Informational Cascades, Type of Technology and Perceptual Factors in E-Commerce Adoption Decision Making

Informational cascades is one of the interesting issues in information systems adoption research. This study aims to investigate the roles of informational cascades and the type of technology on the individual state of cognition and mimetic pressures to adopt e-commerce technology. Perceived success of competitor adopters and perceived relative advantage of information systems are proposed as cognitive variables. An experiment study using a 2 x 2 factorial design was conducted. Participants were 48 postgraduate students. The current study finds that informational cascades occur in information technology adoption. The presence of informational cascades in novel technology adoption leads to the higher perceived advantage of information technologies. Similarly, the presence of informational cascades in novel technology adoption associate with higher perceived success of competitor adopters. Further, both cognitive variables positively correlated with mimetic pressure. In turn, mimetic pressures lead to intention to adopt e-commerce technology