| Internet was one of the most important innovations in the 20th century,which has totally changed all aspect of the human life.E-commerce that is an application in the Internet age,can be referred to the method of transactions through the Internet connection.Corresponding to the business development,there are many types of e-commerce but this thesis only focuses on the business-to-consumer(B2C)type to examine and clarify consumer behaviors mechanism.In comparison with traditional commerce(called brick-and-mortar commerce),e-commerce has a lot of advantages and conveniences for both consumers and retailers.For instance,consumers are not limited by space and time that means they can buy anywhere and anytime.They can even buy products from other countries because the cross-border e-commerce is nowadays more and more popular such as Amazon.com(United States of America),T-mall(China).Consumers can also buy products or services with good prices because purchase online always has promotion.In term of e-retailers,they not only being unlimited by the space and time,but also economize the money because they do not need to have a shop(sometime in the big road)as in the traditional commerce.With the usefulness and conveniences,recently,e-commerce has been developing very fast in all over the world.But besides the conveniences,there are still some problems which come from its own inherent attributes and also from its participants,in which ethics of e-retailers have been marked as one of the most concerns of online consumers.Ethics of e-retailers can be understood as their right or wrong actions during the transaction with their online consumers from offering the information about the products/services,assuring the security and privacy of consumer sensitive information to the delivering of products and after-sales services.This thesis examined ethics of e-retailers in the consumer perspective,called consumers' perception regarding the ethics of e-retailers(abbr.CPEER).This construct can be related to the positive perceptions of consumers concerning the behavior of e-retailers who handle the transaction with confidential,honest,and sincere mode,which can assure consumers' benefits.Previous researches in the ethical field indicated that ethics of retailers in e-commerce is among crucial factors that significantly influence consumer behaviors.Because in comparison with traditional commerce,with the lack of face-to-face interaction between consumers and retailers,consumers always perceive a higher level of risks that may restrain their willingness to the transaction and may explain why they prefer to purchase in traditional stores.Previous researchers showed that consumers have been increasingly interested in the ethical issue when transacting online.As a result,it is necessary to research the impacts of the ethical issue on consumer behavior,especially in e-commerce.But to date,most of these researches have been executed in developed countries.In reality,developing countries apply inventions very fast in their countries.For instance,China is now the biggest e-commerce market in the world with its share of 42.4%,in comparison with 24.1%of the United States(2016).Especially,China's share in 2005 was only 0.6%,in comparison with 34.9%of the United States(McKinsey Global Institute(2018).This evidence indicated the importance of e-commerce in developing countries.Moreover,except China,in other developing countries,e-commerce is in the infancy stage,so that this notion is still new.In the consumers' perspective,e-commerce always exists a higher level of risk and uncertainty that can damage their interests.Furthermore,other supportive services in developing countries,such as logistics,payment medium are nowadays still inadequate for the operation and growth of e-commerce.For instance,in Vietnam,payment by cash is accounting for a large proportion in the business transaction.So that,this thesis attempts to deeper examine the ethical issue in developing countries and considers the e-commerce in Vietnam as the main context.Specifically,this thesis focuses on the ethical issue performed by retailers in Vietnam's e-commerce(B2C)and its impact on consumers' repurchase behavior.The results are very important in both theoretical and managerial significance.Previous research confirmed that the ethical issue of retailers in B2C e-commerce is among the most important factors affecting the online consumer repurchase behavior.Moreover,the actual development of emerging countries in e-commerce requires researchers to explore CPEER s e-commerce consumption in these countries.The findings of this thesis from Vietnam can also be extended and applied to other developing countries as the example in term of crucial importance of ethical practice in e-commerce.This research is mainly executed from the following perspectives:(1)The current thesis explores the implications of ethical issues in the process of e-retailers and online consumer's behaviors.After reviewing related research,this thesis asserted that the ethical issue of e-commerce retailers can be understood as the entire process of e-commerce retailers and online consumer transactions in term of personal information security and privacy,non-deception,fulfilment and after customer services.