Attitudes towards the use of e-commerce for mobile credit top-up

Abstract

The study aims to get an understanding of attitudes that customers usually exhibit when they are faced with the choice of how to top up their mobile phone credit. It tries to understand the role that new technological facilities, also known as E-commerce, plays mainly through services such as topping up through an ATM, internet facilities as well as bank services. The study was conducted in an evaluative manner, mainly in regards to the the relationship between the belief and the attitude formation of a person and if this link sheds light on who is using E-commerce. Special attention was given to a conceptual framework that was instantly introduced in the literature review. This framework was key in analysing trends in beliefs which were then specified and divided into four main constructs, mainly; 'personal Experience, 'Security' 'Knowledge' and 'Reference group'. For this reason, a questionnaire was drafted and executed. The questionnaire targeted a wide age bracket. This was for no random effect. On the contrary, the purpose of this was to get a good idea of who the services are most popular with. The conclusions of these surveys enabled the undersigned to establish whether or not a pattern or a trend existing or was in the process of forming. The two ends of the line were the younger versus the older generations. Results showed that people are gradually shifting to a more e-commerce based system. This was far from surprising - like its European counterparts, it shows that Malta is slowly changing its culture into a more technology based one, at least in the mobile services sector. The study also shows an equally proportional relationship between the use of e-commerce and the level of education or work role held. The higher they go, the likelier the use of modern services is. . Notwithstanding this fact, a natural inclination towards the use of E-commerce was registered amongst the younger generation, regardless of their status or academic achievements. iii As a general recommendation, mobile network providers should increase their awareness and information campaigns on such channels as this seemed to lack especially with the older generation. This has to topple-up and combine the distribution of guidelines instructions on how to use e-commerce with security. Also, the power of the word of mouth had a consistent appearance during this study. For this reason, it was mentioned alongside some of the factors that were discussed in this dissertation.