Common or Not? Variations in E-Commerce Adoption Factors Between India and the USA

ABSTRACT The e-commerce adoption rate is not the same across countries, and there are significant variations. While most technology adoption research has been carried out in on ecommerce across countries, this study focuses on introducing novel constructs with a mix of cross-cultural study. The present study therefore uses a sample mix from a developed nation (the USA) and a developing nation (India) to explore the e-commerce adoption factors. In this study, the supportive factors of perceived trust are hypothesized as causal factors for e-commerce adoption and studied with USA and India results. The factors considered in the proposed model are: hedonic motivation; comparison shopping; and perceived trust (further classified as honesty, benevolence, and competence). The study used Amazon’s MTurk to collect data from Indian (n = 471) and US (n = 440) respondents. The results of the multi-group moderation technique reveal that honesty, comparison shopping, and hedonic motivation were stronger for the US sample, while benevolence and comfort were stronger for the Indian sample. Based on the results, theoretical contributions, managerial implications, and future research directions are discussed.