Mobile Technology Acceptance Among Turkish Travelers

Introduction

Nothing remains the same in the twentieth century since a new technology becomes out-of-date in a very short time. Nowadays, the most important technological devices which change people’s lifestyle are computers, internet, and mobile devices. Mobile devices, such as smartphones, have influenced people’s lives more than any other technological invention in human history (Thakur & Srivastava, 2014). There are approximately five billion unique mobile phone users, which constitutes 67% of the total population in the world (Wearesocial, 2019). In Turkey, there are also almost 80 million mobile subscribers (BTK, 2019). Additionally, worldwide smartphone sales are nearly 1.6 billion units in 2018, an increase by 1.2% each year (Gartner, 2019). These numbers show that mobile technology (e.g. call, SMS, Apps, internet) has its potential also in marketing activities businesses.

Smartphones are the most popular personal technological devices that mankind will ever hold (Krum, 2010). There are many characteristics of mobile devices that help this unique form: portability, personalization, location-specificity, wireless feature and contextual information (Bauer et al., 2005; Buhalis & Foerste, 2014; Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009; Smutkupt et al., 2010; Varnali et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2014). The spread of these characteristics and services has significantly increased the demand for mobile technology in developed and developing countries (Scaglione et al., 2015).

As in the early days of e-commerce, companies had to design a website for successful e-commerce (Venkatesh et al., 2003b); now tourism businesses should use a mobile application and/or mobile-based website for successful m-commerce to gain an advantage in a competition. The mobility of travelers is a certain topic for understanding what businesses can recommend them in terms of tourism services (Baggio, 2017). As one of the rapidly growing industries around the world, tourism has always been in the frontline in terms of using the new technologies and used the advantages of the synergy generated by the technologies. Thanks to this technology, tourism is now the symbol of a new “mobility nexus” that travelers increasingly use mobile devices on their trips (Molz & Paris, 2015). Also with its technologically supported network, mobile technology provides a “travel network” which helps travelers to plan their trips, find information about their trips and share their experiences during and after the trip (Baggio & Scaglione, 2017).

There is naturally a huge gap between the research about information technology and mobile technology. But with the rapid growth of mobile technology, it seems that research about mobile technology will also deepen and increase. Many types of research in tourism are concerned with the application, experiences, technology, social media, design, development of mobile technology (Brown & Chalmers, 2003; Buhalis & Foerste, 2014; Gavalas et al., 2014; Tan et al., 2017; Tussyadiah, 2015; Zhang et al., 2017). However, there is limited research on the traveler’s acceptance of mobile technology. So, the current study is likely to fill the gap in mobile technology acceptance in the field of tourism research.