Page 278 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

264 9 Marketing and Advertising in E-Commerce

Consumer Characteristics
• Motivational Factors. Motivational factors are the
Consumer (personal) characteristics, which are shown in the functions available on the website to provide direct sup-
top-left portion of Figure 9.1, refer to demographic factors, port in the purchasing process (e.g., search engines,
individual preferences, and behavioral characteristics of the shopping carts, multiple payment methods).
consumer. Several websites provide information on customer • Hygiene Factors. Hygiene factors are functions
buying habits online (e.g., emarketer.com, clickz.com, and available on the website whose objective is to
comscore.com). The major demographics that such sites make the website functional and serviceable (e.g.,
track are gender, age, marital status, education level, ethnic- ease of navigation, show items added to the cart);
ity, occupation, and household income, which can be corre- their main purpose is to protect consumers from
lated with Internet usage and EC data. Both men and women risks or unexpected events in the transaction pro-
have been found to perceive information differently depend- cess (e.g., security breaching and site technical
ing on their levels of purchase confidence and internal failure).
knowledge. Marketers also study the psychological variables
such as personality and lifestyle characteristics. Several
studies show that shopping experience has a significant effect
on consumer attitude and intention to purchase and repur- Environmental Factors
chase online (e.g., Chiu et al. 2014).
The environment in which a transaction occurs may affect a
Merchant and Intermediary-Related Factors consumer’s purchase decision. As shown in Figure 9.1, envi-
ronmental variables can be grouped into the following
Online transactions may also be affected by the merchant that categories:
provides the product/service. This group of factors includes
merchant reputation, size of the transaction, trust in the mer- • Social Variables. People are influenced by family mem-
chant, and so on. For example, a customer may feel more bers, friends, coworkers, and current styles. Therefore,
secure when making a purchase from Amazon.com (due to its social variables (such as customer endorsements, word-
reputation) than from an unknown seller. Other factors such as of- mouth) play an important role in EC. Of special impor-
marketing strategy and advertising can also play a major role. tance in EC are Internet communities and discussion
groups, where people communicate via chat rooms, elec-
Product/Service Factors tronic bulletin boards, tweeting, and newsgroups. A study
(by Liang et al. 2011–2012) shows that social support in
The second group of factors is related to the product/service online communities significantly enhances the intention
itself. The consumer’s decision to make a purchase is affected to purchase online.
by the nature of the product/service in the transaction. These • Cultural/Community Variables. The influence of cul-
may include the price, quality, design, brand, and other ture on buying behavior varies from country to country. It
related attributes of the product. makes a big difference in what people buy if a consumer
lives near Silicon Valley in California or in the mountains
EC Systems in Nepal. Chinese shoppers may differ from French shop-
pers, and rural shoppers may differ from urban ones.
The EC platform for online transactions (e.g., security protec- Bashir (2013) conducted a comprehensive study about
tion, payment mechanism, and so forth) offered by the mer- online shopping for electronics in Pakistan.
chant and the type of computing environment (e.g., mobile vs. • Other Environmental Variables. These include aspects
desktop) may also have effects. EC design factors can be such as available public information, government regula-
divided into payment and logistics support, website features, tions, legal constraints, and situational factors. For exam-
and consumer services. Liang and Lai (2002) classified them ple, tax rates may affect online shopping (see Einav et al.
into motivational and hygiene factors and found motivational 2014).
factors to be more important than hygiene factors in attracting
online customers. Another factor that we include here is the Lately, attention has been given to customers’ behavior in
type of EC. For example, consumer behavior in m-commerce the mobile environment. For more information, see mobile-
may be unique and so is behavior during social shopping. marketer.com.