Affiliation:
1. The University of Texas at El Paso, USA
2. Kainan University, Taiwan
Abstract
U.S. Hispanic purchasing power is estimated to reach $1.5 trillion by 2015. Because of this growing importance, there has been a surge of Hispanic consumer behavior research in recent years. Latinas account for 49.5 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population and increasingly become tech-savvy to adopt new mobile social networking technologies. In spite of their growing importance, there still lacks a thorough examination on factors affecting female Hispanic consumers' decision-making process related to mobile social media applications. This book chapter collected qualitative in-depth interview data that were interpreted from Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and TAM2 as theoretical lenses. Four major themes were identified: 1) family and peer influence; 2) perceived functional benefits of mobile social media; 3) Latinas as a primary decision-maker to adopt; 4) cultural and sub-cultural influence.