Analyzing the influence of buyer perceptions on perceived expensiveness : a comparative study in E-commerce

Abstract

E-commerce has become one of the most discussed topics in the today’s world which enables people to purchase goods with ease in online mode by offering enhanced user experience while creating many choices of products. This has emerged with many business models and expanding into variety of product types. The monetary value of the purchases will create more profits for the vendors while buyers get the higher satisfaction proportional to the monetary value they spend. This research study intends to identify the influence of e-commerce platform and product purchase specific buyer perceptions on the consumer behavior of having expensively perceived online purchasing experience. As the platform specific features, it is considered Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Intimacy, and as the product purchase specific feature Perceived Value is considered. The behavior of having expensively online purchasing experience was measured by the analyzing the Perceived Expensiveness of the buyers’ online shopping experience. This research study was conducted as a quantitative study by adopting casual comparative research design which is based on data gathered by a cross-sectional survey from the population in Sri Lanka who are having online shopping experience and, 400 responses were captured through an online mode questionnaire survey. The data analysis was carried out in the perspectives of descriptive and inferential. The research objectives were validated by hypothesis testing carried out using the statistical method of non-parametric Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to identify the influence of platform and product purchase specific perceptions on perceived expensiveness of different groups of observations based on the level of respective perceptions. The findings demonstrated that the Perceived Intimacy is having significant influence on the behavior of having expensively perceived online shopping experience in generally and in Consumer to Consumer(C2C) platform specific as well. Perceived Value showed significant influence on Business to Consumer(B2C) specific expensively perceived online purchasing experience. Therefore, the outcome of this research study suggests that it is required for the e-commerce providers to build up confidence on buyers to have more close interaction with the platforms in generally and specifically Consumer to Consumer platforms while it is required to create significant value in product purchases through the Business to Consumer(B2C) platforms to make buyers to have expensive purchasing interaction with the platforms.