E-commerce adoption among the elderly people

This paper reviews extant literature on e-commerce adoption by the elderly. The main findings are that existing research has defined ‘elderly’ differently due to the lack of consensus on what age one becomes ‘elderly’. The review also found that the reported extent of e-commerce adoption varies widely, within and across different countries of the world. Further, there are many existing studies which have investigated technology adoption by the elderly people compared to e-commerce adoption. In terms of the uses of e-commerce by the elderly, it was found that it is mostly used for buying and no evidence was found on whether the elderly uses e-commerce for selling. Finally, the review also found that there are very few studies which have investigated the determinants of e-commerce adoption by the elderly.. Overall, the findings of this literature review revealed that we know very little about e-commerce adoption by the elderly. The study therefore recommends that it is important for academics to begin by resolving the issue of who is the elderly since this may currently and potentially in future, affect the consistency of the reported results.