Developing an explorative model for SaaS adoption

Among several types of "cloud services", the Software as a Service (SaaS) solution is promising. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and its modified versions have been popularly utilized for examining how users come to accept a new technology, but have not yet been employed to handle issues regarding SaaS adoption. This paper attempts to develop an explorative model that examines important factors affecting SaaS adoption, in order to facilitate understanding with regard to adoption of SaaS solutions. An explorative model using partial least squares (PLS) path modeling is proposed and a number of hypotheses are tested, which integrate TAM related theories with additional imperative constructs such as marketing effort, security and trust. Thus, the findings of this study can not only help enterprise users gain insights into SaaS adoption, but also help SaaS providers obtain inspiration in their efforts to discover more effective courses of action for improving both new product development and marketing strategy. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.