INTERNET BANKING ADOPTION STRATEGIES for a DEVELOPING COUNTRY LIKE THAILAND

The article is based on the adoption of internet banking in developing countries like Thailand and also on the plans or policies which maximize the rate of adoption of internet banking. According to authors, as per the results of pervious research, it is clear that the achievement of internet banking is mainly through customer acceptance however, banks and government support also played an important role in it.  Earlier the innovation adoption in internet banking was mainly focused in some regions of developed and developing countries. Now this study focuses on the adoption of information technology (IT) in a developing country like Thailand, where internet banking is still arising. The main purpose of this study is to find the features that persuade the customers to accept the internet banking service in Thailand and also to create methods which help it to increase the pace of adopting it. In order to do the study, the authors have utilized the decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) (Taylor and Todd, 1995) as; it is useful in forecasting and describing human behaviour across many areas, by decomposing it into certain dimensions. They have done the quantitative research by conducting the survey in the big companies of Bangkok. The result of the survey has been used for the data analysis.

 EVALUATION:

The article is well written and authors have mainly focused on the research objective. The authors have revaluated the banking and internet developments of Thailand for their studies which are followed by the decomposed theory of planned behaviour. Research methodology i.e. quantitative research and data analysis were also under taken. From the findings, advices or suggestions are offered that must help the banks to expand policies to increase the uptake of internet banking. At the end conclusions, study drawbacks and the prospective for further research are also presented. The article also educates that when the internet was introduced in Thailand, what was the ratio of the users, how the Thai ministry has come forward to promote the internet and the history of banking sector in Thailand in early 1990s. As per authors, their study was based on the decomposed theory of planned behaviour. The method of decomposition allows the investigators to expand a set of examine variables. The basic concept of this theory is based on the hypothesis that human behaviour is rational. According to this theory, the factors that influenced human behaviour are: attitude, perceived behavioural control and subjective norms. Here outlook or attitude means that a customer will always think about the benefits as well as the drawbacks of internet banking. Perceived behaviour control means having essential resources and opportunities for a person's objective to achieve. The subjective norm explains the communal pressure e.g. the acceptance of the internet banking in Thailand is referred to as the uniqueness of Thai culture. The research variables are divided into two groups established on the capability and incapability of banks to facilitate acceptance. The groups are bank factors which can be controlled by bank and other factors which are not controlled by bank. This was done to meet the purpose of finding the policies that banks could take on to increase the acceptance of internet banking. As per the article, Internet banking provides various benefits to the user. E.g. customer can access his account at anytime from anywhere as per his convenience. However before taking any new service, several issues needs to consider by the bank customers e.g. their terms and conditions that sensibly can be accepted. In Thailand, maximum bank transactions require documentation; this is again a big drawback of not adopting the internet banking. A user friendly website of bank can convince the customer to accept the internet banking but risk and loosing privacy are the main obstructions in the adoption of internet banking. According to the authors, Internet banking should be compatible, it is difficult for a customer to accept new technology if it is not friendly in nature. Authors have used the quantitative research method for findings; they have done the survey in the 40 big companies of Bangkok by sending the questionnaires to each company to their 15 office workers who use the internet frequently. Out of 600 forms, 506 were used for analyzing the data which signify a response rate of 84%. Data analysis or study can be shown in the table (appendix attached). At the time of analysing the forms were segregated according to the gender, age, experience, education in order to study correctly.

SUMMARY:

As per the author, the below factors can be observed as the most important encouragement features for the acceptance of internet banking in Thailand: quality of the web site and, recognize usefulness. It is necessary for banks to facilitate encouragement and control obstruction factors.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH:

Limitations: The study was done only on the internet users. Non internet users are not considered in this finding. All factors were not covered in the previous adoption studies. Study was monitored only on information technologies which address negative responses to ecommerce. Future research could enlarge the survey to Thai public in other regions, rather than being particular to Bangkok only, and should be repeated at usual period to monitor the influence of changes.

BARRIERS TO INTERNET BANKING ADOPTION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY AMONG CORPORATE CUTSOMERS IN THAILAND

INTRODUCTION:

The article is about the obstructions to the internet banking adoption in developing countries like Thailand. As per the studies, Thailand is still behind in accepting the internet banking as compared to other Asian countries. Although, internet banking allows the customer to use their bank account from anywhere, at any time as per their convenience, then also many corporate customers in Thailand are not using this service. The main objective of this study is to find out the reasons why corporate customers in Thailand are not accepting internet banking which can be examined by banks to come up with the strong resolutions. To find out why the corporate customers in Thailand are not enthusiastic about internet banking, authors have done the qualitative research which consists of the face to face detailed interviews with the corporate customers of banks that offer internet banking.

EVALUATION:

Although the article is all about the barriers of internet banking, authors have also described some benefits of using the internet banking e.g. from the banks point of view, it can reduce the cost, improve competitiveness, attract new customers, retain existing customers. From customer's viewpoint, it is less time consuming and can be operated from anywhere. However still many customers give priority to other services of bank like ATM and Tele-banking rather than internet banking. As the article is to deal with the obstructions of adopting the internet banking, authors have addressed many barriers some are: Some Thai customers believe that technology cannot replace the bank-customer relationship, as they consider in maintaining strong relationships in business. Mostly Thai people choose informal and personal relationship based communication which makes the financial services unappealing to them. Internet banking is lacking in Thailand because of the perceptions of the customers in terms of trust the web system. They are bothered about their security and privacy. They don't trust the service providers and don't want to rely on internet services. Another issue is the negative attitude for adopting new technologies such as web technology in the organisations. Many firms don't want to invest in web technologies in Thailand. This is one of the main barriers for the adopting the internet banking. Customer believes that technology based services will not work as expected. Many customers are worried about legal support for using internet services in their business. They are concerned about the protection of the business practises by fraudulent activities such as illegal access, hackers etc. If there passwords can be hacked then their money can be lost in few seconds. In order to do the findings, authors have done the qualitative research as it provides the opinion of the persons at the early stages of research and allowing the investigator to get a good understanding of the problem. To do the research, interviews were conducted in two groups of managers who deal with financial issues in their organisations. The first group includes the managers who use internet banking frequently and the other group consist of the non- internet banking users. The interviews were conducted in a semi-structured format which allows the managers to express their opinions. The interview includes both the aspects of the internet banking that is the positive as well as the negative. All interviews were done in Thai language, however they were translated later. Authors have presented the details of the interview through a table. To find the major barrier in internet banking, authors have adopted the qualitative content analysis.

SUMMARY:

The study has found 9 obstructions of internet baking which has been divided into 3 groups which are organisational, trust and legal. These interviews proves that there are still some obstructions to accept the internet banking by Thai corporate customers which needs to be taken care of by banks in order to convince the corporate customer to accept the internet banking in their business. Trust is the most significant issue which worries the customer in regards to security, privacy and fraudulent activities. Another concern is lack of confidence in the non- internet banking user to do the financial transaction on internet. They have very much negative attitude in adopting the internet banking. Thai people believe that Thailand is still in the early stages of developing their internet technologies. They can loss their funds due to lack of capability if they adopt internet banking. Furthermore, customers are also unhappy with the legal support they are getting from the government for their private protection. In such cases, bank needs to go ahead and take the lead and advice the customers and create confidence and trust in them to accept the internet banking by making certain policies and contracts. Authors have addressed most of the barriers to the acceptance of internet banking, however not mentioned anything about the future research on the same issue.

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