The Rtlationship Between Usability Characteristics and Teciinology Acceptance Model: an Emperical Case of Web Based Transactional Systems

Abstract

In today’s era of technological competitiveness, the world has witnessed an unprecedented enhancement and technological expansion in electronic market. This tough competition has made it really difficult for the firms to survive without introducing technological modifications within existing business processes and structure. Therefore, it was wise enough for the companies across the globe to invest huge part of their capital in launching web-based systems, thus making sure that more users are involved and have access to the systems globally. Nevertheless, the key factors that play the most vital role in making such systems successful, is solely the will of users as to much extent they are comfortable using these systems. If users are not willing to fully utilize given systems then this will not help firms to generate revenue on their investment. It was therefore necessary to systematically understand users’ decision making process towards acceptance of such systems.

In this regard this research was aimed to design and develop a framework of influential factors that were expected to improve efficiency, acceptability and usage of web-based transactional systems. The model developed in this study was based on well-established technology acceptance model. Despite the popularity of technology acceptance model, there was not a single study, as per author’s knowledge, that has studied and extended it from usability perspective. Although usability has been considered in prior work as a dominant factor for success of the system. Little efforts, however, were devoted to the fundamental issues such as what specific usability characteristics are expected to have an impact on users’ acceptance behaviour or how the acceptance or usage of such systems would be influenced by usability features. This is so because if usability related dimensions/factors are indeed confirmed to show an effect on users’ decision behaviour, online vendors and their design team would be able to focus on those specific dimensions and to positively motivate users towards such systems’ acceptance and usage.