Reserch by: Shweta Pandey, Deepak Chawla, Sandeep Puri, & Luz Jeong
Executive Summary
The worldwide shipments of wearable devices reached 444.7 million in 2020 and it is estimated to grow to overall 1 billion connected wearable devices by 2022. The data obtained from these devices can be used by consumers for self-health management. Hence, usage of wearable devices assumes great importance in the context of reduced medical costs and is consequential to national and consumer healthcare service savings. Notwithstanding the novelty and importance of wearable fitness devices, few studies have focused on comparing the drivers of adoption and usage of wearable fitness in the context of developing countries. This study explores factors that drive overall acceptance of wearable fitness devices in developing countries (India and the Philippines) and whether the impact of these factors on the intention to adopt differs by country and gender.
The study extends the existing body of knowledge by developing a model that integrates the impact of various perceived benefits (health, autonomy, social, hedonic, symbolic), health self-efficacy and individual characteristics (technological innovativeness) on the intention to adopt wearable fitness devices. and the moderating impact of country and gender. The analysis was carried out using partial least square (PLS) and data of 343 respondents.
This study finds that the intention to adopt wearable fitness devices by consumers in developing countries is positively impacted by hedonic, health and autonomy, health self-efficacy and technological innovativeness. Symbolic and social factors do not have any significant impact on the overall intention to adopt wearable fitness devices. However, there are country and gender specific differences that are consequential to the development of marketing strategies.
The framework and results are specific to the two countries and limited by convenience sampling. Future research can focus on replication across different countries and extend the model with additional contextual factors such as perceived risks.
To the best knowledge of the authors, this is one of the few studies to examine and compare the drivers of adoption of wearable fitness devices in lesser researched developing countries. Also, it is one of the few studies to compare the moderating impact of country and gender in the context of the intention to adopt wearable devices. The study provides a theoretical and methodological foundation for future research, as well as practical implications for global companies developing and promoting wearable fitness devices.
To cite this article: Pandey, S., Chawla, D., Puri, S., & Jeong, L. (2021). Acceptance of wearable fitness devices in developing countries: Exploring the country and gender-specific differences. Journal of Asia Business Studies. https://doi.org/10.1108/JABS-11-2020-0456
To access this article: https://doi.org/10.1108/JABS-11-2020-0456
Journal of Asia Business Studies [ABS1]
