Influence of social norms, perceived playfulness and online shopping anxiety on customers' adoption of online retail shopping

Purpose – The previous studies examining the role of subjective norm (SN), online shopping anxiety (ANX) and perceived playfulness (PPL) in predicting the consumer's adoption of online shopping yielded fragmented and inconsistent findings. Also, a high proportion of these findings assessing the regarded behaviour of consumers in the West cannot be directly applied to a cross‐cultural context. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between these variables and the variables of technology acceptance model (TAM) associated with customer's online shopping intentions in an international environment. Design/methodology/approach – The research model reflecting the effects of SN, ANX and PPL on TAM constructs has been proposed. In total, 278 cases were gathered from online shoppers through a web‐based survey. Structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the proposed research model in terms of path significance, overall model fit and explanatory power. Findings – It was found that PPL had positive direct effects on both perceived ease of use of online shopping (PEOU) and behavioural intentions to shop online (BI). Nevertheless, SN and ANX appeared to exert significant positive and negative influences respectfully on only PEOU. Research limitations/implications – The study findings were obtained from the single snapshot research, and the small dataset covering only actual online shoppers. Therefore, the future research should carry a longitudinal nature to show the temporal change effects and remedy the possibility of self‐selection bias with a broader research sample. Originality/value – The paper provides additional insights for retailers and researchers into the effects of SN, ANX and PPL on online shopping intentions of Turkish consumers, which could be used in formulating online marketing strategies and considering future research directions.