(2)This thesis reviewed the related literature from the following aspects.First of all,from the online consumer perspective,the ethical issue of retailers in B2C e-commerce is examined,that is,the consumer 's perception regarding the ethics of e-retailers(CPEER).The degree of e-retailer success is reflected the perception and performance of ethics of e-retailers with their customers in a confidential,honest,and sincere manner,and whether it can ensure its own interests in the e-commerce transaction process.Previous research shows that in comparison with the direct transactions in traditional physical stores,consumers and retailers cannot interact face-to-face in e-commerce,which leads consumers to perceive a higher level of transaction risk,which may inhibit their willingness to transact online.This also explains why Vietnamese consumers prefer to shop in traditional stores in comparison with online stores,it also shows that consumers ' subjective perceptions of the ethics of retailers in e-commerce will profoundly affect consumer purchasing behavior.Secondly,existing research has shown that online consumers are more concerned about the ethics of retailers.However,most of the studies so far are based on countries such as China and the United States,where e-commerce is more developed.E-commerce,as an emerging transaction method,is still in the initial stage of development in Vietnam.From the perspective of online consumers in Vietnam,e-commerce still exists extremely high risks and uncertainty,and unethical behavior of e-retailers may damage their own interests.Moreover,the supportive services for e-commerce in Vietnam(such as logistics,payment...)are still insufficient to reach the full potential of e-commerce,and cash payments still account for a large proportion of commercial transactions.Compared with payment by credit card or e-wallet(such as Ali Pay,WeChat Pay,or Amazon Pay),online consumers in Vietnam prefer cash on delivery.So that many consumers still prefer physical stores instead of online shopping.In sum,e-commerce is still in the initial stage of development process,hence the consumer habits of online shopping have not yet developed,and we need to deeper examine this factor.Thirdly,regarding the development of Vietnam and other developing countries,how to foster consumers to buy and repurchase is a key issue for the rapid and sustainable development of e-commerce in the future.Vietnam is one of the countries with rapid economic growth rate in the Asia-Pacific region.Vietnam's economy has maintained a high growth rate in recent years.Since the Internet was introduced into Vietnam in 1995,there have been 50.5 million Internet users in the 94.93 million population(as of 2017).The reports in this field showed that about 6.6 million Internet users will participate in online shopping in 2021,but in comparison,the sales scale of e-commerce in Vietnam is still small,accounting for only about 2.8%of the total retail market.According to the survey,although the total amount from online shopping of Vietnamese consumers in 2017 was only US $ 160,it has been increasing rapidly year by year.(3)Formal research is carried out according to the following logical lines.First,a CPEER scale for Vietnam is developed,which includes five dimensions:privacy policy,security policy,non-deception,fulfillment,and consumer services.Then,the qualitative and quantitative methods were used to test the proposed research model.In the research model,there are five main variables.In which,ethics of retailer is a sole interdependent variable.This variable is considered as a second order construct,which includes five components,namely,privacy policy,security policy,non-deception,fulfillment,and consumer services.This thesis will present detail about the process for constructing this new scale of CPEER in developing countries.Besides,consumer repurchase intention is the dependent variable.The main focus of this thesis is the relationship between CPEER and consumer repurchase intention.There are two mediating variables in this thesis,namely consumer trust and perceived uncertainty that participate in the relationship between retailers' ethics and consumer repurchase intention.In addition,this thesis proposed consumer online shopping habit as a moderating variable of the relationship between consumer perceived uncertainty and consumer repurchase intention.Furthermore,this thesis will also examine whether existing the differences between two developing countries(China and Vietnam)in terms of the relationships between proposed variables.According to Hofstede 's 6D framework on cultural and power differences between countries,the current thesis uses country factors as moderating variables,aiming to more fully understand the influence of CPEER on repurchase intention by comparing China and Vietnam.Specifically,this thesis is among the first research that focus on the problems as