Technology Acceptance Model (TAM model)
The Technology Acceptance Model or TAM model shows which factors influence people's intention to actually use a product. In this article, we take a closer look at the factors and explain the role that the System Usability Scale (SUS) can play in this.
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What is the Technology Acceptance Model?
The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM model) is based on the research that Fred Davis completed in 1989. The TAM model argues that the adoption rate of a product does not depend on the features it has, but rather on the experience - the user experience - that the user has.
Even before Fred Davis started his research, there was a consensus that a wide deployment of a system depends on the intention to use the product. Not surprising. What is surprising - and was already known at the time - is that the intention to use a product largely depends on the attitude that potential users have towards the product. Schematically this looks like this:
Attitude → Intention to use → Actual use of system
But how is the attitude towards a particular product determined? And how could you positively influence that attitude to ensure that more people start using the product? That is where it gets interesting and where the TAM model shines more light.
For example, the technology acceptance model states that the perceived usefulness and the perceived ease of use have the most influence on the adoption rate of a new product, whereby the perceived usefulness weighs about one and a half times heavier than the perceived ease of use.
The perceived usefulness is the degree to which a user sees the added value or usefulness of the product - and the perceived ease is the perceived ease of use.
The model states that both factors can in turn be influenced by external factors, such as social norms, recommendations from friends and background knowledge.
The full TAM model then looks like this: