Salient antecedents of mobile shopping intentions: Media dependency, fashion/brand interest and peer influence

Ubiquitous usages of mobile devices among young adult consumers have been well recognized. Themobile retail industry has been estimated to have 70 billion subscribers by 2016. There has been much trade report regarding the statistics and estimates of the significance of the industry. However, there is little empirical research explaining the dynamics behind what motivates young adult consumers to usemobile devices for various commerce related activities. This study, therefore, aims to unveil a few key antecedents influencing Gen Y consumers' behavioral intentions toward the use of mobile devices for communication as well as commerce purposes. We developed a conceptual model based on the Media Dependency Theory (Ball-Rokeach & Defluer, 1976) and conspicuous consumption (Veblen, 1899) literature. Five hundred and four college students in two large US universities provided usable responses to our pencil-and-paper survey. Causal modeling analysis results demonstrated that females exhibited higher fashion/brand interest, compared to the counterparts. Individual's perception regarding peer influence on usingmobile devices substantially and positively influenced both fashion/brand interest as well as text messaging behavior via mobile devices, which in turn positively led to the intentions to use mobile devices for shopping for apparel products and receive the promotional messages delivered via mobile devices.