Research Framework Description

The current research model will help to fill out several significant gaps that were stated in sections 3.2.4, 3.3.3, 3.4.3, 3.5.3 and 3.7.5 in the literature review chapter. These would be investigated and examined empirically so that significant contributions to the literature can be added. According to the previous literature, there are several constructs that have been identified and supported to have significant impacts on technology acceptance from customers’ perspectives. Unlike previous studies, the current study went further and beyond the technology acceptance to investigate whether the customers’ behavioural intentions have significant effect on their loyalty with that system.

Accordingly, in the current research’s model, there are twelve constructs proposed to have certain influences on customers’ loyalty, either directly or indirectly. The following figure shows the proposed model and suggests that customers’ loyalty would be affected directly by their behavioural intentions to adopt and use Internet banking, while their behavioural intention is proposed to be influenced by their personal attitude based on what has been proposed in TRA and supported in a more specific technology context in TAM. Based on TAM, the current conceptual framework proposed that users’ attitudes would be influenced by perceived ease of use and usefulness, which are the fundamental technology aspects that determine users’ behaviour to accept or reject such technology.

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Based on the previous marketing literature in both traditional and online contexts in section, trust was proved to be one of the significant constructs that determined customers’ behaviour in different relationships, such as B2C or B2B. Accordingly and because the current research will be conducted at the level of B2C in the context of Internet banking, trust would be an important construct to be examined as it determines customers’ behaviours because in the Internet banking context, significant information and data will be used to perform financial transactions. In addition, all the financial transactions will be performed in the open environment (the Internet) where many uncertainty and risks issues might be involved in the transactions, such as unauthorised parties might have access to the customers’ personal information and that information can be misused, or security numbers might be stolen and used. Accordingly, trust might be a more important construct in the online context than in the traditional context, and have greater importance in Internet banking context than in other contexts. Because of these reasons, amongst others, the current proposed model integrates trust as the main construct that influence customers’ behaviours and proposes that it would have direct influence on perceived ease of use and usefulness.

According to the SCT, self-efficacy as a main personal factor is included in the framework in order to examine whether there is any such influence of this construct on perceived ease of use and usefulness, because in the literature review it was proved that this construct has significant influence on both perceived ease of use and usefulness. The current proposed model considers whether this construct still has significant influences on both perceived ease of use and usefulness, and whether any effect would be held across distinct markets, countries or culture.

According to TRA and TPB, the influence of social pressure on users or customers’ decisions or their positive or negative attitude to accept or reject such technology or on their intentions to adopt that technology was proved. A considerable amount of literature also examined these influences in many different contexts, either in the voluntary or mandatory setting. In the current study, social pressure (subjective norm) would be integrated and added in the proposed model because of several reasons. For example, the current research suggested that subjective norm would be more important in the context of Internet banking than other contexts, such as the influence of this construct on the technology acceptance in the organisation context, or adopting such online activities as information searching and social contact. Using Internet banking would involve such online transactions such as accessing the

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online account using personal information or transferring funds and making investments via an open environment where the risk level might be high so that users or customers might want help from other members in the society to reduce the risk perceptions. Accordingly, investigating subjective norm in the context of Internet banking, and whether its significant influence (if any) would be held across different cultures and marketing are the main objectives in the current proposed model.

Unlike the previous studies, the proposed model attempts to examine some important constructs that were supported to determine customers’ trust perception. These constructs would be integrated in the current proposed model to fill out the gaps that were identified in Chapter 3. The model proposed that security, privacy, communication, reputation and experiences are significant constructs and have been supported in the literature review to have significant effects on customers’ trust perceptions. The current study attempts to examine their influences and whether their influences (if any) would be held similarly across countries, or would be significant on one country and insignificant on another. In addition, the current study will examine the influence of the culture dimension (Uncertainty Avoidance) as a moderator on the direct relationships on the conceptual framework.

Accordingly, from the literature review and the proposed model, several different hypotheses are developed to fill the identified gaps and contribute to the previous literature in the following sections.

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Figure 4.1: The proposed Conceptual Framework of Students’ Perception of Internet Banking Loyalty

behavioural intentions, customers’ attitude, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and customers’ trust) and their antecedents will be highlighted and discussed in separate subsections. Customers’ loyalty will be discussed in the first section, followed by a section that illustrates customers’ behavioural intention and what construct/s would influence it, and so on.

4.3.1. Behavioral Intention and Customers’ Loyalty towards Internet Banking

Customer loyalty is an important factor for most companies. A large body of research has examined and measured customer loyalty in different contexts with different models. For example, considerable research has examined customer loyalty in the context of Internet banking (Moutinho and Smith, 2000, Beerli et al., 2004, Lam and Burton, 2006, Ferguson and Hlavinka, 2007, Casaló et al., 2008), while other research has examined customer loyalty across different cultures (Cyr, (2008), Jin et al., (2008). These studies all found that customer loyalty is an important indication of business success. Therefore, this study proposes that customers’ behavioural intentions to use Internet banking are important factors affecting customer loyalty. In this research, the relationship between customers’ behavioral intention