Normality Benevolence (IB) and BI (r = .293, P<0.01). Nevertheless, there is low correlation
between the two variables. Situation-Normality Integrity (II) strongly, significantly and
positively correlates with BI (r = .487, P<0.01). Situation-Normality-competence (IC) also
shows a positive and significant relation with BI (r = .398, P<0.01). The last variable from
Situational Normality-Assurance (ISA) was also returning a significant and positive result (r=
.329, P<0.01).

The last correlation is between Attitude and Behavior Intention. There is a significant, strong,
and positive relation between attitude (A) and behavior intention (BI) (r = .594, P< 0.01).

36

Correlation for the risk reduction with institution-based trust

In the correlation analysis for the risk reduction section, the 9 items that are presented for the
risk reduction variable will be correlated with the institution-based trust variables consist of
IG, IB, II, IC, and ISA. The purpose of performing correlation analysis between the items and
the variables is to find the best items that are important to reduce the anxiety of the Dutch
seniors towards e-commerce. In this analysis, the items that are significantly and positively
correlated with the variables of institution-based trust are taken into account. Table 6 shows
the correlations between the nine items of risk reduction and the institution-based trust
variables.

Table 6 Risk Reduction descriptive statistic (N=125)
Items N Min. Max. Mean Std.
Deviation
The use of a third party icon may
relieve my anxiety in conducting
on-line purchases. (RR1)
125 1 5 3.43 .846
The use of open security and
privacy policy may relieve my
anxiety in conducting on-line
purchases. (RR2)
125 1 5 3.27 .892
Open addressing of complaint
procedures and policy may
125 1 5 3.38 .790
Partnering with a well-known
company will relieve my anxiety
in conducting on-line purchases.
(RR4)
125 1 5 3.52 .779
Using a customer bulletin board
will relieve my anxiety in
conducting on-line purchases.
(RR5)
125 1 4 2.97 .861
Celebrity referrals will relieve my
anxiety in conducting on-line
purchases. (RR6)
125 1 5 2.54 .971
Positive referrals from friends or
relatives will relieve my anxiety in
(RR7)
125 1 5 2.99 .929
37

Selling highly regarded brand
products may relieve my anxiety
in conducting on-line purchases.
(RR8)
125 1 5 3.14 .895
A money back warranty may
125 1 5 3.57 1.011

Table 7 The correlations between Risk Reduction items and the Institution-Based trust variables

Table 7 shows that items 1, 2, 8 and 9, are the most significantly correlated items with the five
variables of institution-based trust, Situational Normality-General (IG), Situational
Normality-Benevolence (IB), Situational Normality- Integrity (II), Situational Normality-
Competence (IC), and Structural Assurance (ISA). Therefore it can be concluded that the
most important items are the use of third party icon in the web vendor, the use of an open
Variable IG IB II IC ISA
(1) Situational Normality General (IG) 1
(2) Situational Normality Benevolence (IB) .448
**
1
(3) Situational Normality Integrity (II) .499
**
.410
**
1
(4) Situational Normality Competence (IC) .509
**
.478
**
.601
**
1
(5) Situational Normality Assurance (ISA .444
**
.573
**
.531
**
.476
**
1
(6) The use of a third party icon may relieve my anxiety in
conducting on-line purchases. (RR1)
.218
*
.301
**
.253
**
.289
**
.370
**

(7) The use of open security and privacy policy may relieve
my anxiety in conducting on-line purchases. (RR2)
.268
**
.278
**
.256
**
.288
**
.505
**

(8) Open addressing of complaint procedures and policy
may relieve my anxiety in conducting on-line purchases.
(RR3)
.157 .214
*
.342
**
.243
**
.380
**

(9) Partnering with a well-known company will relieve my
anxiety in conducting on-line purchases. (RR4)
.086 .040 .267
**
.157 .199
*

(10) Using a customer bulletin board will relieve my anxiety
in conducting on-line purchases. (RR5)
.099 .301
**
.003 .189
*
.250
**

(11) Celebrity referrals will relieve my anxiety in conducting
.146 .262
**
.116 .137 .230
**

(12) Positive referrals from friends or relatives will relieve
my anxiety in conducting on-line purchases. (RR7)
.112 .236
**
.068 .054 .173
(13) Selling highly regarded brand products may relieve my
anxiety in conducting on-line purchases. (RR8)
.229
*
.297
**
.294
**
.236
**
.322
**

(14) A money back warranty may relieve my anxiety in
conducting on-line purchases. (RR9)
.192
*
.257
**
.374
**
.317
**
.355
**

38

security and privacy policy, selling highly regarded brand products, and a money back
guarantee are the most important aspect to reduce anxiety and to increase trust based on the
opinion from the respondents in the sample.

4.4 Regression Line Analysis

The next step after conducting the Pearson Coefficient correlation analysis is conducting the
regression analysis. The regression line method is to understand which variables in the
analysis are the best predictors of an outcome (Pallant, 2005). In this research, the best
variable(s) to be the predictors of the attitude towards e-commerce, behavioral intention and
also perceived usefulness will be analyzed. This analysis uses 3 different types of regression
lines. The first regression line is using the multiple regression line to measure the relation of
three variables, PU, PEoU, and Social Influence towards attitude. The second regression line
is using simple linear regression, to measure the relation between PEoU towards Perceived
Usefulness (PU), and the third one is to measure the relation between Perceived Usefulness,
Perceived Ease-of-Use, Social Influence, Attitude, Situational Normality General, Situational
Normality Benevolence, Situation Normality Integrity, Situational Normality Competence,
and Situational Assurance towards Behavioral Intention using Hierarchy Regression line.

