This paper explores the relationship between the three beliefs about online shopping—perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived enjoyment—and the intention to shop online. A sample of 150 respondents was selected, using a purposive sampling method, where the respondents were Internet users in the survey. A structured, self-administered questionnaire was used to elicit responses from these respondents. The findings indicate that while perceived ease of use (β = 0.70, p<0.01) and perceived enjoyment (β = 0.32, p<0.05) were positively related to the intention to shop online, perceived usefulness was not significantly related to the intention to shop online. Furthermore, the perceived ease of use (β = 0.78, p<0.01) was found to be a significant predictor of perceived usefulness. This shows that ease of use and enjoyment are the two main drivers of intention to shop online. Implications of the findings for developers are further discussed in the paper.

Internet retailing is one of the fastest growing distribution channels for commerce. Although it generated the lowest in terms of the total retail sales in the United States between 1998 and 2002, yet its significant growth each year warrants attention. Table 1 shows that Internet retailing increases by approximately USD20 bn each year. Europeans spent an average of EUR430 per individual compared to EUR543 by Americans between August and October, in the year 20021. In Asia, China has been projected to achieve tremendous growth in the Internet commerce revenue throughout the past four years2. This growth was partly contributed by globalization and technological advancements that led to the consolidation efforts from retailers worldwide.

Some time back, the convergence of technologies and the potential in Internet as a distribution channel had significantly altered the operations of retailers worldwide. In the United States, the retail industry witnessed larger hypermarkets concentrating on centralizing their operations and consolidating divisions to provide increased product offerings. Hypermarkets were thus able to offer a wider range of cheaper products whilstobliterating smaller independent retailers. However, the inherently large physical size of hypermarkets precludes them from operating at areas or with a population insufficient to support them. Therefore, Internet retailing can serve as an alternate distribution channel to increase hypermarket sales. For example, British hypermarket, Tesco, boasts more than a million online customers who purchased more products online than off-line. With 70,000 online orders per week, Tesco.com is successful in maximizing the existing stores to meet the retail market demand (Boston Consulting Group, 2001). This allows the delay of large investments in physical assets (e.g., distribution centers) while capturing the retail niche from the less populated areas.