Age Differences in Behavioral Intention to Use Internet Marketing: A Comparative Study between Malaysian and Taiwanese

1. INTRODUCTIONInternet marketing is the advertising and marketing efforts that use the internet and email to drive direct sales via electronic commerce. Since the creation of internet, many possibilities that the internet can provide had been explored and internet as a marketing tool is one of the greatest exploration. Internet marketing has become the most exciting and fastest growing branch of marketing nowadays. In this revolutionary era, one of the greatest and the most significant marketing tool for the global marketplace is still internet marketing (Samiee, 1998). Malaysia and Taiwan are actively developing the internet facility. Internet marketing activities in these two countries have been complemented by these developments. Though the developments of internet and internet marketing services are occurring in every country, the consumer response towards internet marketing over conventional marketing medium might not be the same across countries due to the different perceptions and also the difference in culture. Therefore to better understand the global online consumer behavior, a cross-cultural study is required as envisaged by Jarvenpaa Tractinsky & Saarinen (1999). There are very limited comparative studies on consumer behavior towards internet marketing (Al-Qeisi, 2009). Most of the studies focused on the internet use instead of internet marketing. Therefore this study is conducted to investigate the age factor influencing intention to use internet marketing by Malaysians and Taiwainese.2. LITERATURE REVIEW2.1. Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTA UT)UTAUT has four dimensions, (1) performance expectancy; (2) effort expectancy; (3) social influence; and (4) facilitating conditions which were identified as direct determinants of users' behavioral intention and subsequently technology usage (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis and Davis, 2003). Recently, UTAUT2 was introduced and the authors added three more dimensions which are (1) hedonic motivation; (2) price value; and (3) habit, to the original UTAUT model (Ventakesh, Thong and Xu, 2012). According to them, the UTAUT2 model was tailored to a consumer use context. All seven dimensions from the UTAUT2 were used to examine behavioral intention, which is defined in this study as users' intention rather than actual use of internet marketing. Moreover, the age was hypothesized to moderate the effects of these constructs on behavioral intention and technology use.2.2. Performance expectancy and ageIn the context of this study, performance expectancy refers to the belief that users will gain benefits such as increased productivity, efficiency, and time saving as a result of the availability and customization of information by using internet marketing (Srinivasan, Anderson and Ponnavolu, 2002). In fact, excessive amount of information and service required are eliminated by customization and the interest of users in browsing a site is raised (Ansali and Mela, 2003). It is believed that performance expectancy will influence behavioral change towards greater intention to use internet marketing. In this relationship between the performance expectancy and behavioral intention, age however played a moderating role. Age differences have been shown to exist in technology adoption contexts. Research on job-related suggests that younger people may place more importance on extrinsic rewards (Hall and Mansfield, 1975).2.3. Effort expectancy and ageEffort expectancy refers to the degree of ease associated with the use of a particular system (Venkatesh et al., 2003). Adapted from the study of Venkatesh et al. (2003), end-users' direct use experience with the system in terms of changing their perceptions and adoption intentions can be influenced by longer experience in information systems use (Rahman, Jamaludin and Mahmud, 2011). Therefore Szajna (1996) expects effort expectancy to be significant in the early adoption stages of a system, but non-significant in later stages of the system. …