A study to investigate the attitude of customers towards electronic banking: The case of a South African-based company

Abstract

It is known that attitude plays a significant role in consumer decision process whether to adopt new technology or not. Differences in attitude towards a product or a service depend on the nature of the product, individuals and the duration in which the product has been in the market. Based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the current research study investigated the influence of gender, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, trust, social norm, computer confidence on attitude towards e-banking and intention to start or continue using internet/cell phone banking among company ABC customers. Company ABC is a South African-based financial institution which was officially launched in January 2015. With the benefits of e-banking outnumbering the benefits of cash, company ABC started accepting electronic payments only in 2015, and opened for cash transactions in 2016. The need to understand factors impacting on consumers' attitude and behaviour towards using technology motivated the researcher. A quantitative approach was used with the aim to understand the attitude of consumers towards e-banking. 207 participants took part in the study. The sample was made up of customers from company ABC. The e-banking attitude questionnaire consists of six scales measuring perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, subjective norm, attitude, computer confidence, and intention to start to use or continue using e-banking. To measure the impact of computer confidence on attitude towards e-banking, a standardized computer attitude scale was adapted from a computer attitude scale which was developed by Loyd and Loyd (1985). Statistical analyses software packages such as SPSS (version 23) and LISREL (version 8.80) were utilised to measure the relationship between independent and dependent variables. The comprehensive measurement model was assessed by means of item parcelling. Both measurement and structural models showed good fit.