Empirical Studies Of Individual Consumers Willingness To Buy Influence On Subjective Norms And Networks

The Internet era which is full of fierce market competition is coming. On the onehand, statistics show that the growth of domestic online shopping customers has beenbecoming slow since2011, and that the development of e-shopping market can notonly depend on the growing number of consumers in the future, but also rely on therise in consumption depth. On the other hand, with the rapid development of theexpansion of consumers’ demand for personality and social networks, Chineseconsumers try to integrate into groups and highlight their personalities. Thee-commerce enterprises who want to compete for more market share, can no longersolely rely on the promotion and advertising, but should also pay attention to thecustomers’ personalities and needs, to communicate with consumers intiatively, anddesign the products and websites from their perspectives, in order to attract moreconsumers, enhance satisfaction and trust for the e-commerce company. How toaccurately identify the personalities and motivations of consumers, how to executedifferent marketing communication for different consumers or groups with differentpersonalities at different angles, how to use the social networks to affect consumers’willingness of purchasing online, is the current problem that e-commerce businessesneed to resolve.Throughout the research of domestic and foreign scholars on the onlinepurchasing willingness of consumers, the related theories have been much mature.Many scholars have studied the online purchasing willingness from different angles,and the technology acceptance model as one of the basic theories has been widelyused in the study of consumers’ online purchasing behavior. But most scholars havetaken the objective factors as the external variables which impact the perceivedusefulness, perceived ease of use and purchasing willingness, failing in depth to studyconsumers’ personalities. However, the online purchasing willingness comes from thesubjective perception of consumers, so the psychology of consumers should be animportant factor. In addition, consumers as individuals in society, which not only hasindividual psychological characteristics (such as personality), but also have beenaffected by the environmental impact of psychosocial factors (such as the subjectivenorm). Therefore, the study of consumers’ personalities influencing subjective normsand the online purchasing willingness needs to go deeper.From the perspective of consumers’ psychology, this paper divides the personality into five personality dimensions (extraversion, agreeableness, openness toexperience, conscientiousness and emotional) according to the five factor theory, andbuilts the model of consumers’ personalities influencing subjective norms and onlinepurchasing willingness based on the theory of technology acceptance model, applyingthe practical empirical research methods to find the influence and path of subjectivenorms and the five dimensions of personality between online purchasing willingness,in order to provide a reference for the practical and theoretical development ofe-commerce enterprises.In this study, a total of330questionnaires were given out and298effectivesamples were collected. The sample data descriptive statistics analysis, reliability andvalidity analysis and path analysis via SPSS19.0have all reached satisfactory results.Finally, the path analysis shows that the agreeableness, openness to experience andconscientiousness dimensions of personality produce a positive role in promotingperceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and willingness of purchasing online. Theextraversion dimension only impacts the online purchasing willingness by influencingperceived ease of use. The emotional dimension has no significant impact onperceived usefulness or perceived ease of use. All in all, personalities affect the onlinepurchasing willingness significantly. The extraversion, agreeableness and openness toexperience dimensions of personality positively impact the subjective norms, theconscientiousness and emotional dimensions has no significant impact on thesubjective norms. Overall, personalities affect the subjective norms significantly. Thesubjective norms not only impact the online purchasing willingness directly, but alsoinfluence the perceived usefulness. Based on the above findings, this study presentssome marketing suggestions for the e-businesses.