Since SPSS provides results as a two-sided p-value, in order to understand whether the result
is positively or negatively significant in the level of 0.05, the p-value has to be divided into
two.

4.4.1 Attitude towards e-commerce
In this section variables such as Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease-of-Use, and Social
Influence are used to be the predictor of the attitude towards e-commerce variable. The result
of the test using the multiple regression line method will give a summary of which variable(s)
can be the predictor of attitude. Table 8 shows the regression analysis of these variables.

39

Table 8 Table Regression analysis for Attitude (N=125)
Model 1
Percentage of variance (R
2
) 44%
F- change 31.785 *
Degrees of freedom (3, 121)
Standardized regression coefficient (Beta)
PU .575 *
PEoU .163 *
Social Influence -.023
a. Dependent Variable: Attitude
b. Predictors: (Constant), Social Influence, Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease-of-Use
* = Significant at the level of 0.05 if the p level is divided by 2

The regression model for attitude was statistically significant, so that can be concluded that at
least one of the variables, PU, PEoU and Social Influence can be the predictor of attitude (df
= 3, F=31.785, P<0.05) and able to explain 44% of the variance of Attitude (R
2
= 0.44).
According to the regression analysis, from the three predictors, Perceived Usefulness (PU)
and Perceived Ease-of-Use (PEoU) are statistically different from 0 and become the strongest
predictors of Attitude (A). It is shown that the standardized beta coefficient of PU was .575
(P<0.05) and for PEoU was .163 (P<0.05). It is shown that PU has a positive strong
relationship with A and PEoU has also positive relationship but rather weak. Social Influence
shows a negative correlation but not significant in this analysis. Therefore hypothesis one
(H1) and hypothesis three (H3) are supported by the data.
4.4.2 Perceived usefulness
Table 9 Table single linear regression between PU and PEoU (N=125)
Model 1
2
) 20%
F- change 29.767*
Degrees of freedom (1, 123)
Standardized regression coeffiecient (Beta)
PEoU 0.441*
a. Dependent Variable: Perceived Usefulness
b. Predictors: (Constant), Perceived Ease-of-Use (PEoU)

40

The regression model for Perceived Usefulness (PU) was statistically significant with F (1,
123) distribution and P-value 0.000. The variable is able to explain 20% of the variance of
Perceived Usefulness (R
2
= 0.20). According to the regression analysis, PEoU is a strong
predictor of PU. It was shown that the coefficient of PEoU was 0.441 (P<0.05) and also has
a positive relation. Therefore Hypothesis five (H5) is supported by the data.
4.4.3 Behavioral Intention
The third analysis is to focus on the regression analysis towards behavioral intention. The
method that was used for regression analysis was the hierarchy multiple regression lines
method. In this analysis, three steps are applied. The predictors that are proposed for this
model are Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease-of-Use, Social Influence, Attitude,
Situational Normality General (IG), Situational Normality Benevolence (IB), Situation
Normality Integrity (II), Situational Normality Competence (IC), and Situational Assurance
(ISA).

Table 10 Table Hierarchal Multiple Regression analysis for Behavior Intention (N=125)
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
2
) 38% 39% 46%
F- change 24.89* 19.24 * 10.86 *
Degrees of freedom (3,121) (4,120) (9,115)

Standardized regression coefficient (Beta)

PU .115 .093 .036
PEoU .138* .167* .058
Attitude .461* .465* .421*

Social
Influence

.100

.144*

IG

.070
IB .042
II .289*
IC .045
ISA -.132
a. Dependent Variable: Behavior Intention (BI)
b. Predictors: (Constant), Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease-of-Use, Attitude, Social Influence, Situational
41

Normality General (IG), Situational Normality Benevolence (II), Situational Normality Integrity (II), Situational
Normality Competence (IC), Situational Assurance (ISA)

Model 1 consists of Perceived Usefulness (PU), Perceived Ease-of-Use (PEoU), and Attitude
(A). Each of these three variables has positive relations toward Behavioral Intention (BI). This
model was able to explain of the variance of 38 per cent of Behavior Intention (R
2
= .38). In
this model, PEoU shows a positive but rather low and significant result towards BI (b= .138,
p = .092/2) and A also shows a strong, positive, and significant relation towards BI (b= .000,
p = .461/2), hence PU shows positive relation towards BI but not significant (b= .115, p =
.234/2). In conclusion, hypothesis four (H4) and hypothesis thirteen (H13) shows a significant
result and hypothesis two (H2) shows a non-significant result.

In model 2, Social Influence was added. In here, it shows that the variance of the model
improved for 1% (R
2
= .39). In this model, PEoU is still significant (b= .167, p = .049/2) as
well as Attitude is also significant (b= .465, p = .000/2). PU is still showing positive effect on
BI but still not significant (b= .093, p = .342/2). Social influence has a positive relation with
behavioral intention but not significant (b= .144, p= .181/2), therefore hypothesis 7 (H7) is
not significant. In conclusion, hypothesis four (H4) and hypothesis thirteen (H13) are
significant and hypothesis two (H2) and hypothesis seven (H7) are not significant.

