An Study On Consumer Acceptance Of Products In Online Shopping-Based On A Transaction Cost Model

In China, there is no doubt that electronic commerce is one of the focus of people's attention in the area of economic, more and more products are being marketed on the web. However, little effort has been spent on studying what product is more suitable for marketing electronically and why. According to transaction cost theory, this study develops a model to predict consumer acceptance of electronic-shopping to tackle the problem. It is assumed that customers will go with a channel that has lower transactional costs. In other words, whether a customer would buy a product electronically is determined by the transaction cost of the channel. The transaction cost of a product on the web is determined by the uncertainty. An empirical study in ChengDu was conducted to test the model. Five products with different characteristic(software, costume, toothpaste, car, and plane ticket) were used in the study. The results indicate that: different products do have different customer acceptance on the electronic market; the customer acceptance is determined by the transaction cost, which is in turn determined by the uncertainty and asset specificity; when consumers perceive less transaction cost, less uncertainty, less asset specificity in online shopping and more online experiences, they are more likely to buy online. This research develop the consumer acceptance model based on transaction cost theory by a empirical study, and examine the consumers' behavior in online shopping. As the sample was collected in western area in mainland, the generalizability of transaction cost theory in mainland was examined. In addition, the results could help the electronic-shop to select the more suitable products to sell, and let them know how to change some attributes of products to make the products more marketable online.