Evaluating the Usability of a Social Storefront Business Model for Ecuadorian Millennials and Centennials

Social media has been influencing almost all areas of human society during the last decade. Nevertheless, the lack of studies on the acceptance of a social storefront business model has been identified as a missing point in this research area. In this scenario, this paper evaluates the technology acceptance of a storefront website and its Facebook business page. The study was carried out with the participation of 520 young students of two Ecuadorian universities from the Coastal and the Andean region. A controlled experiment was designed based on the Technology Acceptance Model. After using the evaluated tools for two weeks, two surveys were conducted and 48 participants were interviewed. The results show that both, the perceived ease of use and the perceived usefulness of the analyzed tools have a positive impact on the behavioral intention of using social media for e-commerce. No significant differences were found but both, the storefront webpage and the Facebook business page, had positive acceptance among participants. Interviewed students sustained that social media play a key role for reinforcing the trustability of e-commerce initiatives in the country.