In model 3, Situational Normality General (IG), Situational Normality Benevolence (IB),
Situation Normality Integrity (II), Situational Normality Competence (IC), and Situational
Assurance (ISA) were added and the variables were able to explain an additional 7 per cent of
the variance (R
2
= .46). In here, PU is still positively correlated with BI but still not
significant (b= .36, p = .715/2) therefore H2 is still not significant. After the addition of the
variables, PEoU is still positively related but not significant anymore (b= .58, p = .523/2)
therefore H4 is no longer significant. Attitude is still returning a positive and significant result
(b= .421, p= .000/2) therefore H13 is accepted. Social Influence is now significant and also
shows positive relation towards BI (b= .144, p = .063/2), it can be concluded that H7 is now
significant. According to the data, hypothesis eight (H8) about the relation between IG and BI
is positive but not significant (b= .70, p = .471/2). In addition, hypothesis nine (H9) that
suggested for a positive relation between IB and BI, shows that there is a positive but not
significant relationship between these two variables (b= .42, p = .665/2). The relation
42

between II and BI also shows positive and significant therefore hypothesis ten (H10) is
confirmed (b= .289, p = .005/2). Moreover hypothesis eleven (H11) shows the relation
between IC and BI is positive but not significant (b= .45, p = .654/2) and the last hypothesis,
hypothesis twelve (H12) returned a negative and non significant relation between ISA and BI
is negative but not significant (b= -.132, p = .171/2) and this result is contradicted with the
proposed hypothesis that ISA has a positive relation with BI. In conclusion, Attitude (A),
Social Influence and Situational Normality Integrity (II) are the strongest predictors for
Behavioral Intention (BI).

According to this analysis, it can be concluded that the three models from these hierarchy
analysis is all significant at the level of .05, Model 1 has a F(3,121) distribution, Model 2 has
a F(4,120) distribution and Model 3 has an F(9,115) distribution with all significant P-value
(P-value = 0.000). This means that all the models contain important information for predicting
the behavioral intention.

43

5 Discussion and Conclusions

This chapter is the last section of this report, the results from the hypothesis will be
summarized, the research questions will be answered to generate a conclusion, limitations of
this research and recommendations for future research will be discussed. In the next chapter
recommendations will be presented for the marketing strategy that web vendors can apply.

5.1 Discussion

In order to give a better overview of the research questions that are proposed for this research,
the research questions will be presented again in this section.

1. Which factors influence the use of e-commerce of Dutch seniors?

The analysis that has been done in the previous chapter shows that various predictors
influence the attitude and behavior towards e-commerce. The predictors that were proposed
for this research were derived from the Technology Acceptance Model, which was used as the
basis of this research, with two other additional variables i.e. social influence, and institution-
based trust that contains five variables such as situational-normality general, situational-
normality benevolence, situational-normality integrity, situational-normality competence, and
situational assurance.

The two strong predictors of attitude towards the use in this research are Perceived Usefulness
(PU) and Perceived Ease of use (PEoU). According to the result, the attitude itself is strongly
influenced by the Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of use of the e-commerce. As it
has been stated in the hypothesis one, Perceived Usefulness has a positive and important
influence on the attitude of using e-commerce. This hypothesis is also in line with the
statement from Davis (1989) that invented the TAM. The more the website is perceived to be
useful means that there is higher level of attitude that the Dutch senior customers have
towards using e-commerce.

The second hypothesis in which a positive relation between perceived usefulness and
behavioral intention was proposed, has shown that there is no significant relation between the
44

two variables, although these two variables shows a positive correlation. This result is
surprising as in the TAM, the PU has a direct influence towards behavior intention. This can
be the caused that even though the respondents on the sample think that the e-commerce is
perceived to be useful for them, nevertheless this does not always lead into the intention of
using e-commerce. This can be influenced by the perceptions of customers that e-commerce is
not always necessary to use since regular traditional shopping is still applicable and since
customers still want to see and feel the products.

Besides having a positive and significant influence with perceived usefulness, perceived ease
of use also received a positive and also important influence towards attitude. Hypothesis three
is confirmed in here. When the online shop is perceived to be easy to use by the customers,
there is more positive attitude towards using e-commerce. According to the result from the
data analysis, the customers also perceived that the website is easy to be used. This might be
the fact that the respondents are users of the Internet and they are familiar towards how to
operate a website. Although the respondents in the sample are skewed more to gender and
division, which might have influence on the generalizability of this research, nevertheless the
result still shows that perceived ease-of-use is an important factor for the Dutch seniors,
which can lead into a positive attitude towards using e-commerce. The perceived ease-of-use
can be related with different type of aspects. As mentioned by Urban et al. (2009) this can be
related to implementing a good usability, navigation and providing clear and well-structured
website for their customers, that will make them feels that they are dealing with a professional
vendor. In addition to the perceived ease-of-use, hypothesis four suggested that there is a
positive relation between perceived ease-of-use and behavioral intention. Nevertheless, the
data did not return a significant result for these two variables. This can be related to the fact
that the Dutch seniors customers acceptance on the ease of use from e-commerce, does not
always lead into the intention on using the e-commerce. In this analysis, a positive connection
between perceived ease-of-use and perceived usefulness was also proposed and this can be
found in the hypothesis five. The result from the analysis shows that perceived ease-of-use is
a predictor of perceived usefulness. It can be concluded from this analysis that perceived ease-
of-use does not have a direct influence on the behavioral intention but rather to perceived
usefulness. This result also confirms the theory from Davis (1989) that he suggests in the
Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), which states that Perceived Ease-of-Use is positively
related with Perceived Usefulness.
45

a. How does social influence affect the use of e-commerce by Dutch seniors?

Social influence has received many attention nowadays. As many social media are invented
and this is not only used for connecting with people, as various companies use it as their
marketing tool. Within social influence variable, two hypotheses were proposed. Only
hypothesis seven, which measures the relation between social influence and behavioral
intention, is significantly and positively correlated. Hypothesis six states that social influence
has a positive influence on the attitude. The relation between the two variables shows a
negative relation, nevertheless this is a non-significant result shown by the data. This can be
explained that the social influence may not have a strong impact and change the attitude of the
Dutch seniors towards the use of e-commerce. The result from this analysis is also confirming
the theory from Venkatesh et al. (2003) about the direct connection between social influences
with intention to use without attitude as a mediator. The result of the analysis from hypothesis
seven which proposes a positive relation between social influence and the intention to use is
returning a significant result and also confirming the theory from Venkatesh et al. (2003).
Moreover, this is also in line with the statement from Kim and Srivastava (2007) who argued
that social influence has an impact on the customers buying intention on a product from a web
vendors and attitude is a weak mediator between social influence and the behavioral intention.
The social influence variable can be related with the positive review from friends, family or
important people around the senior customers to use e-commerce as the web vendors sell
interesting products or offer a good deal for their customers.

b. How does institution-based trust affect the use of e-commerce by Dutch seniors?

In this research the focus is also given on the institutional-based trust, which is related to the
trust that is institutionalized. From the five variables of institution-based trust, surprisingly
only one variable is significant to be the predictor of behavioral intention. This variable is
situational normality integrity. In this research, the respondents in the sample are active users
of the Internet, in which about 63.2% of these respondents are using one until three hours per
46

day and in addition, the respondents also had experience with using e-commerce, 60% of
them are using e-commerce at least once per month. In addition, 68% of the respondents are
mostly with high education background. It can be perceived that the respondents might
already understand and also have knowledge about the advantages and disadvantages from
using e-commerce and also perceive that the Internet is in a good order. Nevertheless,
although the respondents in the sample belief that the Internet is in good order, this does not
influence on their behavioral intention to use more e-commerce. Therefore situational-
normality general is not a predictor for behavioral intention.

The result from the analysis also shows that the three sub-variables of Situational-Normality,
e.g. situational-normality benevolence, situational normality integrity and situational
normality competence, show a positive relation towards behavioral intention. Although there
is no significant result on the relation between the situational normality benevolence with
behavioral intention, and also situational normality situational competence with behavioral
intention, nevertheless situational normality integrity shows a significant result. Therefore
hypothesis nine and hypothesis ten are not confirmed and hypothesis eleven is confirmed.

Situational normality benevolence is related to the belief that the Internet vendors would act
also on the customers interest not only getting profit from them. This can be related to
providing a good customer service, not selling the data of the customers to other companies.
Although the customers have the belief on the Situation-Normality Benevolence, this does not
always influence their intention to use e-commerce more.

In relation to situational normality competence, the respondents were asked about their
perceptions towards the competence of online shops that the respondents had deal with
previously. The data shows that although the respondents have high situational normality
competence level, however this will not always lead the intention to use the e-commerce.
Their intention to use might come from the fact that these customers needs are on a specific
product from an e-commerce not from their belief that the e-commerce is competent in its
business.

The situational normality integrity (II) received the highest score in the analysis. It can be
seen that the II has the highest mean score compare to other variables from institutional-
47

based trust. This can be related with the fact that the respondents in the sample has had some
experiences with e-commerce and the fact that they are early adopters of e-commerce as II is
related with the belief that the e-commerce has always provided a good service and also
fulfills the agreement to them which make them feels comfortable to the intention of doing
more online shopping in the future.

The last hypothesis is to test the relation between the Situational Normality-Assurance level
of the Dutch seniors and their behavioral intention. The results show that there is a negative
correlation and also a non-significant result. Although there is high level of the Situational
Normality-Assurance of the Dutch seniors customers belief from the respondents, there is still
lack of intention to use e-commerce.

c. How can we reduce the risks in using e-commerce by Dutch seniors?

This analysis is related with the risk reduction analysis to find which items are the best items
to reduce the anxiety of the customers in using e-commerce. The results show a different
result than in the previous research from Corbitt et al. (2003), in which stating that money
back warranty, word-of-mouth, and brand image as important items. This can be the fact that
the research used a different respondents group. In this research, item one is related to the use
of third party icon in the web vendor. It can be seen that the respondents are aware about the
use of third party icon in the website. In the Netherlands, the third party icon is usually known
as Thuiswinkel Waarbog. The awareness of the respondents on this third party icon, due to the
fact that the most of the respondents has a high education background and understand that
third party icon is protecting their safety from the Internet criminals since the respondents has
experience in using e-commerce and might have seen the logo in the e-commerce websites
that they have been previously visited. According to CBS (2011), safety has become one of
the concerns of the customers in the Netherlands that are not using e-commerce. Gefen et al.
(2003) mentioned that the third party icon is also part of the strategy to increase trusting
belief. Hence item 1 is positively correlated with the institution-based trust variables.

In the item two, the respondents of the sample perceived that privacy policy is important. This
is also in line with the result from CBS (2011) which states that the customers are concerned
with their privacy, and there is still lack of performance in e-commerce. This privacy policy is
48

also one of the strategies to increase the trusting belief according to Gefen et al. (2003). The
customers should perceive the vendors as trustworthy and that they will protect the customer
privacy e.g. giving a guarantee that the vendors will not disclose their personal information.

Item thirteen states that the brands that are sold in the website should be a brand with quality.
This item is important as this can be related to the fact that the customers are not able to see
and sense the product directly.

Item fourteen is also related with the result from the research of CBS (2011) states that the
customers are concerned about the delivery of the product. In item fourteen, it states that a
money back guarantee reduces the anxiety in using e-commerce. Gefen et al. (2011) also
mentioned that guarantee is also part of the institution-based trust. Therefore, this item is
important to be considered to increase the trusting belief from the Dutch seniors.

