B2C E-commerce Websites Research Articles

Evaluation of China’s B2C E-commerce Website: An Analysis of Factors that Influence Online Buying Decision

This paper adopts a qualitative method to study influencing factors, expands the field research, processes data based on factor analysis, and finally finds out primary factors that influence online buying decision. On the basis of primary factors, it builds up an evaluation system for B2C e-commerce websites to assess the representatives in each industry. The assessment results include current situation of China’s B2C e-commerce websites and their advantages and disadvantages. In terms of those findings, targeted strategies and recommendations are proposed to promote the development of China’s e-commerce websites.

Customers’ Attitude towards E-commerce in Bangladesh: An Empirical Study on Some Selected B2C E-commerce Sites

This study aims at identifying salient attributes of e-commerce sites in Bangladesh. The study tries to assess the perception of customers about the performance of major-e-commerce sites on those attributes. Eighteen potential attributes are preliminarily selected, and after conducting a pre-test on 50 sample respondents eleven salient attributes are selected for the study. Finally 108 respondents are taken as the study sample. Mertin Fishbein’s multi-attribute attitude models adopted to measure the customers’ attitude. Respondents were asked their belief and evaluation towards some B2C ecommerce sites. The benchmark of positive belief is hypothesized as 4 in a 5 point scale. The significance of the difference between observed mean of customers’ belief and the predetermined benchmark is measured by left tailed Z statistic. It is found that the sample respondents believe that the performance of the B2C e-commerce sites in Bangladesh is up to the benchmark in teams of only two attributes among the eleven. The findings of this study may be used by the existing B2C e-commerce companies as well as by the future e-commerce entrepreneurs in Bangladesh to establish a quality and customer-driven B2C e-commerce industry. Even the customers will be benefitting if the industry considers the findings of the study.Journal of Business and Technology (Dhaka) Vol.10(1) 2015; 37-54

Mining Product Adopter Information from Online Reviews for Improving Product Recommendation

We present in this article an automated framework that extracts product adopter information from online reviews and incorporates the extracted information into feature-based matrix factorization for more effective product recommendation. In specific, we propose a bootstrapping approach for the extraction of product adopters from review text and categorize them into a number of different demographic categories. The aggregated demographic information of many product adopters can be used to characterize both products and users in the form of distributions over different demographic categories. We further propose a graph-based method to iteratively update user- and product-related distributions more reliably in a heterogeneous user--product graph and incorporate them as features into the matrix factorization approach for product recommendation. Our experimental results on a large dataset crawled from J ing D ong , the largest B2C e-commerce website in China, show that our proposed framework outperforms a number of competitive baselines for product recommendation.

Evaluation of B2C website based on the usability factors by using fuzzy AHP & hierarchical fuzzy TOPSIS

In today's technology, electronic trading transaction via internet has been utilized properly with rapid growth. This paper intends to evaluate related to B2C e-commerce website in order to find out the one which meets the usability factors better than another. The influential factors to B2C e-commerce website are determined for two big retailer websites. The factors are investigated based on the consideration of several studies and conformed to the website characteristics. The evaluation is conducted by using different methods namely fuzzy AHP and hierarchical fuzzy TOPSIS so that the final evaluation can be compared. Fuzzy triangular number is adopted to deal with imprecise judgment under fuzzy environment.

Evaluation of e-commerce websites using fuzzy hierarchical TOPSIS based on E-S-QUAL

In the wake of the rapid emergence of e-commerce, its evaluation is of great theoretical and practical importance. Among the various types of e-commerce, business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce has become a key, and especially influential, retailing channel. Its ascendancy raises core issues with respect to how the customer is to be satisfied by, and therefore inclined to trust, e-commerce websites. B2C e-commerce website evaluation, therefore, is an important related issue. First, while a number of studies have studied B2C e-commerce website evaluation using various multiple-criteria-decision-making (MCDM) methods, they have focused only on the perceived service quality of B2C e-commerce websites. In fact, it is generally recognized that service quality is determined by the difference between the expected service level (which expectation is derived from information obtained before the service experience) and the actual, perceived service level; this concept, then, should be also be afforded due consideration in B2C e-commerce website evaluation. Second, among the various MCDM approaches, TOPSIS, which involves the consideration of both the positive-ideal solution (PIS) and the negative-ideal solution (NIS), is especially pertinent to the complex decision-making entailed in the evaluation of B2C e-commerce websites. Third, the human element of subjectivity in the evaluation of B2C e-commerce websites needs to be considered in order to enable modeling of real-life website-evaluation situations. Finally, the hierarchical structure of the evaluation criteria between the main dimensions and their sub-criteria should be considered. To reflect these issues, in this paper, we present a fuzzy hierarchical TOPSIS based on E-SERVQUAL (E-S-QUAL). This approach effectively considers the raised issues and preserves the core concept of E-S-QUAL (the extended version of SERVQUAL) for measurement of electronic service quality in the e-commerce environment. The empirical case study of B2C e-commerce provides the researchers and practitioners to understand in a better way the evaluation process from a practical point of view. In addition, core finding of this study is that the comparison results with other MCDM methods further verify the robustness of the proposed approach. It implies that this method potentially can be applied to performance evaluation of similar service sectors.

