Technology Adoption at the Consumer Level: Focus on Internet Based Communication Technology

Technology adoption has been a very important area of interest in IS research. However, much of this research has been limited to the organizational and household contexts. There is a need to examine adoption at the consumer level as we believe that factors affecting adoption decisions in the contexts somewhat different from those affecting individual adoption situations. The purpose of this paper, as research in progress, is to propose a technology adoption model at the consumer level based on the well established attribution theory and product attribute model. We are focusing on Internet based communication tools and in particular Instant Messengers (IMs). Our model has five variables, perceptions of product attributes, interpersonal influence on adopter, inherent innovativeness, vicarious innovativeness, and adoptive innovativeness. This paper provides a logical framework for a future empirical study that would investigate and test the hypotheses proposed in this paper.