49

5.2 Conclusions

The main goal of this research is to understand the factors that influence the acceptance of the
Dutch seniors towards e-commerce. The result of this research is also provides a contribution
to the theory. In this research, the TAM model is used to measure the acceptance of Dutch
seniors towards e-commerce. Social influences and institutional based trust variables were
added to the model. After testing the variables into the model, the results returned a surprising
result that perceived usefulness is not significantly related with behavioral intention.
Nevertheless, the connections between other variables, PU-A, PEoU-A, PEoU-PU, A- BI
showed a significant result.

Social influence is then added to the TAM model. When it was tested to different target
groups, different locations, and different times, the results still shows that the social influence
is directly correlated with BI rather than to attitude. Therefore this test is confirming the
theory.

The last variable is the institution-based trust. The five variables of institution-based trust IG,
IB, II, IC, and ISA were tested in relation to the behavioral intention. The result shows that II
is the most significant variable to the behavioral intention. This can be the fact in the integrity;
the customers had never received a bad experience in the past, which creates more intention to
use e-commerce. Hence other variables do not always relate to the intention of using e-
commerce but perhaps there should be a mediator as purposed by McKnight et al. (2012),
which relates institution-based trust with trusting belief.

In here, it can be concluded that the marketers should focus more on increasing the perceived
usefulness of the e-commerce to lead the intention to use and also focus more on social
influence variable to increase the interest of the seniors in using e-commerce.

In relation to risk reduction strategy, the correlation shows that the items that related to the
third party logo, privacy policy, high quality brand and money back guarantee are the most
important items for the senior customers in order to reduce their anxiety in using the e-
commerce.
50

5.3 Research limitations and suggestions for future research

This research has several limitations, these limitations are:
The selection of the sample is based on convenience sampling and snowball sampling
in which can be not representative for this research. In addition to the sample problem,
the respondents in the sample are skewed in gender and education, which can be a
problem for the generalization of this research.
This research also only obtained a small sample number, therefore the generalization
can also be a problem;
The respondents in the sample are only people with experience in using e-commerce;
The research is only focusing on seniors in general, rather than comparing the results
between different genders or different age groups;
The items are originally created in English, therefore the translation of the items might
have yielded a different meaning than the original items;
The respondents were asked to measure their behavior based on their experience in
using different type of e-commerce websites, which might be difficult for them to
measure behavior related to the Perceived ease-of-use items.

Recommendation for future research:
In future research, it is recommended to see the differences between those who have
experience and those without experience.
It is also important to see the differences between gender and age.
In this research, the institution-based trust is suggested to have direct influence in
behavioral intention. In the future, additional variables such as trusting belief can be
added as a mediator of institution-based trust variables and behavioral intention.
In the future, the research can also be more focused on specific websites, for example
well known online shopping vendors such as bol.com or wehkamp.nl. The future
research can compare the behavior from the respondents on each of these websites.
Finally, a research to understand the preference from seniors on which products and
brands they would be most interested in buying online.

51

6 Recommendations for Beweging 3.0 and other web vendors

There are many factors that can be improved in order to make the Dutch seniors have the
intention to use e-commerce more. According to the research, there is already a positive
attitude from them about the usefulness of e-commerce and also the ease-of-use from e-
commerce, nevertheless various factors are still lacking significance when these were related
with behavioral intention. Hence there are various recommendations that can be considered by
web vendors in the Netherlands that have seniors as their target customers. The
recommendations that can be given for the web vendors are as follows.

The respondents from the sample might perceive that the usefulness of e-commerce is
influenced by the fact that web vendors offer a good promotion or sell products that they
need. In order to make the website more useful for them, the web vendors can sell products
that are perceived to be necessary for their age for example products that are related to leisure
such as books, or activities. Nevertheless, the website should be really focused on specific
products and categories that are highly needed by senior customers. In addition the customers
might still have lack of trust on the product if an unknown brand is sold in the website. The
fact that the customers have less interaction with the product, e.g. seeing, sensing, and trying
the product make them perceive that a high quality brand is important for them as they are
assured that the product will be worth for them, therefore selling highly regarded brands is
also considered to be important. As there is limitation on this research, therefore further
research should be developed to understand which products are necessary for them and future
research can be developed to understand which brands are perceived to be qualified.

In order to increase the trust of the customers to use e-commerce, the web vendor should be
able to provide a guarantee for example a money back guarantee. This strategy is also
important to reduce the anxiety in using e-commerce and also to increase their trust on e-
commerce. The web vendor can offer a trial for seniors to try the product that the vendors
sells, when the customers are not satisfied, they are guaranteed to get their money back. This
information should be clearly stated in the website and in every page where the products are
shown and the customers should be able to see easily the link for the return policy in the
website. This can be placed on the top of the page.

52

It is important that all aspects that are needed to increase trust are applied in the website.
According to the data, in order to increase the trust of the senior customers, it is necessary that
the website should have a third party icon logo such as Thuiswaarborg in The Netherlands. In
addition as the customers are also concerned about their privacy, all information regarding the
use of their personal data should be clearly stated in the website. The web vendors can place
the link on the place where it is clear for the customers, for example on the top of the page.
Therefore the customers can clearly see that the website is secured and trustable. In addition,
the customers should be informed when there are changes made in the privacy policy as most
customers are very concerned with their privacy. In conclusion, three important sections e.g.
Thuiswaarborg logo, Return Policy and Privacy Policy should be clearly applied in the
website and it should be placed on the spot where the customers can see it immediately when
they arrived in the website. This can be on the top of the page.

The research also showed that the perceived ease-of-use from the website does not have
significant impact on the intention of using e-commerce. A good looking website to make the
customers more interested to buy the product should also be applied. In here, the website
should also be designed in a professional way, by giving a good usability and also using a
clear font, images, and color tones that are suitable for the seniors.

