New institutional arrangements and standard adoption: Evidence from small-scale fruit and vegetable farmers in Thailand

GlobalGAP is the most important private standard for producers in the Thai horticultural sector concerning access to high-value markets, especially to Europe. This paper presents an analysis of GlobalGAP adoption by small-scale fruit and vegetable farmers in Thailand focusing on GlobalGAP group certification, the costs and perceived benefits of GlobalGAP adoption, and the factors influencing standard adoption. In our research area, GlobalGAP group certification has encouraged the formation of new institutional arrangements between farmers, exporters and donors. Farmers participating in a development program were organized in certification groups where the Quality Management System (QMS) was either run by the donor, by the exporter, or by farmers themselves. Results of our adoption model suggest that support by donors, exporters and public–private partnerships are vital to enable small-scale farmers to adopt the standard. Furthermore, farmers are more likely to adopt if they are better educated and more experienced, and if they have access to female family labor, improved farming technology, and information and extension services.     

The adoption of information technology in the sales force

The purpose of this article is to explain why salespeople adopt information technology. The results from a cross-sectional study of 229 salespeople indicate that putting sales technology to use strongly depends on salespeople's perceptions about the technology enhancing their performance, their personal innovativeness and organizational efforts in terms of user training. Throughout the adoption process companies also need to target sales line managers-next to end users-because salespeople clearly comply with the expectations of their supervisors. Finally, the threat from competing sales professionals or peers who use similar sales technology seems to be of secondary importance for individual sales technology adoption.     

COMPETING PAYMENT SCHEMES*

This paper presents a model of competing payment schemes. Unlike previous work on generic two‐sided markets, the model allows for the fact that in a payment system, users on one side of the market (merchants) compete to attract users on the other side (consumers, who may use cards for purchases). It analyzes how competition between card associations and between merchants affects the choice of interchange fees, and thus the structure of fees charged to cardholders and merchants. Implications for other two‐sided markets are discussed.     

What will be the possible barriers to consumers’ adoption of smart home services?

Recently, smart home services have come to the forefront as part of the growing market for the “Internet of Things.” Since these smart home services were introduced, they have been expected to grow rapidly. However, contrary to optimistic expectations for future market growth, the smart home market has appeared to hit a roadblock and remains at an early market stage. This study attempts to identify the possible barriers that consumers perceive when they are introduced to smart home services. Based on the resistance theory and perceived risk model, we investigate the relationship between perceived risk and resistance to smart home services, using technological uncertainty and service intangibility as the antecedents of perceived risk. Dividing perceived risk into four dimensions—performance risk, financial risk, privacy risk, and psychological risk—the empirical results show that these four risk types are affected by technology uncertainty and service intangibility, and the perceived risks, except for financial risk, have positive effects on the resistance to smart home services. When the survey respondents are divided into two types, postponers and rejecters, the result of postponers is similar with that of total sample, except that privacy risk is unimportant to postponers, and the result of rejecter cannot satisfy the recommended model fit.     

Consumer Trial,Continuous Use,and Economic Benefits of a Retail Service Innovation: The Case of the Personal Shopping Assistant

Service innovations in retailing have the potential to benefit consumers as well as retailers. This research models key factors associated with the trial and continuous use of a specific self‐service technology (SST), the personal shopping assistant (PSA), and estimates retailer benefits from implementing that innovation. Based on theoretical insights from prior SST studies, diffusion of innovation literature, and the technology acceptance model (TAM), this study develops specific hypotheses and tests them on a sample of 104 actual users of the PSA and 345 nonusers who shopped at the retail store offering the PSA device. Results indicate that factors affecting initial trial are different from those affecting continuous use. More specifically, consumers' trust toward the retailer, novelty seeking, and market mavenism are positively related to trial, while technology anxiety hinders the likelihood of trying the PSA. Perceived ease of use of the device positively impacts continuous use while consumers' need for interaction in shopping environments reduces the likelihood of continuous use. Importantly, there is evidence on retailer benefits from introducing the innovation since consumers using the PSA tend to spend more during each shopping trip. However, given the high costs of technology, the payback period for recovery of investments in innovation depends largely upon continued use of the innovation by consumers. Important implications are provided for retailers considering investments in new in‐store service innovations. Incorporation of technology within physical stores affords opportunities for the retailer to reduce costs, while enhancing service provided to consumers. Therefore, service innovations in retailing have the potential to benefit consumers as well as retailers. This research models key factors associated with the trial and continuous use of a specific SST in the retail context, the PSA, and estimates retailer benefits from implementing that innovation. In so doing, the study contributes to the nascent area of research on SSTs in the retail sector. Based on theoretical insights from prior SST studies, diffusion of innovation literature, and the TAM, this study develops specific hypotheses regarding the (1) antecedent effects of technological anxiety, novelty seeking, market mavenism, and trust in the retailer on trial of the service innovation; (2) the effects of ease of use, perceived waiting time, and need for interaction on continuous use of the innovation; and (3) the effect of use of innovation on consumer spending at the store. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 104 actual users of the PSA and 345 nonusers who shopped at the retail store offering the PSA device, one of the early adopters of PSA in Germany. Data were analyzed using logistic regression (antecedents of trial), multiple regression (antecedents of continuous use), and propensity score matching (assessing retailer benefits). Results indicate that factors affecting initial trial are different from those affecting continuous use. More specifically, consumers' trust toward the retailer, novelty seeking, and market mavenism are positively related to trial, while technology anxiety hinders the likelihood of trying the PSA. Perceived ease of use of the device positively impacts continuous use, while consumers' need for interaction in shopping environments reduces the likelihood of continuous use. Importantly, there is evidence on retailer benefits from introducing the innovation since consumers using the PSA tend to spend more during each shopping trip. However, given the high costs of technology, the payback period for recovery of investments in innovation depends largely upon continued use of the innovation by consumers. Important implications are provided for retailers considering investments in new in‐store service innovations. The study contributes to the literature through its (1) simultaneous examination of antecedents of trial and continuous usage of a specific SST, (2) the demonstration of economic benefits of SST introduction for the retailer, and (3) contribution to the stream of research on service innovation, as against product innovation.     

Exploring the mass adoption of third-generation (3G) mobile phones in Taiwan

Given that no all new mobile telecommunications technology are accepted by the mass market, this study aims to understand the mass adoption of third-generation (3G) mobile phones that is hypothesized to comprise three consumer perceptions: new technology, new service, and new handset. Based on the theoretical framework of a consumer's decision making process, an empirical study of the mass adoption of 3G mobile phones in Taiwan was conducted. This study demonstrated that perceived utility of a new mobile service was a key factor that resulted in mass adoption. Further, it was found that perceived utility of a new handset directly stimulate consumers to purchase 3G mobile phones. Perceived risk and perceived expense are not negatively correlated with intentions as hypothesized. Moreover, perceived no need was another key factor that inhibited adoption and purchase intention.     

Information,Promotion, and the Adoption of Innovative Consumer Durables*

The diffusion of innovative new products is critically dependent on the transmission of relevant information to potential adopters. Existing research indicates that the relative effectiveness of different communication tools depends on the type of information being communicated. Written and verbal communication tools can be effective when consumers make adoption decisions based on search attributes. However, when adoption depends on experience attributes, marketers must find ways to effectively expose consumers to these attributes. In this paper the authors explore the effectiveness of promotional incentives in motivating consumers to engage in behaviors that should increase their understanding of an innovation's experience attributes. To the authors' knowledge, the research described here is the first published study of the relative effectiveness of different promotional vehicles in stimulating adoption of a consumer durable. The empirical analysis is based on data collected in a real‐world experiment involving 614 households. Just over half of these households received a free DVD movie disc as an incentive to participate in the study. The authors assigned the participating households to four treatment groups of 100 households each and a control group of 214 households. The households in the treatment groups received one of four promotional offers that featured some form of a $50 monetary incentive. These promotional offers differed in the degree to which they encouraged behavior that exposed consumers to the experience attributes of a DVD player. After one month the authors surveyed these households again to determine how many purchased a DVD player in the preceding month. An analysis of this experimental data reveals that all four monetary promotions significantly enhanced the probability of adoption. In particular, the average adoption rate among the households receiving one of the monetary incentives was 41%. In contrast, none of the households in the control group reported purchasing a DVD player. Promotions that paid consumers for specific behaviors that precede purchase were no less effective than a coupon that reduces the purchase price by an equivalent amount. In addition, promotions that directly exposed consumers to experience attributes were more effective than promotions that simply provided consumers with the opportunity to learn about experience attributes. Finally, the gift of a free complementary product (a DVD movie) enhanced the effectiveness of three of the four monetary promotions. The authors close with a discussion of managerial implications and directions for future search.     

