Fashion innovativeness, information technology innovativeness, and prior experience as factors influencing adoption of apparel mobile E-catalogs

The popularity of mobile devices has resulted in the proliferation of many emergent retailing platforms. One of the new inventions in the fields of mobile commerce and catalog shopping is mobile e-catalog apps. This study examines a causal model of how two aspects of domain-specific innovativeness – Fashion Innovativeness (FI) and Information Technology Innovativeness (ITI) – and prior experiences influence consumers’ decisions regarding the adoption of a new shopping platform: apparel Mobile E-catalog (MEC). A total of 217 usable responses were collected from US adult tablet users. The results indicate that respondents who have higher levels of FI and ITI and shop online more frequently have elevated Mobile E-catalog adoption intention. A post hoc analysis showed that 50% of the respondents were reluctant to unsubscribe from print catalogs, even when tablet versions of the catalogs were available. Findings suggest that US tablet users are not ready to suspend their use of print catalogs and switch solely to e-catalog versions. Therefore, providing both options to consumers may be a more effective strategy.