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The impact of the web interface on
the consumer trust in E-commerce
(B2C)
A study submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Master of Information Management
at
THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD
by
XIANG LI
September 2011
2
Abstract
Internet has been developed speedily these years in china, and some new critical
issues appeared which affect the development of e-commerce. The approach of
online purchasing was accepted by the majority of internet users. In this context,
there are many problems which faced at online purchasing in china.
The aim of this study was to identify the situation of e-commerce in china and
explore the top problems which affect consumers’ trust in the design of website
interface. The study states the current environment of china e-commerce, then
examined consumers’ attitude towards online shopping.
This study used two research methods which contain literature review and survey.
The research reviews the literature which related to the trust and e-commerce website
design by previous researchers. Then a survey which used questionnaire was
conducted in order to gather quantitative data.
Finally, the study presents the relationship between trust and each main element in
the design of e-commerce website interface and states the online shopping trends in
china. Moreover, some positive suggestions are presented for the e-vendor to
improve their design of interface to maintain the current consumers and attract
potential consumers.
The survey responded by 138 participants in china who have online shopping
experiences. Consumers’ online shopping behavior and the main elements which
affect consumers’ trust of e-commerce website interface are defined.
3
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge the following people who helped me to complete this study.
Firstly, I am deeply grateful to my dissertation supervisor- Dr Angela Lin for her
continuous support and guidance. Secondly, I would like to thanks all the participants
who responded for my questionnaire. Thirdly, I would like to express my
appreciation to my friends who distribute the hyperlink of online survey.
4
Content
Abstract ............................................................................................................................................. 2
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................... 3
List of Tables ...................................................................................................................................... 6
Chapter 1 ........................................................................................................................................... 8
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 8
1.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 8
1.2 Background of the research ................................................................................................ 8
1.3 The importance of the study ............................................................................................... 9
1.4 Aims, research questions and objectives ............................................................................ 9
1.5 Structure of the dissertation ............................................................................................. 10
Chapter 2 ......................................................................................................................................... 12
Literature review ............................................................................................................................. 12
2.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 12
2.2 What is trust? .................................................................................................................... 12
2.3 Trust in different disciplines .............................................................................................. 12
2.3.1 Philosophy .............................................................................................................. 13
2.3.2 Trust in social Psychology ....................................................................................... 14
2.4 Trust in e-commerce .......................................................................................................... 15
2.4.1 Importance of trust in e-commerce ....................................................................... 16
2.4.2 Distrust in e-commerce .......................................................................................... 18
2.5 Interface design ................................................................................................................. 18
2.5.1 Context design dimension ...................................................................................... 20
2.5.2 Structure design dimension ................................................................................... 21
2.5.3 Content design dimension ...................................................................................... 23
2.5.4 Social-cue design dimension .................................................................................. 25
2.6 Summary ........................................................................................................................... 28
Chapter 3 ......................................................................................................................................... 30
Methodology ................................................................................................................................... 30
3.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 30
3.2 Research approaches ........................................................................................................ 30
3.2.1 Deductive versus Inductive .................................................................................... 30
3.2.2 Quantitative and Qualitative .................................................................................. 31
3.3 Methods of Investigation .................................................................................................. 32
3.3.1 Literature Review ................................................................................................... 32
3.3.2 Quantitative Survey Method .................................................................................. 32
3.4 Questionnaire .................................................................................................................... 33
3.4.1 Pilot Study .............................................................................................................. 33
3.4.2 Distribution and Sampling ...................................................................................... 33
3.4.3 Questionnaire Design ............................................................................................. 34
3.4.4 Data analysis ........................................................................................................... 35
3.5 Ethical Issues ..................................................................................................................... 36
3.6 Summary ........................................................................................................................... 36
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Chapter 4 ......................................................................................................................................... 37
Data analysis .................................................................................................................................... 37
4.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 37
4.2 Demographics of the sample............................................................................................. 37
4.3 Online shopping behavior ................................................................................................. 43