follow:Firstly,consumer perception regarding the ethics of electronic retailer has a positive effect on consumer trust.Secondly,consumer trust has a negative effect on uncertainty perception.Thirdly,consumer uncertainty perception negatively influence on consumer repurchase intention.Fourthly,consumers' perception regarding the ethics of e-retailer positively influence consumer repurchase intention.Moreover,online shopping habits and country factors(China and Vietnam)may play a moderating role in the relationship between CPEER and consumers' repurchase intention.To reach the end,this thesis includes two main parts:in the first part,we executed series of research(items generation,items purification,and items reliability assessment and construct validity)to propose and construct a new CPEER scale in developing countries,with the context of Vietnam.In the second part,to test the proposed research model,we applied both qualitative and quantitative methodology including three research.The first research was qualitative research with the group discussion technique.In this research,experts in English langue and marketing were invited to participate in.The second research was preliminary quantitative research with the face to face interview.In this research,100 MBA students in marketing at Hanoi University of Industry are invited to participate.And third research was the official research with the respondents were online shoppers from an e-commerce platform in Vietnam.Specifically,we employed a survey questionnaire to collect data from a sample of 518 online shoppers who have purchased in the last three months.The study uses AMOS software to examine the influence of country factors through multiple group analysis(comparison between China and Vietnam,with 245 valid questionnaires in China).This thesis found that:Firstly,based on the literature review and suggestions of previous researchers,we found that almost all research in ethics issue within e-commerce has been executed in developed countries while little ones have been carried out in developing countries where there are a lot of different elements in comparison with developed countries such as economic development,technology,culture,consumer buying habit.The results confirmed the importance of e-retailers'ethics effect on consumer behaviors.In the context of developing countries,consumer services is a new dimension that was adjusted in the construct of CPEER.In combination with original four components(privacy,security,non-deception and fulfillment)from Roman(2007)consumer services dimension is ranked in a high position among five components of CPEER.This finding is very important for literature in the ethical issue.Marketers and managers have to know the importance of perceived ethics in consumers' decision making and they are really interested in consumer services.Secondly,retailers' ethics indirectly influences the consumer repurchase intention through the mediation effects of consumer trust and perceived uncertainty.These evidences reconfirmed the findings of previous research,which means consumer trust is full mediation between retailers' ethics and consumer repurchase intention.As confirmed by previous marketing scholars,consumer repurchase intention and word-of-mouth are two main components of consumer loyalty in e-commerce.This thesis also supported the finding of the direct link between retailers' ethics and trust.Interestingly,in contrast with previous research,this thesis showed that retailers' ethics does not directly influence on consumer repurchase intention.These findings suggest marketers that online consumers could be easier to trust in e-retailers and to return to purchase if they perceive the ethical performance of partners in the transaction.Thirdly,previous research in e-commerce often listed consumer perceived uncertainty as a barrier but almost of them considered uncertainty in the same meaning with risks,a little research such as Li(2018)[4]focused on this factor.The current thesis focuses on the consumers who have transacted online in the last three months to have a thorough grasp of what factors can affect and stimulate them to repurchase from a specific retailer.The findings show that perceived uncertainty negatively affects consumer repurchase intention.This thesis contributes to the theory that retailers' ethics indirectly mitigate the negative impact of perceived uncertainty through consumer trust.According to Pavlou(2007),retailers' ethics and consumer trust can be considered as an important“uncertainty mitigators”factor.Besides,findings indicated the crucial role of consumer trust in mitigating uncertainty perception.Moreover,the consumer trust also contributes as a mediating between retailers' ethics and perceived uncertainty.That means,ethics does not directly decrease consumer uncertainty but indirectly via consumer trust.In addition,consumer trust has significant effect on consumer repurchase intention.This finding supports the confirmation of previous research.Fourthly,consumer online shopping habit is the important factor in e-commerce as confirmed by previous research,especially in developing countries,with the lack of trust,and the high level of risks,consumers prefer to buy in brick-and-mortar stores than in e-store[1].The finding showed that online shopping habit has a negative moderating effect in the relationship between consumer perceived uncertainty and consumer repurchase intention.Country factors(China-Vietnam)have significant mediating effects on consumer trust on perceived uncertainty and perceived uncertainty affecting consumers'repurchase intention,but adjustments in CPEER affecting consumer trust and CPEER affecting consumers' willingness to repurchase the effect is not significant.