Factors affecting camera mobile phone adoption before e-shopping in the Arab world

With the seamless inclusion of a camera-mobile phone (CMP) as a regular part of people's everyday life, businesses have tried to explore their potential as an e-commerce tool. Even without the Internet, CMP is a new technology that is in widespread use in the State of Kuwait. This study reports on the findings of a study exploring the intention to use and acceptance use of CMP prior to retail purchases using the second technology acceptance model (TAM 2) in a collectivism culture where social group affects individual decisions. Based on a sample of 151 users in Kuwait, the study reveals that TAM 2 provides limited results. The intention to use CMP is only determined by subjective norms, ease of use and camera usefulness. Surprisingly, the study results revealed that the contribution of social norms on intention to use is weak and less than that of usefulness. Among external variables (image, job relevancy, output quality, and result demonstrability), only job relevancy exerts an indirect effect on the intention to use via the "usefulness" component of this model. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.