An Exploratory Investigation into the Question of Direct Selling via the Internet in Industrial Equipment Markets

ABSTRACT This study seeks to provide exploratory insight into considerations of Internet-based direct marketing strategies aimed at industrial consumers. Our first inquiry concerns operationalizing the ability of industrial consumers to use the Internet for purchasing and/or consumption of electronic marketing communications. We specifically focus on ascertaining the generalizability of Parasuraman's (2000) Technology Readiness Index (TRI), developed in a general consumer setting, to industrial markets. Our results suggest that the TRI demonstrates promise in terms of generalizability to industrial settings. Our second inquiry builds upon our initial findings and the concept of information overload to investigate the additive contribution of a willingness to use the Internet for these purposes. In the second stage of the research we focus on the relative contributions of satisfaction with, trust in, and value perceived from using the Internet as a business tool. The results of this second inquiry suggest that such perceptions may be as important as general technology readiness in terms of explaining the variance associated with behavioral intentions to use the Internet for purchase and information management. Together, our additive model explains between 40%–70% of the variance of these intentions in our sample of industrial consumers. Managerial and research implications are presented and discussed.