Adoption and acceptance of mobile commerce in Saudi Arabia: the case of e-ticketing in the airline industry

Abstract

Mobile technology has influenced business strategies over recent years and the increasing penetration of mobile devices and related solutions such as mobile commerce has revolutionised consumer organisations. Saudi Arabia with its high mobile penetration has the potential for higher usage of mobile services in the near future. This research aimed at understanding and evaluating the acceptance and adoption of mobile commerce in Saudi Arabia with specific focus on the airline ticketing services through evaluation of the attitude and behaviour of the airline consumers towards mobile commerce in airline ticketing services. The research was designed as a mixed and explanatory research and used both deductive and inductive approaches to understanding mobile commerce acceptance in airline ticketing services. The research also involved extensive review of technology adoption models such as Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), based on which a research framework was developed and hypotheses specified. Quantitative study involved online questionnaire based survey with 207 travellers who were connected at the King Abdul-Aziz airport in Saudi Arabia, while qualitative study involved interviews with eight employees of Saudi Airlines. The collected data was analysed using MS Excel and SPSS and subjected to descriptive, regression and content analysis. The research findings indicate positive perceptions of airline travellers towards the usefulness, ease of use and other related benefits of using mobile commerce for air ticketing services. The key factors influencing the attitude were identified to be the ease of use, usefulness and social influence, while key determinants of behavioural intention were identified to be mobility, compatibility and usefulness. The other factors such as cost, trust, perceived risk and usecontext were not found to be the key influencers of the behavioural intention of Saudi Arabian travelers towards use of mobile commerce for airline ticketing services. Another key finding was the lack of any significant differences, perhaps surprising, in the behavioural intention to use mobile commerce across various demographic groups based on age, gender and education. The research findings will be useful for both practitioners of mobile commerce as well as academicians involved in research on acceptance and adoption of mobile commerce. Moreover, the research findings are not just useful for the airline industry in Saudi Arabia, but can also be consulted by those interested in understanding mobile-commerce acceptance in airline industry anywhere else across the globe or any other industry in Saudi Arabia.

Date of Award	2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton