CHAPTER. 1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction
Advances in electronic services technology have created many opportunities, as well as threats, for various business and service sectors. Organisations, either willingly or unwillingly, are increasingly embracing the Internet as a distribution channel, in order to remain competitive or gain a market share. With regard to electronic or e-services, the absence of accurate information on factors that have influenced users’ behaviour could mislead an organisation into adopting unhelpful solutions as it strives to accelerate the implementation of e-services. A large amount of research has been conducted on the adoption of e-services by bank customers and the factors that influence the adoption of these services. There is now growing evidence that banks and customers benefit substantially from e-business and new technology, and in particular the Internet (Zorayda, 2003:33). Since banks are taking advantage of e-services, the main aim of this study was to determine the factors that influence customers’ utilisation of e- services.

In this first chapter, the researcher outlines the importance of prioritising research on the factors that influence customers’ decision to adopt e-services offered by banks. The first section of this chapter provides a background to the study, and the second section presents an overview of the evolution of the banking sector in Cameroon. The third section discusses the problem statement, and the objectives and hypotheses of this study are presented in the fourth section. The fifth section of the chapter describes the significance of the study, whereby an attempt is made to explain how this study differs from previous research conducted in the same country or on the same topic in another country. Section 1.7 discusses the limitations of the study, and the final section of this chapter presents a layout of the remaining chapters of this study.
1.2 Background to the study
Taking advantage of information and communications technology (ICT) is an increasing challenge for developing countries. According to Nyangosi, Arora & Sumanjeet (2009:82), banking through electronic channels has gained popularity in recent years. This system, popularly known as “e-banking1”, provides fast delivery of banking services to a wide range of customers. The Internet, one of the most successful innovations in the world, has created numerous opportunities as well as threats for organisations in various business and service sectors, compelling them to (either willingly or unwillingly) support their products or deliver their services ‘online’ using the Internet as the distribution channel (Chau & Lai, 2003).

Public and private organisations across the world are realigning their strategies to take advantage of this opportunity and to overcome the challenges in terms of the way in which they operate, deliver services and compete with each other using online services (Chan & Lu, 2004).
Boyer et al. (2002: 177) have defined online services as “the initial landing on the home page until the requested service has been completed or the final product has been delivered and is fit for use”. For the banking sector, ebanking is now a global phenomenon. It is an invaluable and powerful tool driving development, supporting growth, promoting innovation, and enhancing competitiveness (Kamel, 2005 and Nath, Shrick & Parzinger, 2001). Technological innovations have been identified as contributing to the distribution channels of banks, and these electronic delivery channels are collectively referred to as electronic banking, hereinafter referred to as ebanking (Goi, 2005).