Individual level culture influence on online consumer iTrust aspects towards purchase intention across cultures: A S-O-R model

Building trust and understanding its relationship with online purchasing decisions is important to business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce firms seeking to extend their consumers reach globally. Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model, this paper examines the moderating role of culture on the relationship between B2C web design (web accessibility, visual appearance and social networking services (SNS)) and interpersonal trust (iTrust), cognitive and affect-based trust that trigger online purchasing intentions. Motivation of this study includes, testing and comparing individual consumer level cultural (individualism and uncertainty avoidance) values as moderators in our research model across two different societies (Australia and Pakistan). The data of the survey were analysed using structural equation modelling-partial least square (SEM-PLS) approach. The results highlight the need to consider cultural differences when identifying the mix of web design strategies to employ in B2C e-commerce websites, not only at the country level but also in one culturally diverse country such as Australia.

An Empirical Study of the Quality Evaluation in Logistic Service of the B2C E-commerce Companies in China

As the outsourcing of key suppliers and business processes becomes increasingly popular, the evaluation and selection of the logistics outsourcing companies is of critical importance in supply chain management. However, there are few quantitative studies on the investigation of the main affecting factors of the logistics service quality focused on the market in China, which is one of the developing countries with the highest online population growth. This paper is an attempt to identify the main factors affecting the logistics service satisfaction of the B2C e-commerce sites in China, and Fisher’s exact test is applied to identify the main affecting factors of logistics service satisfaction and evaluation. The results could be the guideline for the e-commerce companies in terms of improving their outsourcing logistics services.

Consumers\' Demand and Online Promotion of the Food Retailing Through the E-Commerce Websites in China

Over the last decade online shopping provides an open window for producers who will market their products and becomes one of the most rapidly growing forms of shopping. In order to take full advantage of the potential offered by the internet, it is essential that the e-commerce websites meet the customer requirements and be prepared and organized with highly usable manner. This study is an attempt to identify the factors that may have an impact on consumers' probability to buy food through the internet and investigate the current issues and challenges for the top 10 B2C e-commerce websites in terms of promoting food retailing in China. Fuzzy TOPSIS is employed to evaluate the quality of these websites based on the conceptual model of willingness to buy products through internet for the online consumers. The managerial implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

Online Promotion of the E-Commerce Websites in Retail Market in China

For companies to take full advantage of the potential offered by the Web, it is essential that their e-commerce websites be prepared and organized in highly usable manner. Companies with better website quality will save time and money, promote customer satisfaction and continued business, and gain an advantage over their competitors. This paper investigates the current issues and challenges for the top 10 B2C e-commerce websites in terms of promoting and marketing their products and services in China. AHP and Fuzzy TOPSIS are employed to evaluate the quality of these websites from the website design, transmission speed, popularity of the website, information quantity and the service quality. The managerial implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

Quality Criteria for B2C E-Commerce Websites in Brazil

The objective of this study is to compare the ranking of the quality of e-commerce B2C portals in Brazil according to explicit criteria described in the article with the ranking according to the INFO 100 ranking. Theoretical research is first described, followed by the construction of eight self-established criteria of B2C portal quality measures and identification and compilation of requirements used by the I-Best, Opinia, E-bit and other institutes. After that, a portal quality evaluation is made by the web site content analysis; finally, a comparison of the rankings is presented. The obtained results showed that in spite of the lack of knowledge of the criteria adopted by INFO100 [1], there could be agreement with the criteria adopted in this study, because there was agreement with the results for the Ponto Frio portal. Therefore, it was concluded that the eight criteria used in this study can be useful in a quality analysis of B2C electronic portals.

