Has The Internet Become Indispensable Empirical Findings and Model Development.pdfVIP

Has The Internet Become Indispensable? Empirical Findings and Model Development Donna L. Hoffman, Thomas P. Novak and Alladi Venkatesh Donna L. Hoffman is Professor of Management and Co-Director of the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing at Vanderbilt University. email: donna.hoffman@ Thomas P. Novak is Professor of Management and Co-Director, Sloan Center for Internet Retailing Vanderbilt University. email: Tom.Novak@ Alladi Venkatesh is Professor of Management and Computer Science and Associate Director of the Center for Research on Information Technology in Organization (CRITO) at the University of California, Irvine. email: avenkate@ Portions of this study were funded by the United States National Science Foundation grant Nos. IRI-9619695 and SES – 0121232 and the Vanderbilt University Sloan Center for Internet Retailing. The authors thank the editor and four reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. April 11, 2004 A published version of this working paper appears as: Hoffman, Donna L., Thomas P. Novak, and Alladi Venkatesh (2004), “Has the Internet Become Indispensable?” Communications of the ACM, July, 47(7), 37-42. Has The Internet Become Indispensable? Empirical Findings and Model Development Introduction We seem to be in the midst of an Internet revolution and entering the age of digital connectivity. The pace of social change resulting from the diffusion of this technology, both nationally and globally is, by many accounts, dramatic. In less than ten years, the Internet has become indispensable to many people in their daily lives. What are the consequences of this? In this paper, we introduce the idea that the Internet is becoming increasingly essential to families and the society at large, present