Understanding customers' repeat purchase intentions in B2C e-commerce: the roles of utilitarian value, hedonic value and perceived risk

Reviewing the Online Tourism Value Chain

The booking purchase process in B2C tourism online from the perspective of the quality-satisfaction-loyalty value chain has scarcely been investigated. The measurement models of the variables are not unified and essential variables, as transaction costs, need more research in order to achieve a comprehensive model of the digital tourist purchase process. This research is aimed at solving this gap through the proposal of a theoretical structural model, which is tested for the Spanish context. The results show that the measurement of website-perceived quality must include utilitarian and hedonic aspects, which can provide a competitive advantage to acquire and retain customers. Perceived quality and transaction costs determine customer’s satisfaction and, ultimately, repurchase intentions or brand loyalty. Prices are found as mediator variables fostering the effect of quality on satisfaction, and non-monetary costs act as a cause of satisfaction. The online B2C tourism business must implement efficient internal and external processes to justify perceived costs.

How Consumers Process Online Privacy, Financial, and Performance Risks: An fMRI Study

Despite the enormous growth of e-commerce, consumers still come against risk-related barriers while carrying out online purchases. Specialists of e-commerce have therefore explored the facets of online risk perception with the aim of identifying which has the greatest impact. There is, nonetheless, no consensus as to the facets of risk perception or their relative importance. This is the first study resorting to neurological tools that examines the differences between the three most widespread facets of risk (financial, privacy, and performance) in a low-involvement purchase environment. Contrary to behavioral findings, brain data from neurological analyses identify differences between the three facets of risk. Financial risk conveys the lowest subconscious aversion and negative values. Subconscious privacy risk, in turn, confers ambivalence and uncertainty while performance risk elicits the highest levels of disappointment and distrust. Implications from the current findings, if taken into account by retailers, can greatly improve web contents and purchase processes, and bolster sales.

Exploring stickiness intention of B2C online shopping malls

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of flow experience and e-trust in online consumers’ stickiness intentions from a perspective of information quality and discuss how to retain these consumers.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors proposed a research model by integrating three dimensions of information quality, flow experience and e-trust. These factors were analyzed to explore the direct and indirect effects on consumers’ stickiness intention. Online questionnaires were adopted to collect data and 259 valid samples were analyzed by structural equation modeling approach.

Findings

The findings show that information quality provided by B2C online shopping malls can indirectly affect consumers’ stickiness intention through the mediation effects of flow experience and e-trust. Besides, flow experience can also significantly affect e-trust and then indirectly influence stickiness intention.

Research limitations/implications

The findings suggest that information quality can trigger the effects of flow experience and e-trust to keep stickiness of online consumers. Besides, in the context of online shopping, flow experience would promote consumers’ trust toward e-retailers. Some other theoretical and practical implications are also provided.

Originality/value

This study indicates the effects of flow experience and e-trust on stickiness intention from an information quality perspective. Meanwhile, the authors also intend to discuss the relationship between consumers’ flow experience and e-trust in the context of B2C online shopping.

Social value and online social shopping intention: the moderating role of experience

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the shoppers’ social value perception affects their purchase intention in online shopping context through its distinct role and relationships with other value dimensions. The moderating effect of the characteristics of other members on the relationship among value dimensions and the difference of value perception between experienced and inexperienced members were also tested to identify the boundary conditions of the proposed model.

Design/methodology/approach

The survey included 272 consumers from a well-known social shopping website in China to test the hypotheses.

Findings

The results indicate that hedonic and utilitarian value fully mediate the relationship between social value and purchase intention. Perceived expertise positively moderates the relationship between social value and the other two values. In particular, the results found that while inexperienced members can acquire both higher utilitarian and hedonic value from social value and their purchase intention relies more on the hedonic value, experienced members place greater emphasis on the utilitarian value.

Practical implications

The results may help vendors regain confidence in the social shopping business mode and offer specific policy implications on how to leverage shoppers’ social value perception to generate their purchase intention in a social shopping context.

Originality/value

This study focuses on the legitimacy of the independent role of social value and sheds light on the relationships among social value and other value dimensions based on social capital theory, which was under-explored by previous studies. Besides, this study clarifies the moderating role of experience, which highlights the previously unnoticed changing role of consumers’ value perception.

How signaling mechanisms reduce “lemons” from online group buying (OGB) markets? A study of China

Purpose

A major transformation in retail logistics over the few years is backed by enormous improvements in internet technologies. It is now easy for e-retailers to entertain delivery progression, or consumers can share use-experience with future customers and thereby reducing information asymmetry. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of different signals on consumer behavior in the presence of information asymmetry, in the context of online group buying (OGB) markets in China.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the lemon market theory (LMT) and signaling theory, the study develops a research model of the OGB consumers’ context in China, which is validated using data from an online survey. A total of 528 responses are used for data analysis applying structural equation modeling technique.

Findings

The findings of the study show that perceived vendor quality (PVQ) and perceived product quality (PPQ) have significantly positive effects on intention to purchase from OGB websites. PVQ is associated with perceived reputation and perceived trustworthiness (PT) of vendor, and the determinants of PPQ are quality assurance information of products, and information about mer-chants. Further, PT has a mediating effect, while asymmetry of information has a moderating effect.

Research limitations/implications

The research model is valid as a generic OGB model that can be investigated in other contexts to understand the generalizability of the findings. Future research is needed to incorporate additional relevant factors (e.g. price, advertising activity/investments) that may help increase the acceptability of the model to a wide range of e-commerce contexts. Two of the control variables (gender and prior internet experience) were found to be significant; this could be further examined in future studies to determine the relative impact on each causal relationship.

Originality/value

Whereas prior studies in the domain of consumer service proposed different signaling mechanisms that were believed to eliminate information asymmetry from a market, the study sheds light on the effectiveness of the signals in the OGB context. This is a unique effort that applies and extends LMT and signaling theory in OGB context by theorizing the associated dimensions and their causal effects.

Assessing the effects of multichannel service provider corporate reputation on customer new product adoption and RFM value

Purpose

Service providers leverage their corporate reputation management efforts to increase revenues by shaping customer attitudes and behaviours, yet the effects on customer innovation adoption and customer value remain unclear. In an extended conceptualisation of customer-based corporate reputation (CBR), the purpose of this paper is to propose that customer perceived risk, perceived value, and service separation are contingencies of the relationship between CBR and two key customer outcomes: customer new product adoption proneness (CPA) and recency-frequency-monetary (RFM) value.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a predictive survey approach, 1,001 service customers assess the online or offline operations of six multichannel retailers. The hypothesised model is tested using structural equation modelling and multigroup analysis.

Findings

The analysis reveals significant linkages of CBR with perceived risk and perceived value, as well as between perceived risk and perceived value and from perceived value to CPA and RFM value. These linkages vary in strength across unseparated (offline) and separated (online) services.

Research limitations/implications

This study uses cross-sectional data to contribute to literature that relates CBR to relevant customer outcomes by considering CPA and RFM value and investigating contingent factors. It provides conceptual and empirical evidence that price appropriateness represents a new CBR dimension.

Practical implications

The results reveal that CBR reduces customers’ perceived risk and positively affects their perceived value, which drives CPA and RFM value. Multichannel retailers can create rewarding customer relationships by building and nurturing good reputations.

Originality/value

This study is the first to link CBR with customer product adoption proneness and value, two important customer measures. It proposes and tests an extended conceptualisation of CBR.

When Is Information Quality More Important?

One of the key elements that an electronic retailer (e-tailer) relies on for converting website visitors to buyers is information quality management. Previous studies recognized that information quality is a significant predictor of the online consumers' trust, satisfaction with the goods offered by the e-tailer, and most importantly, purchase intention. However, the extant research has largely ignored the possibly contingent effects of information quality on consumer's purchasing intention. By integrating theories and prior research findings from the marketing and e-commerce field, this article validates the direct effect of information quality on consumer's purchasing intention. More importantly, the authors propose that an e-tailer's market-oriented image (perceived market orientation) and consumer's shopping value would have a moderating role on the relationship between information quality and purchasing intention. A survey was conducted to collect data to test the proposed research model. The results generally support the authors' hypotheses. The practical and theoretical contributions of the study are discussed.

