Supply chain finance : adoption assessment among Malaysian manufacturing companies / Mohamad Aznillah Ahmad

The objective of the study is to investigate the salient belief factors (Knowledge and awareness, Cost benefit, Business support and Reputation), perceived ease of use (PEOU), and perceived usefulness (PU), which are the determinants of attitudes towards SCF adoption intention. Attitude is a crucial aspect in describing human behaviour, which has been the key interest in social psychology and consumer behaviour studies. Attitude and behavioural intention are the primary focus in this present study. Contextually, this study had attempted to bridge the gap between manufacturers and supply chain finance (SCF). In fact, SCF has been regarded as a new channel to support competitiveness and resilience of the financial performance amongst companies since the financial crises that occurred in year 2008. Despite of the many benefits that it can offer, its adoption rate is low, especially amidst developing nations. As for Malaysia, the lower adoption rate is witnessed by low penetration of SCF among manufacturing industry players. Business must not only focus on the conventional way of financing their projects, but with less cost possible. Unfortunately, this has yet to be met. As such, this study assessed the attitude of manufacturers in adopting SCF in their businesses, thereon to examine their behavioural intention. This study adopted and integrated the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as the underpinning theories to develop the conceptual framework of this study. The attitude of 411 manufacturers as a sample was analysed by using Smart-Partial Least Square (Smart-PLS) software. The outcomes serve as evidence that the measures for respondents achieved adequate measurement quality in terms of unidimensional, reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Structural equation model was employed to test the hypothesized correlations among the constructs, as postulated in the research model. The outputs of this present investigation highlight several key theoretical and practical contributions, such as in providing empirical evidence that Knowledge and Awareness, Cost Benefit, and Reputation hold essential roles in the formation of attitude amongst manufacturers. Hence, the study provides several recommendations to the industry practitioners, government, the industry association as well as the financial institutions in promoting the adoption of SCF. The significant implication for future research is that the current model can be extended within varied contexts, such as SCF for other industries, for instance, consumers and construction sector. Additionally, the outcomes can be extended to other determinants of attitude, such as perceived service quality or perceived transparency, which can influence attitude formation.