Chen, Gillenson, and Sherrell have addressed a very important question: What motivates a customer to use an electronic store? Some necessary conditions, based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) combined with innovative diffusion theory (IDT), are identified.

The concepts of perceived use (PU), related to the relative advantage of using a certain online store, and perceived ease of use (PEOU), based on compatibility (C) and complexity of an e-commerce site, are used to create an interesting hypothesis. The authors exclude trialability (the degree to which users can experiment with an innovation on a limited basis) and observability (the visibility of the results of an innovation) of the IDT without citing any references (page 708).

Statistical methods and iterations are applied to check the hypothesis, with the conclusion that the PU, PEOU, and C together influence actual use of an electronic store with statistical significance. Both C and PEOU also influence PU significantly. There is an interesting observation: the surveyed users are not that concerned about data security (including transactional security).

This is useful reading for anyone running an online store or involved in e-commerce on the Internet.