IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/net/wpaper/0740.html

Stuck in the Adoption Funnel: The Effect of Delays in the Adoption Process on Ultimate Adoption

Author

Abstract

Online applications and services automate communications and transactions between firms and consumers, promising large efficiency gains. However, consumers have been slow to use these online technologies intensively, despite widespread adoption of the internet. Customers frequently undergo a staggered adoption process that may involve sign-up, experimentation, trial, and substantial usage until they fully embrace internet services. We ask whether delays in moving through the initial stages of this adoption process contribute to consumers ultimately not using the service intensively. Such behavior would be consistent with laboratory findings on consumer memory. We explore this question using data from a German retail bank where only 24% of the customers who sign up for the bank's online banking service use it substantially. We use exogenous variation in delays in the adoption process, caused by vacations and public holidays in different German states, to identify this effect. We find that delays in the early stages of adoption significantly reduce a customer's probability of moving to substantial usage: A 10-day delay of a customer's first online login reduces the likelihood that she will ever use the technology substantially, by 33%. This effect is more severe for demographic groups with less online experience.

Suggested Citation

  • Anja Lambrecht & Katja Seim & Catherine Tucker, 2007. "Stuck in the Adoption Funnel: The Effect of Delays in the Adoption Process on Ultimate Adoption," Working Papers 07-40, NET Institute, revised Oct 2007.
    • Handle: RePEc:net:wpaper:0740
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.netinst.org/Lambrecht_07-40.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David, Paul A, 1990. "The Dynamo and the Computer: An Historical Perspective on the Modern Productivity Paradox," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 355-361, May.
    2. MartinNeil Baily & Robert Z. Lawrence, 2001. "Do We Have a New E-conomy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 308-312, May.
    3. Sarv Devaraj & Rajiv Kohli, 2003. "Performance Impacts of Information Technology: Is Actual Usage the Missing Link?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(3), pages 273-289, March.
    4. Robert J. Gordon, 2000. "Does the "New Economy" Measure Up to the Great Inventions of the Past?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 49-74, Fall.
    5. Newey, Whitney K., 1987. "Efficient estimation of limited dependent variable models with endogenous explanatory variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 231-250, November.
    6. David Hirshleifer & Ivo Welch, 2002. "An Economic Approach to the Psychology of Change: Amnesia, Inertia, and Impulsiveness," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(3), pages 379-421, September.
    7. Bijwaard, G.E., 2007. "Instrumental variable estimation of treatment effects for duration outcomes," Econometric Institute Research Papers EI 2007-20, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Econometric Institute.
    8. Ronald Goettler & Karen Clay, 2006. "Tariff Choice with Consumer Learning: Sorting-Induced Biases and Illusive Surplus," GSIA Working Papers 2003-E35, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
    9. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-475, March.
    10. Fred D. Davis & Richard P. Bagozzi & Paul R. Warshaw, 1989. "User Acceptance of Computer Technology: A Comparison of Two Theoretical Models," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(8), pages 982-1003, August.
    11. Shlomo Kalish, 1985. "A New Product Adoption Model with Price, Advertising, and Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(12), pages 1569-1585, December.
    12. Thomas B. Astebro, 1995. "The Effect of Management and Social Interaction on the Intra-Firm Diffusion of Electronic Mail Systems," Post-Print hal-00648007, HAL.
    13. Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2003. "Computing Productivity: Firm-Level Evidence," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 793-808, November.
    14. Greenleaf, Eric A & Lehmann, Donald R, 1995. "Reasons for Substantial Delay in Consumer Decision Making," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 22(2), pages 186-199, September.
    15. Felix Oberholzer-Gee & Koleman Strumpf, 2007. "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(1), pages 1-42.
    16. Goldfarb, Avi & Prince, Jeff, 2008. "Internet adoption and usage patterns are different: Implications for the digital divide," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 2-15, March.
    17. Lorin M. Hitt & Frances X. Frei, 2002. "Do Better Customers Utilize Electronic Distribution Channels? The Case of PC Banking," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(6), pages 732-748, June.