What drives post-adoption usage? Investigating the negative and positive antecedents of disruptive technology continuous adoption intentions

This article focuses on the pre-adoption antecedents of disruptive technology continuous adoption intentions at the firm level. Understanding how to make a quality adoption decision, as measured by the firm's satisfaction and intention to continue using the technology after the initial adoption phase, is of critical importance for a buying manager. Given this challenge, a model for disruptive technology continuous adoption intention is proposed that considers the following: pre-adoption interorganizational trust, mimetic competitor pressures, normative supplier pressures, efficiency motives, searching efforts, and post-adoption satisfaction. This model was tested using survey results from 211 recent purchasing managers of a cloud computing service, an emerging disruptive technology. Interestingly, normative pressures from supplying firms prior to adoption led to lower user satisfaction and, consequently, lower intentions to continue adopting and using the technology. Moreover, these pressures were driven by pre-adoption levels of interorganizational trust and mimetic pressures from competitors. Potential adopting managers of a disruptive technology should instead be driven by efficiency-oriented motives and actually aim to increase their searching efforts in order to better understand the disruptive technology prior to adoption. These findings add to prior literature demonstrating the complex interplay of external pressures and internal motives on technology adoption strategies.     

Why Don’t Most Merchants Use Price Discounts to Steer Consumer Payment Choice?

Recent legislation and court settlements in the United States allow merchants to use price discounts to steer customers to pay with means of payment that are less costly to merchants. We use transaction data to compute rough estimates of the expected net cost reduction by merchant type of giving debit card and cash price discounts. We find that steering consumers to debit and cash via simple price discounts reduces most merchants’ card processing cost; however, this reduction is small and may be insufficient to offset the increase in the cost of administering price menus that vary by payment instrument.     

Shrouded transaction costs: must-take cards,discounts and surcharges

The proliferation of new payment methods on the Internet rekindles the old and unsettled debate about merchants’ incentive and ability to differentiate price according to payment choice. This paper develops an imperfect-information framework for the analysis of platform and social regulation of card surcharging and cash discounting. It makes three main contributions. First, it identifies the conditions under which concerns about missed sales induce merchants to perceive that they must take the card. Second, it derives a set of predictions about cash discounts, card surcharges and platform fees that shed light on existing evidence. Finally, it shows that the optimal regulation of surcharging is related to public policy toward merchant fees and substantially differs from current practice.     

"Forced" Adoption of Innovations in Organizations: Consequences and Implications

Once organizations adopt an innovation, they may force various individuals to use it. While researchers have frequently studied perspectives of suppliers and their customers, they have sometimes neglected the important roles of those who must use the innovation when it is provided to them. S. Ram and Hyung-Shik Jung report results of their investigation of organizational members' responses when they are forced to adopt an innovation. The results suggest that even innovative individuals resist the innovation in the context of forced adoption. Product trial and repetitive usage significantly reduce innovation resistance and create favorable post-adoption evaluation (attitude and satisfaction judgments). Individuals who perceive themselves to have technical competence offer less resistance to the innovation. Further, organizational members deal with forced adoption through the use of coping mechanisms such as complaining and seeking peer help.     

The Determinants of Optimal Interchange Fees in Payment Systems

This paper presents a model of a card payment system as a two-sided market that allows for partial participation by heterogeneous consumers and merchants. Taking into account the strategic effects arising from competition between merchants, the model is used to characterize the optimal structure of fees between those charged to cardholders and those charged to merchants and, more specifically, the level of the interchange fee that banks charge each other. The results modify the existing characterizations of the interchange fee, and explain the source of potential deviations between the privately and socially optimal level of the fee.     

How family influence,socioemotional wealth,and competitive conditions shape new technology adoption

Research summary : In family businesses, investment decisions often involve both socioemotional wealth and economic considerations. Focusing on new technology adoption, we argue that multiple dimensions of socioemotional wealth contribute to complex effects within different types of family firms—depending on the level of family control—as well as in contrast to non‐family firms. Results based on cable TV operators from 1983 to 1987 confirm that family ownership correlates negatively with technology adoption, especially when family owners hold a minority rather than majority position. We also show contingencies based on performance improvements and competitive threats. Our arguments contribute new insights about the tensions between economic and socioemotional factors within minority family ownership that are absent from non‐family firms and more pronounced than in majority family firms. Managerial summary : We find evidence of greater reluctance toward new technology adoption among firms with minority family influence than majority family influence. This suggests that goals related to socioemotional wealth only partly explain the cautious decision‐making observed in family firms, with further caution arising from conflicting priorities between family and non‐family owners. Recent performance improvements help offset the reluctance to adopt new technology, albeit to a lesser degree among firms with minority family ownership. High levels of competitive threats also offset the reduction in new technology adoption, and contrary to expectations, to a greater extent among minority family firms. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The adoption of radical manufacturing technologies and firm survival

The emergence of dramatically innovative, or radical, new manufacturing technologies can force pivotal and life‐threatening decisions for industry competitors. These technologies can represent a huge cost for adopting firms, but may also offer the chance to achieve competitive advantage through superior manufacturing. While prior research has considered a range of production process decisions (e.g., JIT, mass customization) and outcomes for end‐product technologies, little attention has been given to adoption decisions relative to core manufacturing technologies. This study examines an industry's adoption of major manufacturing technologies over several decades and demonstrates that two groups of contingencies related to adoption (e.g., timing and cumulative effects) have a significant impact on firm performance. Based on a sample of over 1,000 firms, the results provide insights into the effects of adoption timing and ‘manufacturing technology bundles’ on firm survival. We also find that adoption of manufacturing technologies prior to the inflection point of the estimated Bass diffusion curve for each technology leads to significant reduction in firm mortality. Thus, we are able to demonstrate the ability of the Bass model to predict the survival outcomes of firms facing manufacturing technology adoption decisions. The strategic implications of these pivotal decisions are considered. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How institutional pressures and systems characteristics shape customer acceptance of smart product-service systems

This research examines how institutional pressures (mimetic, normative, and coercive), which provide shared expectations of and norms for legitimate behavior, and system characteristics influence business-to-business (B2B) customer acceptance of smart product-service systems (PSSs). This is important because many B2B customers are still reluctant to adopt smart PSSs. Drawing from a cross-industry survey with 160 managers of B2B firms and controlling for other major adoption drivers (e.g., privacy risk, organizational innovativeness), we find a non-linear effect of normative pressure on customers' intention to adopt smart PSSs. Furthermore, normative pressure particularly increases adoption intentions when customers perceive a high relative advantage from smart PSSs. Mimetic pressure positively affects adoption of customer input-oriented PSSs, whereas this effect is highly non-linear (U-shaped) for customer output-oriented PSSs. We extend adoption literature by analyzing non-linear effects of institutional pressures as well as its context dependence. From a managerial perspective, these findings show how suppliers can adapt their sales and communication efforts to effectively market smart PSSs.     