4.4 Summary ........................................................................................................................... 53
Chapter 5 ......................................................................................................................................... 54
Discussion ........................................................................................................................................ 54
5.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 54
5.2 The environment of e-commerce in china ........................................................................ 54
5.3 Experience ......................................................................................................................... 55
5.4 Website characteristics ..................................................................................................... 56
5.4.1 Security ................................................................................................................... 56
5.4.2 Structure of website ............................................................................................... 57
5.4.3 Content of website ................................................................................................. 59
5.4.4 Social-cue design of website .................................................................................. 60
5.5 Summary ........................................................................................................................... 62
Chapter 6 ......................................................................................................................................... 63
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 63
6.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 63
6.2 Aim and Objectives Achievement ..................................................................................... 63
6.2.1 Aim ......................................................................................................................... 63
6.2.2 Objectives ............................................................................................................... 63
6.3 Limitation .......................................................................................................................... 65
6.4 Recommendations for further research ............................................................................ 65
6.5 Summary ........................................................................................................................... 66
Bibliography .................................................................................................................................... 67
Appendix 1 ...................................................................................................................................... 71
Appendix 2 ...................................................................................................................................... 75
6
List of Tables
Table 1 Trust characteristic definition categories .................................................................... 13
Table 2 Factors impacting trust in e-commerce ...................................................................... 17
Table 3 Respondents personal information ............................................................................. 37
Table 4 the numbers of respondents who chose different payment method with each reason 46
7
List of figures
Figure 1 The period of using internet by respondents ............................................................. 39
Figure 2 Level of internet usage by respondents ..................................................................... 40
Figure 3 Level of online purchasing by respondents............................................................... 40
Figure 4 Respondents and types of products which were purchased online ........................... 41
Figure 5 The reason of purchasing online by respondents ...................................................... 42
Figure 6 Unpleasant experience .............................................................................................. 43
Figure 7 The important of the factors which affect consumer confidence .............................. 44
Figure 8 The effect of the information of product on consumers’ purchase decision ............. 45
Figure 9 Payment method ....................................................................................................... 45
Figure 10 The reason of choosing this payment method ......................................................... 46
Figure 11 The effect of the professional design on consumers’ choice of website ................. 47
Figure 12 The effect of response time on consumer’s trust ..................................................... 48
Figure 13 Reading comments and ratings ............................................................................... 48
Figure 14 Comment and rate for products and e-vendors ....................................................... 49
Figure 15 The effect of negative comments on consumer’s choice of product ....................... 50
Figure 16 The effect of customer service on consumers’ trust ................................................ 50
Figure 17 Communication method .......................................................................................... 50
Figure 18 The effect of recommendation system and navigation on consumer’s trust ........... 51
Figure 19 Respondents and elements which affect choice of new e-commerce website ........ 52
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Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Introduction
This chapter firstly points out the background of the research and indicates the main
issues of this research. Secondly, the importance of this study will be stated. Then,
the research aim, questions and specific objectives are expressed briefly. Finally, the
structure of this paper will be indicated at the end of the chapter in order to support
readers a clear overview of this dissertation.
1.2 Background of the research
Internet users in the world reached 1.9billion in 2010 which covers 20% of world
population (Internet World Stats, 2011). In particularly, in china the number of internet
users was 457 million in 2010, which is one-third of the population (CNNIC, 2011).
In the past few years, internet and e-commerce had developed rapidly. According to
the report of the online shopping by CNNIC, the number of the online shoppers has
increased dramatically from 33 million in 2006 to 160 million in 2010. The statistics
presented by Date center of the China Internet (DCCI, 2011) show that the total sales
of China’s B2C reached ￥523 billion in 2010 and are predicted to reach ￥1
trillion by 2012. The yearly increasing rate was more than 100% from 2007-2010
(CNNIC, 2011). In China, 22.1% of consumers shopping online two times monthly
and each of them spend ￥3259 per year on average in 2010. The figures from
CNNIC demonstrate that 61.9% of online shoppers conduct online transaction
through B2C websites in 2010. However, the competition between e-vendors
becomes more intense than several years before. And how to attract the consumers
and gain they trust toward online shopping become the main concern of e-vendors in
china. The interface plays an important role in the e-commerce. Online trust is one of
9
the important elements of the success of e-vendors and the website features are
related the consumers’ trust to them. So this dissertation will discuss why trust issues
play an important role in the development of e-commerce in china and the
relationship between trust and interface design.
1.3 The importance of the study
In the past several years, internet and e-commerce has developed dramatically in
china. However, lack of trust that is appearing in the transactions in which consumers
offer personal and financial information to e-vendor via internet has become one of
the most important barriers in the e-commerce. Currently the consumers concern
about the security, privacy and consumer protection issues during e-commerce.
