Table 2.
Recurring themes that emerged from the group-discussion content regarding Email
| Categories | Themes | Example Quotes |
|---|---|---|
| From UTAUT | ||
| Performance Expectancy (Email helpful) | time-effectiveness |
“I like the instantaneous response factor. I mean, I can stay in touch with someone even if they're too busy to respond. I just like the fact that I’m not always intruding on their time because eventually they will respond by email” “It’s faster. That’s the thing, it’s a lot faster than waiting for a paper in the mail. That’s a plus of it.” “I particularly like the fact that you can contact your doctor and get a response back within 48 hours. It’s usually a very short time.” |
| goal-effectiveness | “I love it for keeping in touch with my tennis team. If we’re rained out, we need a fourth, something happens …the courts are wet. That’s very useful.” | |
| geographic –irrelevance | “I use my email to keep in touch with my brothers and sisters because we all live in a different state. My daughter travels for [a] living so I use it to communicate with her and to catch up with old friends that I haven’t talked to for a long time.” | |
| information-documentation | “A lot of stores now, instead of or in addition to a paper receipt, will ask if you want an email. I keep all the emails and have a folder of receipts in my email which prevents me from throwing it in the trash and wanting it later.” | |
| Performance Expectancy (Email not helpful) | technology-related issues | “And sometimes, I will want to forward an email to somebody but they don’t get it because their filters are so strict” |
| goal-ineffectiveness | “I also prefer the phone. In the hierarchy of communication, face-to-face is the best. You always get more accomplished face-to-face. Second level is telephone. You can hear tones. You can get more communication from phones.” | |
| Effort Expectancy | technology-related | “I’ve noticed that it has been a lot easier to unsubscribe to some of the mail that you get. Before, it really was a pain in the butt but now I find it pretty simple to unsubscribe.” |
| goal-related | “It just makes everything so much easier. It’s quicker, and… makes everything easier to get to a lot of people.” | |
| Social Influence | “I have no grandchildren, so that has not forced me to stay and keep in touch because I know I have a lot of contemporaries that [their grandchildren] force them into it.” | |
| Facilitating and Impeding Conditions | “Well, don’t ever open anything on Gmail or whatever that is an ad. …I use Norton, and it makes better judgments on the sites…And you never go to an ad. I never go to an ad. Just go to things that are Norton approved.” | |
| Additional | ||
| Trust-Privacy | “The worst part about spam is you go someplace, they ask for your email address, you do it, you give it to them, but then they have all their affiliates, and they pass your email address to their affiliates and then you’ve got tons of spam.” | |
| Trust-Security | “Well, worst thing now is the security because that if you open an email from somebody that you don’t know there’s [a] 75% chance there’s some kind of virus associated with it…and it’ll completely take control of your computer.” | |
| Perception of Content | undesired or unsolicited content | “One of the things I don’t like about [email] is spam. You get a lot of stuff on there that you don’t really want. And then, of course some of it is my own creation, I’ll say well I’m interested in something so then I get a thousand emails on life fishing or sport, sports-related things.” |
| Current Knowledge/Skills | “In the junk department in email, on my computer, I haven’t figured out a way to delete. Say you’ve got 500 of those or a 1000 of those, and there should be an easy way to just…delete them all.” |
Notes. UTAUT = Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model (Venkatesh et al., 2003).