(4)This thesis also has the following management significance.Firstly,this thesis proposed a new scale of CPEER in developing countries.This scale includes five dimensions,namely,privacy,security,non-deception,fulfillment,and consumer services.In which,consumer services is the new component in comparison with previous works.From these findings,e-retailers have a better understanding of the importance of their ethics performance in the consumers' perspective.It can be viewed as one of the most important factors that stimulate consumer behaviors.So e-retailers have to perform well the ethical issues in the practice and have also suitable communication policies to their consumers.Secondly,previous research considered consumer trust is among the most crucial factors in e-commerce.As a result,e-retailers have to build and maintain their consumers' trust.From the finding of this thesis,e-retailers could apply and perform well the business ethics because this is an important factor that fosters consumer trust,which in turn decreases the level of consumer perceived uncertainty,especially in e-commerce in developing countries.To develop consumer trust,e-retailers have to provide clear information of products and services;to assure the security of consumer in the transaction;to ascertain the sensitive information of consumer;especially,in the context of developing countries,e-retailers need to give the better services for their consumers.Thirdly,the findings suggested to the policymakers focusing more about the ethical issue in B2C e-commerce in particularly as well as e-commerce in general to reach the full potential of e-commerce that corresponds with the trend of the world.In the developing countries,consumers still prefer purchase in conventional stores because they can diminish their perceived uncertainty in the online transaction.Moreover,the technologies and other complementary services,such as logistic,banking services,have not been suitable yet for the development of e-commerce.As a consequence,the policymakers could have better solutions for e-commerce,and digital economy as well.This thesis also gave an insight into the effect of consumer perceived uncertainty which can prevent consumer behavior.This thesis suggests to the managers that they have to mitigate consumer uncertainty by suitable solutions.As noted above,there are two types of consumer perceived uncertainty,one concerning to retailer and another relating to products.Nowadays,with the advent of new technologies,there are a lot of methods to diminish consumer perceived uncertainty.For instance,retailers could use videos of the products or purchase via live stream.Fourthly,this thesis focused on the important role of consumer online shopping habit which can give to the marketers about how to attract the attention of consumers,and repurchase intention as well.For instance,besides a low price,online consumers also need other factors such as coupon,playfulness,easy-to-use,and usefulness.Moreover,in digital 4.0,the roles of consumers have been transformed from passive to active roles.As a result,one of the solutions is to stimulate consumers participating more in the co-creation values for the firms,as we called“user-generated contents”.From the active participation,consumer online shopping habit will be stimulated.Beside it,e-commerce firms need to apply new solutions to motivate consumer online shopping habit.5-In the fifth perspective,this study also has the following limitations.First of all,collected data used in this study was constrained to data pertaining to online shoppers who already had the experience in e-commerce and who has purchased in the last three months from a specific online website.Secondly,this thesis considered retailers' ethics as a second-order construct and examined with consequences such as trust,uncertainty,and consumer repurchase intention.Therefore,future research could examine other consequences of retailers5 ethics to have a more comprehensive understanding of this issue.Thirdly,consumer trust is considered as a uni-dimensional construct but other research suggested that trust is a complex construct.Last but not least,this thesis could overlook some other important mediating and moderating variables that can better explain the relationship between retailers' ethics and consumer repurchase intention.This gives the opportunity for future research. |
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