An Empirical Study on Users' Continuous Usage Intention of QR Code Mobile Payment Services in China

This article aims to investigate users' continuous usage intention of quick response (QR) code mobile payment services in China. Drawing from UTAUT as theory foundation, this study integrates with literature on perceived risk and involvement to propose a research model and seven research hypotheses to examine user's continuous usage of QR code mobile payment services. The research model was empirically tested with a sample of 215 users of QR code mobile payment services in China. The results indicated that five of seven research hypotheses were significantly supported. According to the results, performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence had significant positive direct impacts on users' continuous usage intention of QR code mobile payment services. However, perceived risk did not have a negative effect on users' continuous usage intention of QR code mobile payment services. This article contributes to the existing literature on continuous usage of mobile payment services.

E-procurement quality from an internal customer perspective

Purpose

Despite significant investment in e-procurement by many organisations, perceived failings in the quality of such technologies and of the support provided to use them – termed here e-procurement quality – continue to generate resistance from internal customers who must assimilate e-procurement into their daily routines. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of e-procurement quality from an internal customer perspective and to develop, refine, and validate construct measures.

Design/methodology/approach

Research was undertaken in the UK and the Netherlands incorporating a literature review, a qualitative study with 58 interviews, a quantitative study with 274 survey respondents, and a replication study with 154 survey respondents.

Findings

Analysis reveals that e-procurement quality comprises five universally applicable dimensions: processing, content, usability, professionalism, and training. A sixth dimension, specification, appears to be applicable, but context specific.

Originality/value

The study represents one of the most extensive investigations of e-procurement quality to date and is the first to examine its underlying dimensional structure. The multi-item scales developed and validated using a mixed-methods process are suitable for theory building and testing, as well as providing useful diagnostic value to practitioners.

Factors influencing users’ subjective well-being: an empirical study based on shared bicycles in China

Purpose

Bike sharing becomes suddenly hot up in China since the end of 2016. However, few studies have focused on shared bicycle users’ behavior. To fill this research gap, this paper aims to develop an integrated model to investigate factors that affect shared bicycle users’ subjective well-being.

Design/methodology/approach

A field survey with 220 shared bicycle users is conducted to test the research model and hypotheses.

Findings

The highlights are that perceived value has positive effect on users’ life satisfaction. Specially, it is interesting to find that hedonic value has the greatest impact on users’ life satisfaction, followed by social value and utilitarian value. Perceived risks which including privacy risks, financial risks and functional risks act as a moderating role between perceived value and users’ life satisfaction.

Originality/value

First, the authors clear factors that affect users’ subjective well-being from the perspective of perceived value. The results deepen our understanding about the effect of perceived value on users’ subjective well-being. Second, the current researches have ignored the effect of perceived risks on users’ subjective well-being. The authors filled that gap and found that perceived risks which including privacy risks, financial risks and functional risks act as a moderating role between perceived value and users’ subjective well-being.

Why should I pay for e-books?

Purpose

Because mobile phones offer a new, affordable and easy-to-use portal to reading material, mobile reading is emerging as the most ultra-modern reading approach. From the perspective of mobile reading service providers, knowledge of customer purchase, and consumption behaviour is critical for their survival and success. This paper aims to provide insights into the factors that influence the purchase e-books.

Design/methodology/approach

Following means-end chain theory, the prospect theory and elaboration likelihood model, a structural equation model is proposed to investigate and identify key factors that drive the purchase intention of experienced mobile readers. In the theoretical model, utilitarian value (UV) and hedonic value (HV) are supposed as formative second-order constructs formed by related payoff.

Findings

Both UV and HV are positively associated with readers’ purchase intention. However, there are no big differences between these two path coefficients. People seem to perceive relatively low payment risk although perceived risk could still negatively affect purchase intention. As a predictor of purchase intention, UV is less important when risk perception increases or when involvement (IV) decreases. Furthermore, this study illustrates that uniqueness and convenience (CV) are significant components of UV, whereas curiosity and flow are components of HV.

