Predicting retail banking customers’ attitude towards Internet banking services in South Africa

Abstract

This paper investigates the predicators of retail banking customers’ attitude towards the adoption of Internet banking services in South Africa. This study extended the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by including trust, subjective norm and demographic variables, and presents an empirical validation in South Africa. The results suggest that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and trust have signifi cant positive relationships with attitude, while subjective norm has a relationship with attitude, albeit a moderate relationship. Consumers’ trust of the Internet banking system emerged as the strongest predicator of their attitude, while demographic variables were found to be weak and poor predictors of customers’ attitude. Moreover, the results indicated that, even though customers are sceptical of the Internet banking system, they intend to start using/continue using the service. The managerial implications of these findings on efforts aimed at increasing the adoption of Internet banking use among retail banking customers in South Africa and others operating in similar contexts are noted in this paper. This research also adds value to existing studies of Internet banking in South Africa. Moreover, it makes a contribution to the current literature on customers’ attitude towards Internet banking services, which is largely under-researched in South Africa.

Key words: Internet banking, retail banking, attitude, technology acceptance model, SouthAfrica