Identifying the key drivers of b2b customers’ adoption of online-based freight forwarding services in Thailand

Abstract

The development of online-based freight forwarding service include the innovative features that allow the customers for 24/7 freight quote, online booking, filling, uploading and downloading of documents, tracking the shipment, and online payment for the service. As the concept of online-based freight forwarding service is still new in the Thai market, the researcher aims to explore the level of adoption intention to use online-based freight forwarding service among business customers in the market, to identify the influential factors affecting the adoption of services, and to recommend strategies for encouraging the adoption of online-based freight forwarding services. Quantitative methodological approach was applied to meet the objective of this study. Online questionnaire survey was conducted to collect the data from 400 managers from 400 companies in Thailand who was in charge with booking and coordinating with freight forwarding services in their organizations. The results confirmed that Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE), Social Influence (SI), Perceived Risk (PR), and Facilitating Conditions (FC) significantly affected the intention to use online-based freight forwarding platform, in which intention to use further affected the actually use significantly. The results also suggested that PE affects the adoption intention with the strongest effect, followed by FC, SI, PR, and EE, respectively. The results indicated that there was a moderating effect of organization size on the relationship between SI and intention to use in the way that large-size firms seemed to have stronger effect of social influence on the adoption intention.