The Interactive Strategy of B2C E-Commerce Website

With the fiercer competition of B2C e-commerce websites, interactivity has gradually caught the attention of businesses, which signifies the importance of studying the method to improving web interactivity so as to provide better services for customers. Based on the supposition that the proper setting of interacting way can improve interactivity effectively, this paper discusses the proper methods from the aspects of interactivity between the website and customers, the interactivity between the service client and customers and the interactivity among customers according to the relevant theories of Applied Statistics. Through the analysis on the comprehensive information of the interactivity of the 100 B2C e-commerce websites based on the judgment sampling of non-probability, the systematic, comprehensive interactive strategy of B2C e-commerce website is proposed.

Adoption of Social Media by Online Retailers

In the online environment, the absence of social presence may prevent consumers from purchasing online, while it can enhance their trust, loyalty and enjoyment toward the e-retailer. Thus, today many online retailers try to create social presence by adopting media-rich technologies. In this paper, the authors assess to what degree social media cues are currently adopted by thriving web-vendors and on that basis speculate about future developments. To this purpose, 210 top B2C e-commerce websites have been content analyzed to identify how they differ in the deployment of diverse social media cues. While a wide range of social media cues are adopted by a majority of top e-retailers, a number of more advanced social media features like avatars, recommendation agents, and video-streams are in their infancy where adoption is concerned. The paper demonstrates that the utilization of social media features differs according to the monetary and symbolic value of products sold by the e-commerce vendors.

Rank B2C e-commerce websites in e-alliance based on AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS

E-alliance is the union of e-commerce and its success and efficiency is related to comprehensive quality of e-commerce. Thus, ranking e-commerce websites in e-alliance is of importance, which is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. This paper proposes an evaluation model based on analytic hierarchy process (AHP), fuzzy sets and technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), to tackle the issue in fuzzy environment. The AHP is applied to analyze the structure of ranking problem and to determine weights of the criteria, fuzzy sets is utilized to present ambiguity and subjectivity with linguistic values parameterized by triangular fuzzy numbers, and TOPSIS method is used to obtain final ranking. Case analysis is conducted to illustrate the utilization of the model for the problem. It demonstrates the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed model.

Modeling roles of subjective norms and eTrust in customers' acceptance of airline B2C eCommerce websites

Airline companies have increasingly employed electronic commerce (eCommerce) for strategic purposes, most notably in order to achieve long-term competitive advantage and global competitiveness by enhancing customer satisfaction as well as marketing efficacy and managerial efficiency. eCommerce has now emerged as possibly the most representative distribution channel in the airline industry. In this study, we describe an extended technology acceptance model (TAM), which integrates subjective norms and electronic trust (eTrust) into the model, in order to determine their relevance to the acceptance of airline business-to-customer (B2C) eCommerce websites (AB2CEWS). The proposed research model was tested empirically using data collected from a survey of customers who had utilized B2C eCommerce websites of two representative airline companies in South Korea (i.e., KAL and ASIANA) for the purpose of purchasing air tickets. Path analysis was employed in order to assess the significance and strength of the hypothesized causal relationships between subjective norms, eTrust, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude toward use, and intention to reuse. Our results provide general support for an extended TAM, and also confirmed its robustness in predicting customers' intention to reuse AB2CEWS. Valuable information was found from our results regarding the management of AB2CEWS in the formulation of airlines' Internet marketing strategies.

Development and Testing of an E-Commerce Web Site Evaluation Model

The scope of this research is to develop and test a model for evaluating B2C e-commerce Web sites. Consequently, this study seeks to investigate the relationship between the Web site interface of B2C e-commerce and virtual customer behavior, concentrating on purchasing attitude and intention. The objective of this article is, therefore, to research which features of a virtual store effectively influence the user purchasing process via the Internet. In order to achieve this aim, the technology acceptance model was adapted for pertinent theoretical references about consumer behavior on the Web. The model developed was then tested and validated through a structural equation modeling approach. An empirical analysis of the CD e-retailing industry in Brazil was then conducted. The study concludes that, for the electronic commerce of CDs, ease of use, trust, pleasure, and attractiveness as perceived by visitors to CD e-retailing Web sites are key issues for understanding customer attitude and purchasing intention.