A Comparative Study Of Values’ Influence On Sino-U.S.Online Consumer Behavior

With the rapid development of information technology and Internet application, the network has become an inseparable part of people’s daily life and work. We can not ignore the contribution to the social and economics development by uprising of online retail industry and it strong development trend. As the E-marketing environment is constantly changing, online consumer behavior will be affected by the personal past experiences and major events, and then will produce seemingly irregular reaction. However, most E-marketing professionals and market planners seldom analyze the online consumer behavior from the value differences when they make marketing strategy, without paying enough attention to the different online consumer behavior with different values. In fact, everyone’s values were formed through acquisition and abstraction of their own experiences. Once formed, this values will have a huge influence on the individual’s way of life and behavior. Since one’s values provides a powerful inner drive for him to make a purchase and plays a decisive role on his purchasing behavior. Therefore, it is the ultimate decisive force to influence consumers purchase decisions.In recent years, quite a number of scholars have studied how the values affect the consumer behavior, but most researches are done in the traditional marketing environment. One of the representive researches if the Means-End Chain Theory proposed by Gutman (1982). It is the only theory which can directly reflect the interact relations of three factors:product attributes, consumer consequence and personal value in consumer purchasing behabior. However, up to now, no scholars have ever applied this theory in the research of values influence on online consumer behavior in the network environment.The dissertation introduces the Means-End Chain Theory to network environment for the first time, selects customized online notebook computer as the research object, and explores the differences of product attributes and consumption consequence under the influence of Sino-U.S. online consumer values from cross-cultural perspective. First of all, the author analyzes the correlation of product attributes, consumption consequence and personal values with correlation analysis. Secondly, the writer divides the two respondents from two countries into three different age groups:student group (18-24), white-collar group (25-30) and the elite group (30-40) with age variables, and then analyzes the differences of Sino-U.S. online consumer behaviors that different values influence on different age groups with single-factor variance analysis. Finally, the dissertation depicts how values influence the Network of Means-End Chain on the whole sample and all age groups of online consumers with the customization of laptop computer.This dissertation consist of five parts:Chapter1is introduction. On one hand, it introduces the background, significance, methods, contents, basic structures, innovation and drawbacks of the research. On the other hand, it gives a literature review and comment from two aspects:values and online consumer behavior; Chapter2is the retrospect of Means-End Chain Theory, including the meaning, elements and application in the marketing practice; Chapter3is the research design, including research hypothesis, research framework, sample selection, questionnaires description and methods of data processing; Chapter4is an analysis of the research results, including reliability and validity analysis, basic statistics analysis, factor analysis, hypothesis testing and network of means-end chain as well as the empirical conclusion; Chapter5is a comparative analysis of Sino-U.S. values and its application, including the comparative analysis of values of Sino-U.S. different age groups and marketing inspiration which values diversity bring to B2C industry.The results show that:the values have influence on Sino-U.S. consumer behavior; Values have different influence on the different age groups of Sino-U.S. online consumer behavior; Values have different influence on the same age group of Sino-U.S. online consumer behavior.