Shipper behavior to use EC services in liner shipping

The purpose of this paper is to discuss shipper behavior to use electronic commerce (EC) services in liner shipping. Inquiry use intention and transaction use intention were employed to define shipper intention to use the EC services. Based on the internal and external perspectives of shippers, a causal model was constructed to investigate the determinants of the intentions. The internal factor is defined as shippers' perceived usefulness (PU) of the EC services. The external factors include the EC promotions of shipping companies and the partnership between shippers and shipping companies. From eight major industries in Taiwan, 135 exporting companies were sampled to validate the model. The results indicate that the partnership is the most significant factor affecting the transaction use intention, while the PU of the shipper is the most significant determinant of inquiry use intention. EC promotions only significantly affect transaction use intention. These results may provide useful information for shipping companies seeking to promote their EC services.