Therefore, developing buyers’ trust in business-to-customer transaction is critical for
many e-vendors, especially for startup companies. The research in the design of the
interface is essential in the e-commerce which can improve the trust of e-consumer
during shopping online. Furthermore, the research will analyze the shopping
behavior of the consumers which can used to improve the e-vendor’s
competitiveness.
1.4 Aims, research questions and objectives
Aims
The research focused on the e-commerce market, particularly in business to
consumer (B2C) e-commerce market. The study researches the consumer shopping
behaviors during them purchase online and explores the relationship between the
website interface and consumers’ trust. The aim of this study is to discover solutions
to solve trust issues during design the web site.
Research objectives
In order to achieve the research purpose, several objectives have been developed as
follows:
1. Provide a critical literature review on the e-commerce which focuses on the issue
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of trust and the design of website. Furthermore, the relationship between distrust
and e-commerce will be related in the literature review.
2. Find out the trend of online shopping in china which contains the feature
consumer group and online shopping behavior. The e-commerce portals should
meet Chinese consumers’ shopping habit and decrease the consumers’ distrust in
order to attract the potentials for the further development of the e-commerce in
the country.
3. Explain the constitution of a good e-commerce web design which relates to the
consumers’ trust.
4. Provide recommendations that focus on solving the trust issues which appears
during the design of the interface.
1.5 Structure of the dissertation
This section outlines the structure of this research and the contents of each chapter
are summarized briefly.
1. Introduction
This chapter introduces the problem domain and the background which referred in
the study. The importance of this study is presented with the explanation of research
gap. Then, the research aim and objective are defined briefly in this chapter. Finally,
the structure of this dissertation is expressed.
2. Literature Review
This chapter is a literature review which provides the general concepts of trust and
interface design. The literature review has been presented through several sections as
follows:
What is trust?
Trust in e-commerce
Interface design
3. Methodology
This chapter states the methodology used in this research. The research approaches
11
are discussed with the purpose of explain the reason of choosing this approach for
this study. After that, the methods of investigation which used for collecting data are
described. Then, design detail of the survey is detailed followed by the description of
sampling and distribution. In addition, ethical issues are presented at the end of this
chapter.
4. Data analysis
The data collected by the survey is presented in this chapter. In order to explain the
statistical data, the findings are illustrated with paragraphs followed by related
graphs, tables, and charts. Moreover, some related analysis is presented to provide a
deep understanding of the relationships between variables.
5. Discussion
This chapter will analyzed the research findings which presented in chapter 4. In
addition, the analysis will compare with the relevant literature and state some solving
approaches for the problems that discovered from the obtained data.
6. Conclusion
This chapter will recap and assess the research aim and objective of this study as to
whether they have been fulfilled. Furthermore, limitations of the study and
recommendations for further researchers are presented.
12
Chapter 2
Literature review
2.1 Introduction
This literature review refers to trust, e-commerce and interface design. Firstly, the
definition of trust will be explained and trust in the disciplines of Philosophy and
social psychology will be demonstrated. Secondly, trust in e-commerce will be
analyzed and distrust in e-commerce also will be stated. Finally, the interface design
of the e-commerce will explained, which contains context design, structure design,
content design, and social-cue design. In this part, the recommendation system and
ratings system will be discussed deeply.
2.2 What is trust?
Trust is a broad concept and its definitions have developed in various disciplines
(McKnight & Chervany, 2001; Blomqvist, 1997). In different languages such as
French, Norwegian, Egyptian, Chinese and Hebrew, trust has defined with different
meanings (Hardin, 2002). Trust is defined in the Online Oxford Dictionary as “firm
belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something”. Trust is
essential in the social and economic interactions and refers to social behavior which
associates with the important decisions making that involves uncertainty and
dependency (Gefen, 2000 & Pu, 2006). Kim & Tadisina (2005) argue that trust can
be studied in macro-level which called institution-based trust and micro-level that
contains personality-based and process-based trust.
2.3 Trust in different disciplines
The concept of trust is elusive and definitions of trust are numerous and confusing.
Wang and Emurian (2004: 107) state:”trust is a complex and abstract concept; it is
13
difficult to define trust and identify the elements that construct it.” Trust has different
meanings with different disciplines with the reason of that each disciplines view trust
with its own perspective which cannot create an agreed-on definition (McKnight &
Chervany, 2001). Blomqvist (1997) expressed that the research of the trust is chosen
in an interdisciplinary approach and seems to be used differently with the reason of
that researcher depend on the different context and the disciplinary in the questions.
