Factors Affecting Broadband Adoption for Mainstream Consumers

Abstract

This chapter explores whether past experiences with telecommunications providers and current ‘plans’ on offer serve as barriers between an individual consumers’ persuasion phase of the Innovation-Decision Process (Rogers, 2003) and the decision phase. With broadband in around 33% of Australian homes, it is important that telecommunications providers understand why the future mainstream segment of consumers will want to adopt broadband, and any barriers to this. This analysis suggests future studies are needed to investigate whether the telecommunications providers are collectively confusing potential broadband consumers in their attempts to differentiate a generic product in the market. It argues that future technology adoption studies need to consider including the complexity of the actual purchase decision when developing constructs for quantitative models. If we are to build a picture of why mainstream consumers adopt broadband, more than just the perceptions of using the technology itself need to be investigated.