Information Technology Reference
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Table 2.
Frequency of purchasing products online
How many times have
you purchased something
over the Internet in the
last months?
TOTAL
SAMPLE
(
N
= 0)
Age 0-
(
N
= )
Age 0-
(
N
= )
Age 0-
(
N
= 0)
Age 0+
(
N
= )
0
(0%)
(%)
(%)
(%)
(%)
-
(%)
(%)
(%)
(%)
(%)
-0
(%)
(%)
(%)
(%)
(%)
-
(%)
(%)
(%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
-0
(%)
(%)
(%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
-
(%)
0(0%)
(%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
+
(%)
0(0%)
(%)
0 (0%)
(%)
items as a guide, five items were developed to
assess the usefulness of purchasing products over
the Internet. The items, contained in Table 3, fo-
cus on convenience, efficiency and saving time.
Responses to each item ranged from (1)
strongly
agree
to (5)
strongly disagree
.
Concerns about security and privacy have
been identified as barriers to electronic commerce
participation (Hoffman et al., 1999; Pitkow &
Kehoe, 1996). Five items, also contained in Table
3, were designed to assess the extent to which the
respondent trusts that the personal and financial
information they provide online to a vendor will be
secure. The 5-item scale ranged from (1)
strongly
agree
to (5)
strongly disagree
.
age of the respondents was 66 years and ranged
from 52 to 87. The sample was highly educated.
Twelve percent had completed college and an ad-
ditional 22% completed an advanced degree. The
respondents reported having spent an average of
$374 online in the last 6 months.
data analysis
Participants were asked to indicate how many
times they had bought something online in the last
6 months. Sixty five respondents (59%) indicated
they had made one or more online purchases in
this time period. These individuals were catego-
rized as electronic commerce participants. The
45 respondents (41%) who indicated they had not
made an online purchase in the last 6 months were
categorized as nonparticipants. Table 1 presents
the demographics on the total sample and these
subgroups. Chi-square analysis reveals that there
was not a significant difference in the distribu-
tion of gender or education for the e-commerce
participants and nonparticipants. Independent
samples
t
test indicated the two groups did not
differ significantly in terms of age or number
of hours using e-mail. There was, however, a
significant difference in the amount of time
e-commerce participants and non-participants
spent using the Internet. Electronic commerce
participants spent an average of 3.4 more hours
sample
A large retirement community and several senior
centers located in Pennsylvania made the ques-
tionnaires and postage-paid return envelopes
available. Questionnaires were received from 150
respondents over the age of fifty. Since the ques-
tionnaires were not distributed to individuals, the
response rate can not be calculated. Twenty-two
responses were eliminated because the respon-
dents indicated they did not have access to the
Internet and another 18 responses were eliminated
due to incomplete answers. This resulted in use-
able responses from 110 individuals. The average
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