Strategic online-banking adoption

"In this paper we study the determinants of the decision of U.S. banks to create a transactional website for their customers. We show that although bank-specific characteristics (such as the volume of deposits) are important, competition plays a prominent role. In more competitive markets banks are more likely to adopt earlier. Even more important, banks adopt earlier in markets where their competitors have already adopted. A contribution of this paper is to study the adoption decision over time using a panel of commercial banks. We also contribute to the literature by adapting a measure of competition related to the choices of competitors that a bank faces in each market"--Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis web site.