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An Empirical Study of Online Shopping in Mainland China
Abstract
The Internet has developed rapidly in China in recent years. According to a report published by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNINC) [1] in July 2001, there were 26.5 million Internet users in China. 73.9% of these people visited Web stores and 31.9% of them had purchased products or paid for services on the Web. The growth is significant when compared to the data from July 2000, when there were only 16.9 million Internet users, 72.46% of whom had visited Web stores, and 16.28% had purchased products or paid for services on the Web. These statistics indicate an opportunity to businesses around the world to enter the Chinese electronic commerce (EC) markets. This huge potential market has already attracted the attention of big names in B2C EC such as yahoo and AOL. Chinese consumers possess cultural traits that are different from those of the westerner. According to Ackerman and Tellis [2], culture differences have an impact on online consumer’s shopping behavior. However, few previous studies on EC have taken the culture issues into consideration. Moreover, there is little research on the Chinese consumers’ intentions and attitudes to online shopping. The purpose of this research is to investigate the factors that affect the Chinese consumers intention to buy from the Internet. Specifically, this research has two main objectives. The first objective is to use current behavioral theories to elaborate a model that can identify key factors influencing intention to buy online. The second objective is to conduct an empirical study of Chinese consumers to test the validity of the proposed model. This study may also contribute to future research in the comparison of online shopping behavior between Chinese and other national cultures.
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