A Study On The Factors Affecting Consumer's Use Of Cross-border E-commerce Platforms

Globalization and the popularization of the Internet have stimulated the rapid development of e-commerce in China in recent years.E-commerce has various development trends,one of which is the shift to cross-border e-commerce.Due to the growth of China's foreign trade and the upgrade of domestic consumption structure,many foreign brands and products have also become the option of Chinese consumers.The development of cross-border importing e-commerce is dependent on the support of national policies.The latest New Customs Taxation Policy for Retailing Imports via E-Commerce Platforms("Four-Eight New Policy")clarified the definition of imported goods and the tax rules.The demand for high-quality products has given rise to the overseas purchasing agents as well as the cross-border e-commerce platforms that import goods to China.Among them,Tmall International,JD Global and Net Ease kaola.com are the three leaders.In addition,xiaohongshu.com and ymatou.com have also gained high recognition among specific customers while reaching a larger target market.With the continuous expansion of cross-border importing e-commerce websites and preferential policies and subsidies,consumers gradually switch from overseas shopping or purchasing through agents to cross-border importing e-commerce websites.The operation model of cross-border importing e-commerce platform differs from one another,which can usual be classified into bonded import and self-operated import.Tmall International and JD Global adopt the bonded import while the import of the platforms of Netease Kaola.com and Mitao is self-operated.As an shopping model that has emerged in recent years,studies on the cross-border importing e-commerce are still very limited,compared with the large amount of studies on consumers' online shopping behaviors.Research on consumers' choices of cross-border e-commerce platforms and the reason behind their choices is still very rare.This research studies and identifies the factors influencing consumers' behavior of using cross-border importing e-commerce platforms,which will provide the basis for cross-border shopping websites to make decisions,better meet consumers' needs,and offer better services to consumers.This paper aims to enrich the research on the factors related to the use of cross-border e-commerce platforms and provide feasible advice on the development of cross-border importing e-commerce.A combination of empirical research and literature research was employed in this research.Literature research was used to identify the factors that affect consumers' online shopping behavior and thereby relevant measurement scales were designed.Based on the Technology Acceptance Model(TAM),by taking the development characteristics of cross-border e-commerce into account,this paper used some factors as the independent variables that affect consumers' behavior of using cross-border e-commerce websites,including perceived security,perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness.Meanwhile,consumer online shopping experience,product prices,logistics timeliness and platform service quality were introduced as the four external variables and the demographic factor as the control variable.Correlation analysis and regression analysis have found that perceived usefulness has an intermediary effect on the price and the service quality of the platform.Consumers' behavior of using cross-border importing e-commerce was adopted as the dependent variable.Based on these variables,relevant hypotheses were proposed and questionnaire was designed to collect data.SPSS 20.0 was utilized for reliability and validity test,correlation analysis and regression analysis.The results indicate that perceived ease of use,perceived usefulness,and perceived security all have a positive effect on consumers' behavior of using cross-border e-commerce websites.Product prices,logistics timeliness,and platform service quality also have a positive effect on perceived usefulness.Among them,the price of goods affects consumers' behavior of using cross-border e-commerce websites completely through perceived usefulness,and the quality of platform service indirectly affects consumers' final behavior of using cross-border e-commerce websites through perceived usefulness.Finally,based on the findings of this study,some suggestions on the development of the cross-border importing e-commerce platforms are proposed.