Impacts Of Interactions Between Reputation And Search Costs On C2C Sales

The reputation of the seller and the searching-expense cost during the process of shopping from buyer has an important impact on the C2C transactions. The study on the relationship between reputation and trading volume and the relationship between searching expense and trading volume has only concerned about the direct effect of a single factor, neither combining each other from the point of consumer shopping decision-making behavior, no analyzing the interaction of credibility and search costs in the process of C2C transaction volume. As a result, there is no agreement on the conclusion in such problem. It’s not only important in theory when we research the influence from reputation to search costs, but in practice, arming vital practical values to the sellers and buyers in C2C transaction and the supervisors in the C2C platform.This article proposes the decision transactions model of buyers in the C2C shopping based on the behavior theory of consumer shopping, holding that information of the product and the seller-store and the search cost from the buyer have a major impact on the trading volume after reviewing and summarizing the existing research. Firstly, the study analyzes the effect on the trading volume from the credibility and search cost’s point respectively, which means the credibility has an inverted "U" shaped feature to the role of trading volume. That is, in the process of the seller credit from low to high variation, their relationship between each other is creative before the reputation reaches a certain value (or range). However, their relationship will be negative if the value of seller credit exceed the range. Further, the reputation and searching expense are combined,the differences and connections of the two above are researched. Results show that the positive effect of reputation on trading volume are offsetted by the negative effect of searching expense on trading volume, the inverted "U" is shifted to the left.In this study,we taking into account the effect of reputation and search costs of trading volume,using the consumer shopping decision theory,reputation mechanism theory and clue theory,we explain the mechanism of the effect of reputation and search costs of trading volume.Meanwhile,the relationship of reputation and search cost on C2C trading are enriched, we provides a new idea for this field,at the same time, the conclusion of this research is of great practical significance,the buyer should pay attention to the effect of the interaction between the reputation and search costs, the seller should maintain and update the product information and store information in time, and provide an easy way for buyers to search, C2C trading system designers also need to actively improve the existing evaluation mechanism.