Paper has been co-authored with IIMB faculty Prof. D Krishna Sundar and Ravi Srinivasan
2 April, 2024, Bengaluru: A paper titled, ‘Adoption of cashless payment systems in the bottom-of-the-pyramid retail supply chains in India: A technology-organization-environment framework perspective’, co-authored by Shubham Singh, student of the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programme of IIM Bangalore, Production and Operations Management area, along with Prof. D Krishna Sundar, IIMB faculty in the same area and Ravi Srinivasan, has been published in Electronic Commerce Research, an ABDC-A journal.
Abstract of paper: The researchers investigate the adoption of cashless payment systems by small retailers and their upstream suppliers (wholesalers, distributors and manufacturers) serving the bottom-of-the-pyramid customers in India. They use the Technology-Organization-Environment framework to hypothesize how relative advantage, perceived barriers, firm size, firm scope and competition influence the adoption of cashless payment systems. They collected data from small retailers and upstream suppliers from urban, semi-urban and rural India. The results indicate that perceived barriers, firm scope, firm size and competition influence the adoption of cashless payment systems.
Upon further investigation, it is found that all five factors influence retailers’ adoption of cashless payment systems, but only firm scope and competition are significantly related to adoption for upstream suppliers. These results highlight that the factors influencing the adoption of cashless payment systems may also depend on supply chain position. The researchers discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results. From a practical standpoint, the study provides useful insights to FinTech (financial technology) companies that plan to market their technology to merchants, especially those based in emerging economies. Such companies can use the insights from this study to develop strategies and pricing models when they introduce technologies to their customers.