Practical implications

Mobile reading providers should highlight the professional and specificity of app such as beautiful cover, page setup that similar to real books and so on. Readers should be allowed to post real-time reviews and communicate with others to improve their sense of satisfaction, participation and belonging. The payment process should be concise and simple through which readers can save their purchase time and effort. Mobile reading service providers should provide trustworthy payment approaches, especially third-party platform and guarantee the CV and safety of payment activity.

Originality value

By focusing on the impacts of relationships among UV, HV, perceived risk and IV to purchase intention, this paper not only provides a theoretical understanding of mobile reading purchase behaviour but also offers practical insights to reading material manufactures and app developers for promoting such a process.

Online privacy and security concerns of consumers

Purpose

Privacy and security concerns of consumers have been touted as one of the hindrances to the growth of e-commerce. These concerns increase the risk perception of consumers. Understanding the consequences of privacy and security concerns and their relationship to risk perceptions may provide a solution. The relationship between privacy and security is investigated using the theory of planned behavior. The study aims to examine the relationship of trust, privacy and security concerns to the risk perception adoption of e-commerce. The results from a survey validate the model.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected using survey from undergraduate business students. The respondents were requested to select a specific product that they plan to purchase in the next six months. After selecting a product, the respondents were requested to report an online company that they have recently visited which offers the selected product. The respondents were requested to fill out the survey with regard to their selected online company. Time given was approximately 20 min.

Findings

The results suggest that privacy and security concerns and trust beliefs had effects on risk perception. Among these effects, trust had the largest effect followed by privacy and security concerns. Furthermore, risk perception and trust beliefs had effects on attitude. The effect of trust beliefs on attitude was larger than the effect of risk perception on attitude. Similarly, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and attitude had a positive and direct effect on intention to be involved in e-commerce.

Research limitations/implications

The first limitation of this study is the use of student subjects. Because this study took place in an educational setting, its generalizability to the general population of consumers lacks to some degree. The second limitation of this study is mono-method bias.

Practical implications

The effect of privacy concerns on risk perception was larger than that of security concerns. Because the consumers get more experienced and sophisticated using the Web, the security concerns that they may have had at the beginning are not reflected in their risk perceptions. It is likely that they have adopted protective measures on their own to defend their privacy online. An example of such a measure would be providing false information to online companies when asked to submit personal information.

Originality/value

The major contributions of this study are developing and validating an integrative framework of e-commerce adoption at the individual level. The model includes privacy and security concerns, risk perception and trust beliefs. This study also highlighted the distinction of constructs of privacy and security concerns and showed their differential effects on other related constructs in the research model.

The mediation of cognitive attitude for online shopping

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships among intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, flow, cognitive attitudes, perceived satisfaction, and purchase intention of consumers’ online shopping from a cognitive attitudes perspective. This study collected data from consumers having bought goods on the e-shopping platform.

Design/methodology/approach

– This study adopted online questionnaire through my3q (www.my3q.com) for data collection. This research collected and analyzed 866 samples by using the structural equation modeling for validation of the proposed model.

Findings

– The results indicated that hedonic value, utilitarian value, security, and privacy significantly affected cognitive attitudes (i.e. cognitive trust and perceived risk). Cognitive attitudes significantly affected perceived satisfaction and purchase intention, respectively. Flow significantly and positively influenced cognitive trust and purchase intentions, respectively. Cognitive trust is the mediators between motivations/flow and perceived satisfaction/purchase intention.

Research limitations/implications

– Both of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation can reflect the cognitive and conscious plan of an individual for a particular task. The cognitive trust and perceived risk are partial mediator and full mediator in the model, respectively. Hedonic value, utilitarian value, security, privacy, and flow all affect the individual’s perceived satisfaction and purchase intention through cognitive trust and perceived risk in the context of online shopping. Cognitive trust is a full mediator of the effects of privacy on purchase intention. It indicates that consumers must fully trust the website to ensure that the information provided by consumers in the transaction will not spread out for the protection of personal privacy.

