Big Data Analytics In An E-Commerce Context:Empirical Analysis Of German Customers' Satisfaction Of Online Purchasing Behavior

Ever since the concept of Big Data Analytics(BDA)emerged a few decades ago,the concept has raised not only the businesses' but also the researchers' attention.Many scholars have been studying the influences of BDA on business values.However,research on the customers' satisfaction of online purchasing behavior towards webpages applying the concept of BDA is still rare and mainly focused on the developing countries.This research aims to explore the influence of Big Data applications on German customers' satisfaction of online purchasing behavior exclusively focusing on various age groups and occupations.This study starts with the introduction section,including the research context,problem definition as well as research questions.Chapter 2 illustrates the relevant literature,which hypotheses can be built on.In order to do that,the definition of Big Data and the dimensions of Big Data will be reviewed.It follows up with the literature on the applications of Big Data used by e-commerce businesses and the culture's influence on customers' purchasing behavior including its relation to the German context.Literature review then provides an overview of e-commerce in Germany.Chapter 3 gives a clear understanding of the method that was used in order to address the research questions as well as the hypotheses that were illustrated.A quantitative method was applied to gather data through online and paper form surveys involving customers from several German regions,in particular including the cities of Berlin,Munich,Hamburg,Marburg,Halle,Cologne,and Aachen.Chapter 4 provides the analysis of the data gathered through the surveys.A total number of 318 German passport holders who have purchased goods on Amazon.de participated in the survey.The survey exclusively focused on the e-commerce platform Amazon.de as it is the most frequently used e-vendor in Germany.Demographic statistics,Cronbach's alpha,correlation analysis,significance test,analysis of variance test as well as regression analysis were conducted to predict German customers' satisfaction of online purchasing behavior.The outcome of the analysis which is shown in the same chapter indicates that there are two main groups of aspects with opposed influence on the German customers' satisfaction of online shopping behavior.The first group comprises the aspects of the information search system and the recommendation system employed by Amazon.de,and it is found to have positive significant effects.The second group comprising the aspects of privacy and security,and shopping addiction is found to have a negative significant effect.In the final section of this study,chapter 5 gives a discussion of the results of the analysis in accordance with the research question and the hypotheses.Given this,this chapter provides limitations of the study as well as recommendations for future studies.This study examines Germany as a developed country and thus contributes uniquely to the existing literature and improves the understanding of customers' responses in the Big Data era.Moreover,the research proves that the application of BDA within German e-commerce comes along both with numerous opportunities and with high challenges to the businesses.Besides,the study elaborates recommendations to e-vendors as to how to respond to the challenges.