Identifying key drivers and bottlenecks in the adoption of E-book readers in Korea

• Identified drivers and bottlenecks of the adoption of E-book readers in South Korea.
• Modeled consumers’ decision making as cognitive, affective, and behavioral stages.
• Applied multivariate probit analysis to data collected through a structural survey.
• Found complexity to be the main bottleneck and observability to be the main driver.
• Found distinguishing motivational innovativeness to explain the adoption behavior.

This study seeks to describe the dynamic effects of innovation characteristics and consumer innovativeness as conditioned by consumer decision making in the Korean E-book reader market. Dedicated Korean E-book readers have received little research attention over the last few years, as consumers’ interest in E-book readers has not been as high as was expected. This study identifies the barriers and bottlenecks impacting Korean consumers’ adoption of dedicated E-book readers based on the theories of innovation adoption and consumer behavior. Our estimation results indicate that complexity was the main bottleneck blocking the adoption of dedicated E-book readers in every decision-making stage (cognitive–affective–behavioral), whereas observability was the driver stimulating adoption in every stage. Moreover, the relative advantage of dedicated E-book readers is significant only in the affective stage, while compatibility is meaningful only in the behavioral stage. The results of this study provide useful guidelines to help marketers and engineers design dedicated E-book readers and promote them in Korea.