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Empirical studies using the technology acceptance model (TAM) have mainly focussed on utilitarian technologies. The purpose of this paper is to extend the TAM in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of the family dynamic around video game acceptance within households.

This paper proposes a new and unique adaptation of the TAM to study the acceptance of hedonic technologies in the context of parents’/carers’ acceptance and integration of video games within family-life dynamics. This adaptation of the TAM attempts to shed light on the social influences and intrinsic motivations behind parents’ and carers’ intentions to purchase video games for their children’s consumption.

The usefulness of video games lies in how enjoyable and entertaining they are, and this seems to be influenced by the convenience and ease of use that ultimately affects the behavioural intention towards video games. Convenience of use brings in social influences on perceived enjoyment and on parents’ actual behaviour towards video games. Some social influences seem to play a direct role in affecting children’s behaviour towards video games.

The authors acknowledge that using Facebook as a tool for data collection has limitations attributed to selection bias. Another limitation is not giving voice to the children to account for their own subjective experience of video games and relying on their parents’ perceptions on the matter.

This study advocated extending TAM within a hedonic framework in the context of examining parents’/carers’ acceptance of video games, while re-validating past theories of TAM and introducing new contextual variables adapted to address hedonic technologies.

Empirical studies using TAM have focussed on the utilitarian nature of technologies and very few considered hedonic technologies. This study’s key contribution to research lies in explaining the effects of parents’ perceived enjoyment, ease of use and convenience on the intention to purchase and play video games. The findings feed into work on the ethics and developmental issues around the marketing of video games to and for children.

The study aims to identify and explore the antecedents to short message service (SMS) advertising acceptance as an effect to the entire process of communicating the SMS ad.

The study follows a sequential mixed-methods approach, starting with qualitative interviews, to build the research model following the grounded theory approach and then a quantitative survey study to apply the model to two types of ads (discount and notification ads).

Perceived value, ad trust and channel acceptance are crucial to the attitude towards SMS ads. Relevance, content, brand equity and perceived usefulness are significant triggers to perceived value and trust, with an emphasis on importance of brand equity in trusting discount ads.

Accurate targeting and personalisation are crucial to ensure that SMS ads are useful and relevant to recipients. SMS advertising is more effective when the recipients are already connected with the brand. Including the brand name as the sender increases both value and trust. Transparency and adequate information are important for gaining trust especially for discount ads.

The study proposes an integrative model for SMS advertising acceptance after a rigorous consideration of all elements in the process of communicating the SMS ad following the GTA. The study also highlights the differences between the acceptance models for discount and notification ads.

Country of origin (COO) is well established as an extrinsic product cue that influences buyer behavior in the business-to-business (B2B) context. However, non-product-specific attitudes to a COO, including the notion of animosity, have received rather less attention. This paper aims to investigate COO as a multi-dimensional construct and animosity as a normative dimension of buyers’ attitudes and intentions.

The work is based on data collected from industrial buyers in Egypt and Canada to enable a comparative perspective between developing and developed countries. Structural equation modeling was used to test the study’s hypotheses.

Country of manufacture was an antecedent of perceived quality and a determinant of brand evaluation in both countries. Price was an antecedent of perceived risk and value in Egypt, while its impact on perceived risk was less pronounced in Canada. Perceived value was the strongest determinant of willingness to buy, while animosity played a significant role in this respect in Canada but not in Egypt.

Country of brand was not included as a dimension to be investigated; industry type was not controlled and may confound the results; and generalization of the results is limited given the cross-sectional approach.

The study’s contribution lies in four main elements, viewed individually and in combination: investigating a large number of COO constructs that have not been studied within a single research context in B2B before; including the animosity construct in a B2B setting; contrasting “benefit received” and “sacrifice given” constructs that help to shape industrial buyers’ purchase decisions; and carrying out the research in two very different countries to help improve the generalizability of results.