Practical implications

– This study aimed to assist the marketing personnel of the EC industry to examine the key influential factors of consumers’ purchase satisfactions and purchase intentions. The results of this study indicated that cognitive trust is the foundation for gaining and retaining customers. The classification of consumer motivations facilitates the understanding of consumers’ demands and accurate interpretation of consumers’ needs. The main influential factor of cognitive trust is utilitarian value. Therefore, this study states that the primary intrinsic motivation of online shopping for most consumers is utilitarian value (e.g. saving time, the cost of searching for the appropriate products, and increasing purchasing efficiency).

Social implications

– Websites should strengthen the quality and quantity of product information. In addition, websites should provide a dynamic presentation of the product by presenting in various forms (multimedia and text description) about product-related information in order to increase consumers’ hedonic value. For the aspects of security and privacy, websites should provide consumers with reliable safety features, such as secure socket layer or digital signature, smooth communication channel (specific phone services and e-mail address), and consumer’s privacy statements. Finally, web design should meet with the consumer experience model in order to make the website easy to use and order the purchase from the website directly. Websites should also increase the fluency and positive experience of consumers and improve the interaction of a website. Meanwhile, websites need to feedback the consumer problem instantly and provide customized information in order to increase the chance of interaction between the consumers and the website.

Originality/value

– Relevant studies have explored online shopping from various perspectives, but few studies have examined consumers’ cognitive attitudes toward websites from the consumer motivation perspective. Thus, this study focussed on the influences of consumers’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (e.g. hedonic value, utilitarian value, security, and privacy) on their cognitive attitudes toward websites. In addition, with the rapid development of the internet in recent years, internet users’ online flow experiences have gained increased attention. The creation of attractive consumption conditions is vital for website managers to provide consumers with flow experiences. Therefore, this study included consumers’ flow in the proposed model.

Behavioral Issues in B2C E-commerce

B2C e-commerce is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide. A lot of studies were carried out by both scholars and practitioners in order to assess online consumers’ behavioral issues in B2C e-commerce platforms. This paper aims to organize and classify the accumulated literature on B2C e-commerce in order to determine less-researched areas and provide future research directions. For that purpose 208 peer-reviewed articles from 71 journals published between 2005 and 2014 were retrieved and analyzed. The findings of the studies are discussed within the scope of developed framework.

Understanding individuals’ initial and continued use of online auction marketplaces

Purpose

– The current study aims to systematically review the existing literature, identify the main determinants that impact individuals’ perceptions, attitude, intention and behavior and meta-analytically evaluate their respective strength. Moreover, this study examines the specific mechanism through which more distal factors, such as trust, risk, experience and enjoyment influence individuals’ decision in the context of online auction markets. Finally, the moderating effects of contextual and methodological factors that could potentially influence the relationships are explored. During the past two decades, a large number of empirical studies examined the factors that hinder or foster individuals’ initial and continued acceptance of online auction marketplaces.

Design/methodology/approach

– Based on the effect sizes reported, 91 studies, including 95 independent samples (N = 36.788), the current study utilizes bivariate meta-analysis, meta-analytic structural equation modeling and weighted least squares regression moderator analysis to examine the nature of the identified relationships, the mechanisms through which they operate and the boundary conditions under which they do or do not hold.

Findings

– The results show that trust and experience explain individuals’ initial usage intention, while risk and experience explain actual usage behavior, indicating that these variables are viable extensions to the technology acceptance model in the context of online auction marketplaces. The results also demonstrate that, once individuals participate in online auction markets, trust and enjoyment are important predictors of satisfaction, which, in turn, is the strongest determinant of loyalty intention. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that cultural context acts as moderator and, to some degree, explains the mixed empirical findings in prior research.

Originality/value

– This study contributes to the existing literature by identifying the main determinants and their average direct and indirect effect on the individuals’ decisions in online auction marketplaces. The findings provide critical insights into the complex network of relationships which impact individuals’ perceptions, attitude, intention and behavior to initially and continuously use online auction marketplaces. Furthermore, the result contributes to the existing research by examining the effect of contextual and methodological boundary conditions – moderating factors that are difficult to test in primary studies.