Determinants of Physicians' Purchase Intention for Innovative Services. Integrating Professional Characteristics with Technology Acceptance Model and Theory of Planned Behaviour

This paper seeks to explore the factors that influence physicians’ purchase intention for supplementary professional services that have been recently introduced to the market. For that reason, a model has been developed and empirically tested using data collected from 100 physicians regarding an innovative e-detailing service. Results show that physicians’ purchase intention is significantly influenced by five factors. Three of them derive from the integration of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with the Theory of Planned behaviour (TPB), i.e. perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and professional image. The rest, namely work experience, working status and innovativeness, refer to physicians’ professional characteristics. Work experience and innovativeness were found to have a significant effect on physicians’ perceptions of the innovative service, whereas, physicians’ current working status was not found to have significant influence on either their perceptions of the innovative service or their purchase intention.