Leveraging Mobile Payment Affordance For Business Benefit: A Case Study Of Merchants In Ghana
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Date
2023-03
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University Of Ghana
Abstract
Merchant adoption of mobile payment platforms is critical in market development for mobile payments in Africa. Extant literature has validated that the COVID-19 global pandemic is reshaping the market outlook for payments in Africa and how merchants and consumers respond. The pandemic has also driven a significant change in consumer and merchant behaviours that will continue to exist, even after the post-COVID-19 era. Despite the myriad of research on mobile payment, there exist a paucity of research from the merchant’s perspective on mobile payment platforms’ adoption, their affordances, and the outcomes of merchants’ interactions with these platforms. The dearth of knowledge on the above has revealed four significant interrelated research gaps that need attention. First, arguably there is lack of understanding of merchant decision pathways and the strategic and non-strategic influencing factors in adopting mobile payment platforms aside utility/risk trade-offs. Second, slimily limited knowledge of how merchants interact with, identify and actualise affordances that accompany mobile payment systems and their attendant constraints. Third, the literature project limited understanding of the strategic and non-strategic outcomes of actualising mobile payment affordances after adoption, specifically focusing on what outcomes occur and what goals are achieved due to the affordance actualisation process. Last, there is arguably limited understanding of the context-specific factors that enable, stimulate and constrain specific technology in a specific context and the affordances generated from actors’ interaction with technology. Therefore, the purpose of this research is stated as follows: developing a theoretical and practice-oriented framework that explains mobile payment platforms' adoption decision pathways of merchants and how these platforms afford or constrain benefits to merchants.
This doctoral thesis formulated four research questions using the Ghanaian context as a case based on the identified gaps. First, "What are the mobile payment platforms' adoption decision pathways of merchants in Ghana and the strategic and non-strategic influencing factors besides the risk/utility trade-off"? Second, "How do mobile payment platforms afford or constrain merchants' transactions in Ghana"? Third, "What forms of outcomes (benefits) do mobile payment platforms afford merchants in Ghana "? last, "What enabling, stimulating and releasing conditions affect the benefits afforded by mobile payment platforms to merchants in Ghana"? Addressing the above research questions contributes to achieving the study's purpose of developing a theoretical and practice-oriented framework that explains mobile payment platforms' adoption decision pathways of merchants and how these platforms afford or constrain benefits to merchants. The study employed the Technology Affordance and Constraints Theory with principles from the Rational Choice Theory and literature on e-commerce to develop a conceptual framework. Based on the conceptual framework, five propositions were developed and tested. Further, the study was underpinned by the critical realist paradigm and adopted a qualitative multiple-case study approach using three merchant firms in Ghana to explore an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon. The case firms were theoretically selected based on a predetermined set of criteria. The research focused on Ghana because the country is an instance of a developing economy is continuously increasing access to payment systems by leveraging the widespread usage of mobile payment technologies as alternative channel access to financial inclusion and to promote a cash-lite economy.
In responding to the first research question, the study found three main pathways by which merchants adopt mobile payment platforms in Ghana. First, rational decision, where the merchant adoption of mobile payment platforms is influenced by cost-benefit analysis based on the utility /risk trade-offs. The second is a strategic decision, where the business model and partnership survival influence merchant adoption of mobile payment. The third is the experimental decision, where merchants incrementally develop capabilities in adopting and using mobile payment. The findings suggest that in Ghana, factors that influence the merchant adoption of mobile payment platforms are multidimensional instead of the unidimensional factors identified in extant literature. Hitherto, there was no mention of the experimental decision, in literature, which, therefore, is a new contribution. Out of the three-dimensional factors that could influence merchants’ decision to adopt mobile payment, the strategic path was found to be most influential because it supported merchants’ organisational strategies of developing new business models. The second research question found that merchants’ interaction with mobile payment platforms afford the merchant a primary affordance of strategic information capturing. Relative to the extant literature, the study further revealed that the primary affordance of strategic information further affords the merchant with action possibilities of possible data analytics on critical customer data, leading to superior secondary affordances such as performance-monitoring, business development, and fraud detection affordances. Despite these affordances, technological deficiency, and value chain shortcomings such as mobile payment platforms interoperability, electronic-levy policy implementation, and network connectivity constrained mobile payment platform affordance actualisation and benefits.
The third research question found that merchant mobile payment platform's affordance actualisation leads to strategic and operational benefits, as reported in the e-commerce literature in information systems. The study further discovered three new forms of benefits from mobile payment platforms' affordance actualisation relative to extant literature. This includes transformational, managerial, and organisational benefits. The transformational benefits were vital in supporting valuable and positive change in merchants’ firms leading to efficient merchant service delivery. This conceptualisation has not yet received scholars’ attention in mobile payment literature therefore this finding is a new knowledge and contribution to mobile payment research.
Finally, the fourth research question found adoption readiness and stakeholder direction as two key enabling conditions. The adoption readiness factors include a favourable adoption environment, mobile payment pervasiveness, critical mass, and digitalisation uptake from COVID-19 pandemic. The prevailing payment culture consisted of mobile payment as the new normal, multi-currency feature and third-party mobile payment support. The stakeholder directional factors were also found to include regulatory factors and competitive pressure. The regulatory factors include government legislation, operational accreditation and interoperability. Finally, competitive pressure relates to usage from other firms and the changing consumer preference. On the other hand, the merchant’s orientation, the kind of business model, perceived extra revenue generation, financial readiness, merchant brand value, and COVID-19 served as stimulating conditions. Furthermore, the merchant's decision to pursue an overall benefit was found to be the fundamental releasing condition.
The originality and contribution of this doctoral study to research and practice are as follows. First, hitherto non-existent in mobile payment literature, the research uncovers a new decision-making pathway to merchants’ adoption of mobile payment platforms. Second, this study contributes to theory development in the field of IS and mobile payment studies with several conceptualisations. This includes an empirically-validated conceptual framework that explains how mobile payment platforms afford or constrain benefits to merchants; a unique conceptualisation of mobile payment benefits as transformational, managerial and organisational; and six typologies on merchant adoption pathways to mobile payment platforms, affordances and constraints, mobile payment affordance actualisation outcomes and typologies of environmental factors that can enable, stimulate or release affordance perception and actualisation from a developing country context. These were non-existent in the mobile payment literature hitherto this study. Also, policymakers and practitioners can leverage this knowledge to create enabling conditions to ensure merchants’ continuance in the use of mobile payment platforms. This study's contributions have been published in one journal, two book chapters and two conference papers.
Description
PhD. Information Systems
Keywords
Ghana, Merchants, Mobile Payment