Therefore, the Technology Acceptance Model that could be customized and expanded to incorporate trust and risk was preferred over other models such was Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), and Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). Furthermore, the TAM is versatile enough to be easily customized and extended to incorporate trust (Perceived Trust) and risk (perceived Risk) factors for consideration into use and acceptance of e-Commerce. e-Commerce being a new technology for the consumers in the Pacific Island Countries (PICs), and its acceptance and use could easily be determined with the Technology Acceptance Model. The model determines how users might react to the acceptance of new technology based on their Perceived-Ease-Of-Use (PEOU) and Perceived Usefulness (PU) of technology. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been widely used by researchers to check and test the acceptance of e-Commerce technology by users. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been used to ground this research from a theoretical perspective and align it with a validated research model. Based on this knowledge, the relevant stakeholders, namely businesses, consumers and government as regulators can create a conducive e-Commerce landscape. This research study aims to fill the research gap on consumers’ perception of e-Commerce taking into consideration the trust and risk factor. Preliminary investigation with many consumers found trust and risk as being a common inhibitor to engage in e-Commerce and the same has been found in published literature. Consumers perception of e-Commerce is lacking or non-existent for Pacific Island Countries. A few researches have looked into the availability, provision, and challenges of e-Commerce in the region from the business owner’s perspective. Many businesses in sales and retail are trying to take advantage of e-Commerce’s many capabilities, flexibilities for service provision, convenience, and cost savings. Online shopping can be considered as an exchange of money, time and effort for getting products and services.Į-Commerce is beginning to gain traction in the Pacific Island Countries (PICs) as the affordability and availability of Internet connectivity becomes better.

One of its utmost result is the convenience of online shopping. With the current developments in internet and web-based technologies, distinctions between traditional markets and the global electronic marketplace-such as business capital size, among others-are gradually being narrowed down. The use of internet in business has enhanced productivity, encouraged greater customer participation and satisfaction, besides reducing costs. In this emerging global trend of business, technology is increasingly becoming a necessary component and a strong promoter for electronic sales. Many firms approach the e-commerce market with no clear idea of where they are going. According to Internet World Stats, as of December, 2017 54.4% of the world population use the internet. With emerging information technology, more and more people can access internet connectivity everyday using smart devices. Tremendous growth has been experienced in ICT and much of the advancement may be attributed to the various types of ICT ventures that invent and commercialize a variety of ICT products. Through the use of this research, businesses in Fiji may incorporate features as per user expectations and have a good background before venturing into e-commerce. The outcome of which verified that there were correlations between trust, perceived risk, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and usage of e-commerce. To gain an in-depth understanding of consumers’ acceptance of e-commerce an online questionnaire was used with questions which focused on these disciplines. As the acceptance of e-commerce in Fiji is relatively low, this paper integrates the findings of previous researches with the perceived trust and perceived risk of consumers to provide a comprehensive framework of online shopping behavior based on the Technology Acceptance Model. The two leading theories - perceived ease of use and usefulness have been employed in numerous information systems research studies to help understand consumer behavior in e-commerce environments. The rise in internet users presents the opportunity of Electronic Commerce, the idea of providing and accessing goods and services using internet, such as selling goods and services, performing financial transactions and even booking an appointment. The rapid growth in internet technology and the innovations in smart devices has had its impact on how businesses used to operate a decade ago to how consumers followed traditional shopping behavior when goods or services was required.

Consumer perception definition