Countervailing effects of value and risk perceptions in manufacturers' adoption of expensive,discontinuous innovations

Both value and risk perceptions are germane to industrial firms' adoption decisions involving discontinuous innovations. Yet a surprisingly limited number of studies examine how these two considerations jointly influence the innovation adoption phenomenon. We intend to fill this gap by studying the countervailing and context-dependent effects of value and risk perceptions on industrial firms' intention to adopt discontinuous innovations.A conceptual model is proposed and tested with data collected from influential decision makers in pharmaceutical manufacturers on their decision to adopt the modular facility technology, a costly, discontinuous facility construction innovation. The findings confirm the offsetting roles of value and risk in affecting adoption and reveal the moderating effects of external market pressure in that both value and risk assume greater roles in affecting adoption as external market pressure increases. Furthermore, our results show a positive effect of external market pressure on value, and negative effects of external market pressure and internal adoption readiness on risk.Our study contributes to the innovation diffusion and industrial marketing literatures by: (1) studying the joint and countervailing effects of value and risk perceptions on adoption decisions by manufacturers, (2) considering the contextual influences on industrial adopters' value and risk perceptions, and (3) gathering data from influential decision makers for a major capital investment decision.     

On the diffusion of electronic commerce

This paper analyzes retailers' adoption of e-commerce in a technology adoption race framework. An internet-based firm with no traditional market presence competes with an established traditional firm to adopt the e-commerce technology and sell to a growing number of consumers with on-line shopping capability. The focus of the analysis is on identifying how consumer loyalty, differences in firms' technology and consumers' preferences for the traditional versus the virtual market, and the expansion in market size made possible by the internet can affect the timing and sequence of adoption by firms, as well as the post-adoption evolution of prices. The model's implications are used to discuss empirical evidence on adoption patterns for different product categories and firm types.     

New product adoption and sales performance from the importer perspective

From an international business setting, this paper investigates how importers determine new product adoptions and how exporters diffuse new products to offshore markets through importers. Using the technology–environment–organization framework, we examine the effect of innovative characteristics of selected new products, importer-specific organizational capability, and exporter-specific environmental factors, on the adoption of new products by importers. Our sample included 585 new products from 152 local import firms nested in 34 foreign export firms. The results indicate that product meaningfulness, product superiority, and customer familiarity facilitate importer success in new product adoption. Importer host-market experience enhances new product adoption and moderates the relationship between adoption and sales performance. Exporter influence of market reputation in the host market and product-innovation capability is beneficial in promoting new products for enhanced sales performance. Instead of a single focus on new product adoption, we used a cross-level model to test the factors that foster new product adoption by importers.     

Payment Systems and Interchange Fees

In a typical bank credit card transaction, the merchant's bank pays an interchange fee , collectively determined by all participating banks, to the cardholder's bank. This paper shows how the interchange fee balances charges between cardholders and merchants under imperfect competition. The privately optimal fee depends mainly on differences between cardholders' and merchants' banks, not their collective market power. In a non-extreme case, the profit-maximizing interchange fee also maximizes total output and producers' plus consumers' surplus. There is no economic basis for favoring proprietary payment systems, which do not need interchange fees to balance charges, over the cooperative bank card systems.     

Government Policies Supporting Open Source Software for the Mass Market

This paper analyzes the impact on social welfare of government policies supporting open source software (OSS). Mass-market consumers can be divided between those who are informed about the existence of OSS and those who are uninformed. Since OSS producers have little incentive to advertise, there may be a substantial mass of uniformed consumers, leading to market failures that may justify government intervention. We study three government policies: (a) mandated adoption, whereby the government forces public agencies, schools, and universities to adopt OSS, (b) information provision, whereby the government informs the uninformed users about the existence and the characteristics of OSS, and (c) subsidy, whereby the government makes a payment to consumers if they adopt OSS. We show that mandated adoption and information provision may increase social welfare, but the subsidy always reduces it. When network externalities are added to the model, we show that mandated adoption and information provision may increase social welfare if they help the market to tip towards standardization. The web site www.opensource.org provides further details on the open source software movement