Content area
Purpose
Despite the efforts of governments and firms, consumer resistance toward digital innovations in the retail finance space continues to manifest rather visibly. Yet, the causes of consumer resistance toward innovations such as online procurement of financial products continue to remain under-explored. The present study attempts to address this gap by examining barriers that may constitute Indian consumers' resistance to buying financial products marketed digitally, using insurance as an exemplar. Precisely, the study measures five classic innovation resistance theory (IRT) barriers constituting consumers' resistance toward procuring digitally marketed insurance and examines the influence of consumers' demographic characteristics, measured through age and gender.
Design/methodology/approach
The conceptual model, resting on the theoretical proposition of IRT, was tested using data collected from 420 smartphone users. Given that, the data did not satisfy the multivariate assumptions of normality, homoscedasticity and linearity, artificial neural network approach was used for analysis. The analysis served as the basis for determining the relative importance of the five barriers in influencing consumer resistance.
Findings
The results indicated that the image barrier was the most influential barrier impacting consumer resistance, followed by usage, tradition, risk and value barriers. Moreover, as revealed by the values of correlations, the direction of influence was positive. Notably, the relationship of all barriers except tradition with consumer resistance was found to be nonlinear.
Originality/value
The study makes a novel contribution in two ways – one by extending IRT to a new area, i.e., resistance to buying financial products online, thereby further enhancing its applicability, and the other by exploring consumer resistance to e-procurement of life and nonlife insurance, which to the best of the authors' knowledge, has not been examined so far despite the established exigency.
Details
Barriers;
Technological change;
Resistance;
Consumers;
Conceptual models;
Neural networks;
Social networks;
Computer platforms;
Insurance;
Demography;
Digital marketing;
Value;
Economic development;
Resting;
Distribution channels;
Insurance policies;
Distribution costs;
Normality;
Purchasing;
Insurance industry;
Consumer goods;
Life insurance;
Traditions
; Corazza, Laura 2 ; Bodhi, Rahul 3
; Malibari, Areej 4 1 University of Mumbai Alkesh Dinesh Mody Institute for Financial and Management Studies, Mumbai, India
2 Department of Management, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
3 School of Business, UPES, Dehradun, India
4 Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, College of Engineering, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia