Innovation resistance among mature consumers

The purpose of this paper is to investigate innovation resistance among mature consumers in the mobile banking context. The reasons inhibiting mature consumers' mobile banking adoption were compared to those of younger consumers.

Following Ram and Sheth, resistance was measured with five barriers namely Usage, Value, Risk, Tradition and Image barriers. An extensive internet survey was implemented and 1,525 usable responses were collected, of which 370 respondents (24.3 percent) represented the mature consumer segment (age over 55) and 1,155 respondents (75.7 percent) represented the younger consumers.

The empirical findings indicate that the value barrier is the most intense barrier to mobile banking adoption among both mature and younger consumers. However, aging appears to be related especially to the risk and image barriers; the most significant differences between mature and younger consumers' perceptions of mobile banking were related to input and output mechanisms of information, the battery life of a mobile phone, a fear that the list of PIN codes would be lost and end up in the wrong hands and the usefulness of new technology in general.

The study has practical implications to marketers in different fields in that strategies to overcome resistance to innovations like mobile banking are discussed.

Innovation resistance can be seen as a less developed concept in adoption research. While the majority of studies have focused on the success of innovations and reasons to adopt, this study empirically investigates the reasons preventing innovation adoption.