Examining Consumers’ Adoption of Digital Payment Brand Extensions – Evidence from Ghana

Abstract

The proliferation of digital payment brands in emerging markets like Ghana creates competitive pressures on consumers’ disposition towards and adoption of digital payment innovations. The different digital payment brands - most of which entered the market through brand extensions - have experienced varied and inexplicable penetration levels in Ghana. Despite providing evidence for the unique but complementary predictors of consumers’ adoption of digital payment brands, the empirical applications of technology acceptance and brand extension fit models have been divergent. The dissertation resolves the emergent research problem by integrating the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2(UTAUT 2) with the brand extension fit model and parent brand trust in a conceptual framework. A survey of 384 customers of MTN Mobile Money – a brand extension of the MTN telecommunications network in Ghana - was used to examine the antecedents of digital payment brands. The study reveals that only three out of the seven dimensions of the UTAUT2 model: performance expectancy, facilitating conditions, and hedonic motivation, are the most critical factors driving the use intention of digital payment brands in an emerging market like Ghana. The study also determined that brand extension fit and parent brand trust moderate the relationship between use intention and use behaviour. Significantly too, parent brand trust mediates the relationship between use behaviour and use continuance, validating its critical role in ensuring loyalty to digital payment brand extension. The post-study results form the basis for a significant research agenda relating to the intersection of technology acceptance and brand extension strategy knowledge domains. Importantly, it provides private and public sector actors in the digital payments market with explicit insights on how brand extension strategy, comprising brand extension fit and parent brand trust elements specifically, impacts adoption rates within competitive market contexts.