The Effects of Online Shopping Context Cues on Consumers’ Purchase Intention for Cross-Border E-Commerce Sustainability

Abstract

China is currently the world’s largest cross-border e-commerce purchaser and destination country. Therefore, how to promote consumer online shopping is the most important goal for cross-border e-commerce sustainability. Meanwhile, the previous research has not empirically verified the precise effect of online shopping context and perceived value on consumers’ cross-border online purchase intention. To address this gap, this study analyzes the online shopping context that determines consumers’ purchase intention and innovatively identifies four cues that promote this consumption behavior in cross-border e-commerce, such as online promotion cues, content marketing cues, personalized recommendation cues, and social review cues. It proposes a theoretical model based on cue utilization theory and stimulus-organism-response model, which introduces this four cues and brand familiarity in analyzing the effects on consumers’ purchase intention in cross-border online shopping (CBOS). In addition, the paper examines the mediating role of perceived functional value and perceived emotional value. Survey data collected 372 cross-border online consumers from China and the PLS-SEM method was used to empirically test the proposed model. The results show that these four cross-border online shopping context cues have a significantly positive impact on consumers’ purchase intention. Brand familiarity has significantly negative moderating effects between the four cues and the perceived functional value, while brand familiarity also negatively moderates the relationship between online promotion cues, social review cues, and perceived emotional value, respectively.