When these important aspects have been applied in the website, the marketing managers can
create more promotions offline and online for Dutch customers to attract them to use e-
commerce more. The marketing managers can create a give-away discount coupons to try the
product that are sold in the website. In addition, the marketing managers can also apply search
engine optimation (SEO) to increase the online listing of the website so that it can create more
awareness at the targeted customers, in this case the seniors. Another interesting factor that
was found in this research is that social influence has an important relation with behavioral
intention. It can be perceived that the customers decision making to use e-commerce is
influenced by what others say. Nowadays, there are various social networking sites invented.
The marketing managers can also focus on creating a marketing campaign through social
networking sites. In addition, the marketing managers can also send an email marketing
newsletter to ask the customers who just tried the new website to forward an email with a
coupon in the email, hence those who are in the network can also try to use the e-commerce
website.
53

54

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57

Annex A Invitation Letter

A.1 Online Survey Invitation Letter

Uitnodiging onderzoek: online winkels voor senioren

Geachte heer, mevrouw,

Voor mijn scriptie in het kader van mijn opleiding communicatiewetenschap (CW) aan de
Universiteit Twente, voer ik een onderzoek uit naar het gebruik van online winkels door
ouderen. De laatste jaren is het gebruik van online winkels minder toegenomen dan andere
activiteiten op het Internet.

Doel van het onderzoek
Het doel van het onderzoek is om meer inzicht te krijgen in de motieven en factoren die een
rol spelen bij het gebruik van online winkels. Specifiek richt dit onderzoek zich op ouderen.
Door middel van enkele aanpassingen kunnen online winkels beter aansluiten bij de wensen
en behoeften van de gebruikers.

Doelgroep
Deze enqute kan ingevuld worden door iedereen van 55 jaar of ouder die ervaring heeft met
het kopen van producten of diensten via internet.

Graag nodig ik u uit om de enqute in te vullen. Dit kan door de klikken op de onderstaande
link:

http://www.thesistools.com/?id=282914&code=1000136

Bij voorbaat hartelijk dank voor uw tijd en uw bijdrage,

Voor vragen en of opmerkingen kunt u mij mailen via:m.c.kusumadewi@student.utwente.nl

A.2 Offline Survey Invitation Letter
onderzoek: online winkels voor senioren

Geachte heer, mevrouw,

Voor mijn scriptie in het kader van mijn opleiding communicatiewetenschap (CW) aan de
Universiteit Twente, voer ik een onderzoek uit naar het gebruik van online winkels door
ouderen. De laatste jaren is het gebruik van online winkels minder toegenomen dan andere
activiteiten op het Internet.

Doel van het onderzoek
Het doel van het onderzoek is om meer inzicht te krijgen in de motieven en factoren die een
rol spelen bij het gebruik van online winkels. Specifiek richt dit onderzoek zich op ouderen.
Door middel van enkele aanpassingen kunnen online winkels beter aansluiten bij de wensen
en behoeften van de gebruikers.
58

Doelgroep
Deze enqute kan ingevuld worden door iedereen van 55 jaar of ouder die ervaring heeft met
het kopen van producten of diensten via internet.

Bij voorbaat hartelijk dank voor uw tijd en uw bijdrage,

m.c.kusumadewi@student.utwente.nl

59

Annex B The Survey

1.

Heeft u de afgelopen 3 maanden gebruik gemaakt van een online winkel?
Ja
Nee

2.

Hoe vaak winkelt u online per maand?
Minder dan 1 keer per maand
Tussen 1 tot 3 keer per maand
Meer dan 10 keer per maand

3.

In hoeverre bent u het eens met de volgende stellingen?

Helemaal mee oneens

Helemaal mee eens

Ik vind online winkelen leuk

Ik vind online winkelen een goed idee

Ik vind online winkelen interessant

Ik vind dat online winkelen mij tijd bespaart

Ik vind dat online winkelen mijn productiviteit in een product zoeken en
aankopen verhoogt

Ik vind online winkelen voordelig

Ik vind het gemakkelijk om te leren hoe een online winkel te gebruiken

Ik vind dat een online winkel eenvoudig in gebruik moet zijn zodat ik kan
vinden wat ik zoek

Ik kan een online winkel gebruiken zonder enige hulp

Ik doe aan online winkelen omdat mensen die mijn gedrag benvloeden,
mij aanraadden om online te winkelen

Ik doe aan online winkelen omdat mensen die belangrijk voor mij zijn,
mij aanraadden om online te winkelen

Ik deel mijn ervaringen in het gebruiken van een online winkel

Ik doe aan online winkelen omdat mijn kinderen en familie ook online
winkelen

Ik doe aan online winkelen omdat de meeste van mijn vrienden ook
online winkelen

4.

In hoeverre dragen onderstaande factoren bij aan uw vertrouwen over winkelen op het Internet?
60

Helemaal mee oneens

Helemaal mee eens

Ik voel me goed over hoe het gaat als ik op het internet aankopen doe of
andere activiteiten onderneem

Ik voel mij comfortabel bij het doen van aankopen op het internet

Ik heb het gevoel dat de meeste internetleveranciers handelen in het
belang van de klant

Als een klant hulp nodig heeft, zouden de meeste internetleveranciers hun
best doen om te helpen

De meeste internetleveranciers zijn genteresseerd in het welzijn van de
klant, niet alleen in hun eigen welzijn

Ik vertrouw erop dat internetleveranciers aan hun verplichtingen voldoen

Ik voel me goed om zaken op het internet te doen, omdat
internetleveranciers over het algemeen hun afspraken nakomen

Ik vertrouw erop dat internetleveranciers hun taken uitvoeren als ik zaken
met ze doe

Over het algemeen zijn de meeste internetverkopers bekwaam in het
dienen van hun klanten

De meeste internetleveranciers doen bekwaam hun taak en voldoen aan
de behoeften van de klant

Ik heb het gevoel dat de meeste internetverkopers goed zijn in wat ze
doen

Het internet heeft genoeg waarborgen om in vertrouwen persoonlijke
zaken af te handelen

Ik voel me er zeker van dat de juridische en technologische structuren mij
voldoende beschermen tegen problemen op het internet

Ik ben er van overtuigd dat technologische ontwikkelingen op het internet
het voor mij veilig maken om er zaken te doen

Over het algemeen is het internet nu een robuuste en veilige omgeving
om zaken af te handelen

5.

