25-07-2012, 01:37 PM
ONLINE SHOPPING ACCEPTANCE MODEL A CRITICAL SURVEY OF CONSUMER FACTORS IN ONLINE SHOPPING
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ABATRACT
Since the late 1990s, online shopping has taken off as an increasing number of consumers purchase increasingly diversified products on the Internet. Given that how to attract and retain consumers is critical to the success of online retailers, research on the antecedents of consumer acceptance of online shopping has attracted widespread attention. There has yet to be a holistic view of online shopping acceptance from the perspective of consumers. In this research, we conducted an extensive survey of extant related studies and synthesized their findings into a reference model called OSAM (Online Shopping Acceptance Model) to explain consumer acceptance of online shopping. Our literature survey reveals that a myriad of factors have been examined in the context of online shopping and mixed results on those factors have been reported. The proposed model helps reconcile conflicting findings, discover recent trends in this line of research, and shed light on future research directions.
Consumer Factors in Online Shopping Acceptance
Drawing upon the extant literature, we summarize individual factors and their impact on consumer online shopping in Table 1. In particular, we identified nine types of consumer factors, including demographics, Internet experience, normative beliefs, shopping orientation, shopping motivation, personal traits, online experience, psychological perception, and online shopping experience. Among them, demographics were the focus of early studies, while psychological perception and online experience (e.g., emotion) have been examined in more recent studies. It is not surprising that some consumer factors were found to have consistent effects across different studies, while others were found to have mixed or even contradictory impacts. To enable better understanding of the results, we provide alternative explanations for some of the mixed findings. In addition, we analyze how the importance of the nine factors evolves over time.
A Reference Model for Consumer Acceptance of Online Shopping
Based on the detailed review of extant literature on consumer factors that have influence on online shopping acceptance and the relationships among those factors, we develop a reference model called Online Shopping Acceptance Model (OSAM) by synthesizing the identified factors and presenting a holistic view of antecedents of consumer acceptance of online shopping. OSAM extends the TAM [Chen et al. 2002; Davis 1989] by taking specific characteristics of online shopping environments into consideration.
Discussion
As discussed above, consumer factors and their effects on online shopping intention and behavior have been studied from a variety of perspectives, and related research findings have greatly improved online retailing practice. As a relatively new research field, there are still a lot of research questions that remain unsolved. In this section, we identify some research issues and trends that merit further investigation. In addition, we discuss several research design issues that are of significance to future empirical studies. The research trends identified in this study also highlight a few managerial issues that should be appealing to online retailers.