The pandemic has accelerated e-commerce adoption for both consumers and sellers. This study aims to identify factors critical to the adoption of electronic markets (EM) during the pandemic, from the perspective of small sellers in non-metro cities. The research design utilizes core dimensions of the UTAUT model and selected constructs from protection motivation theory; since business closure vulnerability also triggers electronic market adoption. A questionnaire survey method was used to collect data from 150 sellers from tier-II/III cities of India. Study results identified performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and perceived vulnerability as significant determinants of behavioural intention towards adoption of EM. The findings also explain the moderating impact of sellers' awareness of information technology and merchants' age on behavioural outcomes. Given the growing demands from such cities, the research offers insights for marketers to understand the bottlenecks and ways to motivate small sellers to get associated with EMs.
Keywords: Electronic marketplace; Perceived vulnerability; Protection motivation theory; Self-efficacy; UTAUT.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Institute of Applied Informatics at University of Leipzig 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.