A Study on Factors Influencing Consumers’ Intention to Adopt Intelligent Home Robot Services (IHRS) - Applying the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) Model

Intelligent home robot service is expected to become a next-generation industry as well as an important telecommunication service. Recently, various types of intelligent home robot services have been tested in the market to observe market responses and to find ways to improve the quality of current services. This study examines how consumers' intention to adopt an intelligent home robot service is formed. Intelligent home robot services are characterized as novel, high-tech intensive, and possible innovative offerings in the networked digital environment. This makes the technology acceptance model an appropriate theoretical framework to conceptualize consumers' adoption intention process. As the technology acceptance model posits, our empirical analysis results show that perceived usefulness plays an important role in predicting the acceptance of intelligence home robot service. Perceived ease of use indirectly affects the adoption intention through perceived usefulness, but it has no direct effects. The results also show that the correlations between perceived usefulness and two other variables - relative advantage and compatibility - are strong. The relationship between perceived risk and perceived usefulness is not statistically significant. The findings of the study provide some insights for marketers on how to introduce hi-tech innovative services such as intelligent home robot services to penetrate into the mass-market. Some limitations and further research are also discussed. KCI Citation Count: 3