    18. Timothy F. Bresnahan & Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2002. "Information Technology, Workplace Organization, and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 339-376.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jason Allen & Robert Clark & Jean-François Houde, 2008. "Market Structure and the Diffusion of E-Commerce: Evidence from the Retail Banking Industry," Staff Working Papers 08-32, Bank of Canada.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anja Lambrecht & Katja Seim & Catherine Tucker, 2011. "Stuck in the Adoption Funnel: The Effect of Interruptions in the Adoption Process on Usage," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(2), pages 355-367, 03-04.
    2. Stefan Schweikl & Robert Obermaier, 2020. "Lessons from three decades of IT productivity research: towards a better understanding of IT-induced productivity effects," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 70(4), pages 461-507, November.
    3. Timothy DeStefano & Richard Kneller & Jonathan Timmis, 2020. "ICT and capital biased technical change," Discussion Papers 2020-03, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    4. Neeraj Mittal & Barrie R. Nault, 2009. "Research Note ---Investments in Information Technology: Indirect Effects and Information Technology Intensity," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 20(1), pages 140-154, March.
    5. Ahn, Sanghoon, 2003. "Technology Upgrading with Learning Cost," CEI Working Paper Series 2003-21, Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    6. Kiley, Michael T., 2001. "Computers and growth with frictions: aggregate and disaggregate evidence," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 171-215, December.
    7. Dale W. Jorgenson & Mun S. Ho & Kevin J. Stiroh, 2008. "A Retrospective Look at the U.S. Productivity Growth Resurgence," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(1), pages 3-24, Winter.
    8. Hilal Atasoy & Rajiv D. Banker & Paul A. Pavlou, 2016. "On the Longitudinal Effects of IT Use on Firm-Level Employment," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(1), pages 6-26, March.
    9. Sadaf Bashir & Bert Sadowski, 2014. "General Purpose Technologies: A Survey, a Critique and Future Research Directions," Working Papers 14-02, Eindhoven Center for Innovation Studies, revised Feb 2014.
    10. Oliner, Stephen D. & Sichel, Daniel E. & Stiroh, Kevin J., 2008. "Explaining a productive decade," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 633-673.
    11. Prasanna Tambe & Lorin M. Hitt, 2014. "Job Hopping, Information Technology Spillovers, and Productivity Growth," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(2), pages 338-355, February.
    12. Erik Brynjolfsson & Kristina McElheran, 2016. "Data in Action: Data-Driven Decision Making in U.S. Manufacturing," Working Papers 16-06, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    13. Lach, Saul & Trajtenberg, Manuel & Shiff, Gil, 2008. "Together but Apart: ICT and Productivity Growth in Israel," CEPR Discussion Papers 6732, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Thomas Anderson, 2001. "Changing Patterns and Determinants of Growth," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 2(03), pages 23-28, October.
    15. Landon Kleis & Paul Chwelos & Ronald V. Ramirez & Iain Cockburn, 2012. "Information Technology and Intangible Output: The Impact of IT Investment on Innovation Productivity," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 42-59, March.
    16. Pierre-Alain Muet, 2006. "Impacts économiques de la révolution numérique," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 57(3), pages 347-375.
    17. Kemeny, Tom & Petralia, Sergio & Storper, Michael, 2022. "Disruptive innovation and spatial inequality," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 115953, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Liao, Hailin & Wang, Bin & Li, Baibing & Weyman-Jones, Tom, 2016. "ICT as a general-purpose technology: The productivity of ICT in the United States revisited," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 10-25.
    19. Polák, Petr, 2017. "The productivity paradox: A meta-analysis," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 38-54.
    20. John Van Reenen, 2001. "The new economy: reality and policy," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 22(3), pages 307-336, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • M3 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising
    • M30 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - General
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing
    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
    • L16 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics; Macroeconomic Industrial Structure
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:net:wpaper:0740. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nicholas Economides (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.NETinst.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.