Correspondence: Abdullatif I. Alhudaithy, Business School, Hull University, Hull HU6 7RXT, UK. E-mail: A.I.Alhudaithy@2005.hull.ac.uk

¹gained a bachelor degree in business administration in 1993 and an MBA degree in marketing in 2001. At present, he is engaged in doctoral research at the Centre for Marketing, Communications and International Strategy as an associate member of Hull University, England. Before this he worked as Demonstrator at Imam University, Riyadh, from 1994 to 1998, and as Lecturer at King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia, from 2001 to 2004. He is working with others on areas such as consumer behaviour and marketing on the Internet.

²Ph.D. director of the Research Centre for Marketing, Communications, and International Strategy (CMCIS) and chair of Strategic Marketing at Hull University Business School; affiliated professor, School of Business, University of Rennes, France; visiting professor, University of Malaya, Malaysia. Editor of Journal of Marketing Communications. Has published 12 books and over 100 papers in leading journals around the world. Listed as one of the 'The Top 50 Gurus who have influenced the Future of Marketing,' Marketing Business, December 2003, pp. 12–16. Fellow of CIM, RSA, HEA, and member of the ALCS, Institute of Marketing Science, Institute of Directors, UK.

Received 1 February 2009; Revised 1 February 2009.

Abstract

Research on the adoption of information technology, drawing on models borrowed from social psychology, typically views adoption as a function of individual attitudes, the influence of others, perception of ability to perform a particular behaviour, and facilitating factors. A significant limitation of these models, in technology-adoption situations, is failure to consider the features of the technology itself. This essentially theoretical paper introduces the construct 'website features' as potentially influential in technology adoption, and specifically Internet banking. Research evidence on the salience of such features is reviewed, and it is argued that the effective features and their impacts differ along the stages of the customer purchase process. A theoretical framework is developed for evaluating website design in relation to these stages. Incorporating this construct into existing models, it is argued, will advance marketing theory in an online environment and assist website designers in enhancing website effectiveness to the benefit of the business–customer relationship.