Evaluating Electronic Commerce Acceptance with the Technology Acceptance Model

As many retailers struggle with their on-line operations and dot corns close their virtual doors, it has become critical to understand why consumers buy online. This study applies the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to electronic commerce participation using a sample of 138 college students. Ease of use was found to have an impact on whether someone would buy a product online and on usefulness. Usefulness had an impact on the number of times a respondent purchased items online. The number of hours spent using the internet per week had a significant impact on all four measures of electronic commerce participation, whether they bought something online, how many times they bought something online, how frequently and how much was spent buying online. Surprisingly, security and privacy concerns did not have an impact on electronic commerce participation. The implications, limitations and directions for future research are addressed.