USING THE THEORY OF TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL TO EXPLAIN TEENAGERS' ADOPTION OF SMARTPHONES IN TRANSYLVANIA
USING THE THEORY OF TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL TO EXPLAIN TEENAGERS' ADOPTION OF SMARTPHONES IN TRANSYLVANIA

Summary/Abstract: In Romania the mobile phones has been adopted rapidly, and the newer generation of these devices, the smartphones follow the same pattern. The main purpose of the research is to study the smartphone adoption process among teenagers from the 1st Macro-region in Romania. The originality of this paper is to study a very special and vulnerable market segment such as teenagers. In our study, we test a simplified Technology Acceptance Model on a convenience sample, which contains 1,864 questionnaires, collected online. According to the results, in the high school students market, the smartphone penetration is 60%, higher than in case of other age and educational groups. We found that perceived usefulness of these devices is influenced both by social norms and behavioral control while perceived enjoyment is not. The results also show that the teenagers use smart phones from a utilitarian necessity not a hedonic one. The model was tested on a convenience sample; therefore the results cannot be generalized. The proposed technological acceptance model is not perfectly suited for teenagers. In a further research we should proposed a specific model for them. From the practical viewpoint, the teenagers represent a new generation, which should be called “a smartphone generation”. They represent a real market for the smartphone producers.

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