Consumers’ channel choice for university-licensed products: Exploring factors of consumer acceptance with social identification

This research investigated a modified-technology acceptance model (TAM) with two added antecedents (e.g., information search motivation and perceived risk) to examine whether online shopping channels would be adopted by college students, the main target market of university-licensed products (ULP). Moreover, this study tried to adopt the social identity theory to fit a modified TAM model to explain the role of identification with a university on the attitude toward shopping for collegiate products. This research surveyed college students from two large Midwestern universities and utilized structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypotheses in a conceptual framework. As expected from previous TAM research, two specific behavioral attributes explained students’ adoption of online channels. Moreover, the results showed that both information search motivation and perceived risk have significant positive effects on attitude toward shopping via online channels. Specifically, the students who have strong information search motivation from concerns about online shopping had a higher level of online channel purchase intention. In addition, the attitude toward ULP online shopping formed by the antecedents gave a different level of purchase intention about the multiple distribution channels. The results suggest that retailers in the ULP industry should build efficient multi-channel strategies by adopting online channels.