In hoeverre bent u het eens met de volgende stellingen?

Helemaal mee oneens

Helemaal mee eens

Ik vind dat een video-instructie over hoe een online winkel te gebruiken
belangrijk is

Ik vind dat in de online winkel beelden belangrijker zijn dan tekst

Voor mij moet de lettergrootte in de online winkel groot zijn

Ik vind dat een aantrekkelijke kleurstelling belangrijk is voor een online
winkel

Voor mij is een duidelijke en goed gestructureerde online winkel belangrijk

Ik vind dat een online winkel duidelijke informatie moet verschaffen over
het product waarnaar ik op zoek ben

Het gebruik van het Thuiswinkel-Waarborg neemt mijn bedenkingen tegen
online winkelen weg

Het hebben van een privacy-beleid neemt mijn bedenkingen tegen online
winkelen weg (privacy-beleid is informatie waarin rechten over
gegevensverwerking zijn gepresenteerd)

Het openlijk weergeven van het klachtenbeleid en bijbehorende
procedures neemt mijn bedenkingen tegen online winkelen weg

61

Samenwerken met een bekend bedrijf neemt mijn bedenkingen tegen
online winkelen weg

Het hebben van een discussieforum voor klanten neemt mijn bedenkingen
tegen online winkelen weg

Positieve aanbevelingen van bekende personen neemt mijn bedenkingen
tegen online winkelen weg

Positieve aanbevelingen van vrienden of familieleden neemt mijn
bedenkingen tegen online winkelen weg

Het verkopen van goed aangeschreven merkproducten neemt mijn
bedenkingen tegen online winkelen weg

Een niet-goed-geld-terug-garantie neemt mijn bedenkingen tegen online
winkelen weg

6.

Hoe zie je jezelf in de toekomst in verband met online winkelen?

Helemaal mee oneens

Helemaal mee eens

Ik ben van plan om in de komende 3 maanden aan online winkelen te
doen

Ik verwacht dat ik de komende 3 maanden meer aan online winkelen zal
doen

7.

Wat is uw leeftijd?
*

55 of jonger
56-64
65-73
74 of ouder

8.

Wat is uw geslacht?
*

Man
Vrouw

9.

Wat is uw hoogst genoten opleiding?
*

Lager onderwijs
MAVO/VMBO
HAVO
VWO
MBO
62

HBO
Universiteit

10.

Hoeveel uur gebruikt u Internet per dag?
*

0
Minder dan 1 uur per dag
Tussen 1 tot 3 uur per dag
Tussen 3 tot 5 uur per dag
Tussen 5 en 7 uur per dag
Meer dan 15 uur per dag

11.

Wat is uw totale bruto maandinkomen?
2000 Euro of minder
2001 Euro 2500 Euro
2501 Euro 3000 Euro
3001 Euro 4000 Euro
4001 Euro of meer

63

Annex C List of final items used in the research

Perceived Usefulness (Davis, 1989)
I find online shopping saving my time
I find online shopping increasing my productivity in finding and buying
the products
I find online shopping is useful
PU1
PU2

PU3
Perceived Ease of Use (Davis, 1989)
I find it easy to learn how to use an online shop
I find online shopping should be easy to use so that I can find what I am
looking for
I am able to use online shop without any help
PEoU1
PEoU2

PEoU3
Social Influence (Venkatesh et al., 2003)
I use online shop because people that influence my behavior, suggest me
to do online shopping
I use online shop because people that are important for me, suggest me
to do online shopping
I use online shop because my children and family also use online shop
I use online shop because most of my friends also use online shop
This items is added by the author
I share my experience in using an online shopping
SF1

SF2

SF4
SF5

SF3
Institution-Based Trust (McKnight et al., 2002)
Situational Normality-General (IG)
I feel good about how things go when I do purchasing or other activities
on the Internet.
I am comfortable making purchases on the Internet.

IG1

IG2
Situational Normality-Benevolence (IB)
I feel that most Internet vendors would act in a customers best interest.
If a customer required help, most Internet vendors would do their best to
help.
Most Internet vendors are interested in customer well-being, not just
their own well- being.

IB1
IB2

IB3

Situational Normality- Integrity (II)
I am comfortable relying on Internet vendors to meet their obligations.
I feel fine doing business on the Internet since Internet vendors
generally fulfill their agreements.
I always feel confident that I can rely on Internet vendors to do their part
when I interact with them.

II1
II2

II3

Situational Normality-Competence (IC)
In general, most Internet vendors are competent at serving their
customers.
Most Internet vendors do a capable job at meeting customer needs.
I feel that most Internet vendors are good at what they do.

IC1

IC2
IC3
Structural Assurance (ISA)
The Internet has enough safeguards to make me feel comfortable using
it to transact personal business.
I feel assured that legal and technological structures adequately protect
me from problems on the Internet.
I feel confident that encryption and other technological advances on the
Internet make it safe for me to do business there.
In general, the Internet is now a robust and safe environment in which to
transact business.

