The determinants of consumer attitude toward service innovation – the evidence of ETC system in Taiwan

Purpose – Innovation has attracted considerable interest in recent years in improving competitive advantage for both profit and nonprofit organizations. Service innovation offers the potential for substantially improving the performance, but performance gains are often obstructed by users' unwillingness to accept and use available systems. This research aims to use the concept of Reasoned Action Theory to further examine consumer attitudes toward service innovation and its antecedents. Design/methodology/approach – By focus group discussion and literature review, a conceptual model with six postulated hypotheses is proposed. The Electronic Toll Collecting (ETC) system launched by the Taiwanese government is selected as the service innovation to test the model. A structured questionnaire is designed to collect field data. The structural equation model with LISREL VIII program is used to estimate the structural coefficients and to test the hypotheses. Findings – The results show that perceived ease of use, perceived price fairness, risk averseness and satisfaction with existing service significantly influence consumer attitude, and then influence consumer's intention to adopt service innovation. Practical implications – Before introducing a service innovation, the service provider must seriously consider the possible difficulties of usage and risk from the consumer's perspective. Originality/value – Compared with product innovation, research focusing on service innovation is relatively scarce. Services have specific characteristics of intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability. Hence, the factors influencing the consumer adoption of service innovation may be different from those of product innovation.