International Journal of Contemporary Business Management 1(1): 87-93
ISSN: 1793-453 eISSN: REQUEST PENDING
© 2014 Universiti Selangor
87
Determinants of Behavioural Intention to Use E-Payment System in
Nigerian Retail Industry: A Conceptual Extension of UTAUT with
Concern for Customers
Faruq Muhammad Abubakar and Hartini Ahmad
Abstract
A number of scholars have emphasised the need for change in business processes. These changes are often
necessitated by new technological development, changing consumer preference, cultural pluralism, knowledge
capital, and globalization. It is therefore paramount that business organisations must embrace change in order to
survive the competitions in nowadays ever-growing technology-driven marketplace. Nigerian business
environment is not in isolation in this regard, owing to the introduction of new payment process to the economy;
the cash-less policy, which entails all business to change their payment process to an electronic based. There is so
much resistance to change from the merchants, thus calls for a research to identify the factor that can influence
the merchants to adopt the change. The volume and value of cash-based transactions in Nigeria is high and
expected to rise. This is linked to non-adoption of new e-payment process introduced by the Central Bank. The
adoption of Point of Sale (POS) terminal is reported to be very low. A number of researchers have used several
technology adoption theories to answer a similar phenomenon, but their studies were fragmented. Thus the
Unified Theory of acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) combined eight among those numerous theories and
models of technology adoption, toward a unified view. However, several studies that used UTAUT and investigate
behavioural intention to use technology yielded conflicting findings. Therefore the current study, based on review
of past literature, observed that despite the important of customers to every business enterprise, it was found that
previous researchers have neglected their influence on managers' behavioural intention. Thus the current study
conceptualised that managers' behavioural intention to use POS is expected to be influenced by their concern for
customers. Therefore, the current research proposed to extend UTAUT with a new construct "Concern for
Customers", to enhance the current understanding of behavioural intention. Specifically, to investigate the
managers' behavioural intention to use point of sale (POS) terminal in Nigerian retail industry. This research
contributes in two folds; practically and theoretically. Customer is the main focus of any business enterprise, thus
require attention. This concern for customer is expected to influence the decision of retail industry managers.
Therefore, by incorporating this construct into technology adoption research, findings of the will help the industry
players and regulators in formulating policies that considers the customer's preference. The conceptual paper
compares only on the fundamental concepts and findings, thus calls for an empirical validation of the proposed
framework.
Keywords: Retail business, technology adoption, strategic change, e-commerce
INTRODUCTION
The rapidly ever-changing and yet technology-driven market place stresses a paradigm shift in the
approach to managing businesses, thus requires the deployment of alternative management designs.
Also, with the advancements in information and communication technology (ICT), such as e-commerce,
business processes becomes much easier, but yet the competition from external environment remains
or even stiffer (Ahmad, 2012). These necessitate the emergence of technology management approach
to managing businesses.