ISA1

ISA2

ISA3

ISA4

Risk Reduction (Corbitt et al., 2003)
The use of a third party icon may relieve my anxiety in conducting on-
line purchases.
The use of open security and privacy policy may relieve my anxiety in
Open addressing of complaint procedures and policy may relieve my
RR1

RR2

RR3
64

anxiety in conducting on-line purchases.
Partnering with a well-known company will relieve my anxiety in
Using a customer bulletin board will relieve my anxiety in conducting
on-line purchases.
Celebrity referrals will relieve my anxiety in conducting on-line
purchases.
Positive referrals from friends or relatives will relieve my anxiety in
Selling highly regarded brand products may relieve my anxiety in
A money back warranty may relieve my anxiety in conducting on-line
purchases.

RR 4

RR 5

RR 6

RR 7

RR 8

RR 9
Attitude (Venkatesh et al., 2003)
I think online shopping is fun
I think online shopping is a good idea
I find online shopping is interesting
A1
A2
A3
Behavioral Intention (Venkatesh et al., 2003)
I have intention to use online shops in the next 3 months
I have intention to do more online shopping in the next 3 months
BI1
BI2

Control Variables
What is your age? (55 or younger/56-64/65-73/74 or older)
What is your gender? (Male / Female)
What is your highest level of education? (Education / MAVO or VMBO
/ HAVO / VWO / MBO / HBO / University)
How many hours of Internet use per day? (0 / Less than 1 hour a day /
Between 1-3 hours a day / Between 3-5 hours a day / Between 5 and 7
hours per day / Between 7 and 9 hours a day / Between 9 and 11 hours a
day / Between 11 and 13 hours a day / Between 13 and 15 hours a day /
more than 15 hours per day)
How often do you shop online per month?
(Less than 1 time per month / Between 1 to 3 times per month / Between
3-5 times per month / Between 5 to 10 times
Age
Gender
Education
Background

Internet Use

Frequency of
doing online
shopping

65

Annex D Literature study log book
Research questions for the literature study
1. Adoptions and E-commerce
What is adoption?
What is Technology Acceptance Model?
How TAM can be applied in e-commerce?

2. Social Influence
Does TAM model works with Social Influence variable?
How do the variables of TAM works with social influence?
What are the relations of TAM with social influence in the adoption research?
What other variables that can be related with TAM and Social Influence?

3. Trust
What are the predictors of Trust?
What is important to understand in Trust?
What is institution-based trust?
Is there a relation between institution-based trust with TAM?
What is situational normality?
What is situational assurance?
What are benevolence, integrity and competence as the base of Trust?
What is risk reduction?

4. Research methods
What is the advantage and disadvantage from survey method?
What type of bias can happen from survey method?
What method to analyze the data from the survey?
How to perform multiple regression analysis?

The following are the concepts that are purposed in research:
Adoption
Technology Acceptance Model
66

Social Influence
Trust
Institution-Based trust
E-commerce
Dutch seniors

Criteria preferred materials
The selection of the articles are based on several criteria
1. The articles should be related with the research theme
2. The journal article should be up to date; by looking on the year of publications
3. The journal should be frequently cited.
4. Current articles on the news about e-commerce, adoption, and seniors who use e-
commerce
5. Books to find related theories about e-commerce, adoption and trust
6. The language can be in English, Dutch, and Bahasa Indonesia

Selected databases
The library of University of Twente (UT) has been the main source of the database of this
research. Through the VPN access, I can access the articles provided by the library in any
place. Moreover, the website also provides link to other databases that makes the process of
generating articles much easier. There are various databases that were used for this research.

1. Psycinfo, which is focusing on psychology article. As the research is focusing on
behavioral research, therefore this database is a suitable database
2. Scopus this database provides various journals in different disciplines
3. UT catalogue was also used to find the related books for the research and also published
thesis in the database of UT
4. Emerald database that provides articles around marketing topics
5. Google scholar to find the related articles for the first based

67

Relevant terms
No. Concepts ke|ated 1erms Sma||er 1erms 8roader 1erms
1 -$0/(*0# 01 23.044%&.% =>8 0#<*#% ',0//*#+ )((*(?$% (0@)&$'
%3.044%&.%
2 :%.,#0<0+6 -..%/()#.% A0$%< B%&.%*C%$ ?'%1?<#%'' B" -;D B20" E#(%#(*0# (0 ?'%
3 70.*)< E#1<?%#.% :-A @0&$301340?(, #%(@0&F'
4 :&?'( E#'(*(?(*0# =)'%$ :&?' :&?'( *# 23.044%&.% (&?'(*#+ 5%<*%1

Search Action

Reflection
Searching for scientific articles is different than searching for a news article or just article that
are published in a blog. The first time I learned how to search for a scientific result is actually
during my previous study in HBO. In UT, I received a course, which thought me how to write
a scientific report in the academic writing class. In this course I also learned how to use the
database from the UT Library in which has the same function as the databases that I used for
my previous thesis.

In the UT library database, there is a link, which redirect us to various different databases and
also dictionary that are very helpful to be used during this research. In this research, I mostly
obtained scientific articles through the databases from UT. As the databases that are provided
by UT have more articles and usually the year of publications are mostly new. The articles
that are provided in the blog or news are used only for input or idea.

Most of the terms that I used in this research are related to adoption TAM E-commerce,
Social Influence and Trust, as these are the most important terms for my literature study.
During this research different databases were used, for example Scopus, Web of Science, UT
Catalogue and Google Scholar. I applied Boolean searching (e.g. AND, OR, NOT) in my
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research. These techniques are useful to increase the amount of relevant articles for my
research and I have applied this for many years. For my future research, I would certainly
apply this technique again.

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