Empirical researchers have driven vast definitions of trust and each of them are do
one type of trust which are developed a narrow conceptualization to fits their
research (McKnight & Chervany, 2001). Eng (2007) argues that trust can be defined
in eighty trust-related materials which contains different disciplines include
psychology, social psychology, sociology, economics, political science, management,
and communications.
Table 1 Trust characteristic definition categories
Concept category Trust-related characteristic
competence Competent, expert, dynamic
predictability Predictable
benevolence good, moral; good will; benevolent;
caring responsive
integrity Honest, credible, reliable, dependable
other Open; careful, safe; shared
understanding; personally attractive
Source: McKnight & Chervany (2001; 3)
2.3.1 Philosophy
In the discipline of philosophy, the speculation on trust developed in Greeks and the
purpose of study the trust is to describe human nature by the philosophers (Wang &
Emurian, 2005). Baier (1986) quoted in Blomqvist (1997: 274) state that, “Trust is
accepted vulnerability to another’s possible but not expected ill will (or lack of good
will) towards one. It is reliance on the other’s competence, and willingness to look
14
after, rather than harm, things one cares about which are entrusted to the other’s
care.”
Khazaei (2006) expresses that trust is part of love and friendship; it has a positive
influence in human society. Modern philosophers accept trust as a three-place
predicate that trustor A trusts trustee B with valued thing C. Wang & Emurian (2005)
also state:”people trust others only if people are confident that the others fear
detection and punishment sufficiently to dissuade them from harming or stealing. In
addition, they identified love and sympathy to be elements that would ensure more
trust and, therefore, more cooperation and peace, in a state of nature. ”
2.3.2 Trust in social Psychology
On the social psychology aspect, the concept of trust constructs with trusting beliefs
(include competence, benevolence, integrity and predictability beliefs) and trusting
intentions (includes willingness to depend and subjective probability of depending)
(McKnight & Chervany, 2001). Blomqvist (1997) argues that the concept of trust is
instinctive and unstrategized which like the feeling of love. From social relationships
perspective, trust can be exam by individuals, social relationships, and social systems
and in modern society it is hard for people to do business without trust (Lumsden,
2006). The majority of psychologists research the trust focused on interpersonal trust
that the concept plays an important role in psychology, personality, cooperation
institution and social life (Wang & Emurian, 2005; Khazaei, 2006). Lumsden (2006)
states psychological trust refers to individual personality differences and
interpersonal relationships. McKnight & Chervany (2001) state:”trusting beliefs
means one believes that the other person has one or more traits desirable to one in a
situation in which negative consequences are possible. Trusting intentions means one
is willing to depend on, or intends to depend on, the other person in a given task or
situation with a feeling of relative security, even though negative consequences are
possible.”
Wang & Emurian, (2005) argue define trust as a personal trait. Blomqvist (1997: 273)
15
borrowed Deutch (1958) theory state:”An individual may be said to have trust in the
occurrence of an event if he expects its occurrence and his expectation leads to
behavior which he perceives to have greater negative motivational consequences if
the expectation is not confirmed than positive motivational consequences if it is
confirmed.”
Other approach people try to reduce the social uncertainty is trust and familiarity.
Gefen (2000) describes familiarity is an understanding which based on previous
interactions and experiences. Khazaei (2006) also argue that familiarity is a
precondition for trust.
2.4 Trust in e-commerce
Trust is one of the most important factors that affect the performance of e-commerce.
With the context of e-commerce, McKnight & Chervany (2001: 1) state that “trust
has been defined as a willingness to believe, or an individual’s beliefs, regarding
various attributes of the other party. Among the attributes mentioned are: fairness,
goodness, strength, ability, benevolence, honesty, and predictability. ” E-commerce
has grown rapidly these years and how to build and maintain trust online is an
essential issue (Yang, 2005). Online shopping is different from traditional transaction
which involves simultaneous exchange of goods and money; it needs consumers to
share their personal information and financial information with the e-vendor who
located in different parts of the country (Yang, 2005 & Khazaei, 2006). Gefen (2000)
claims that the main reason people do not shopping online is that they are troubled
about online payments security, reliability of companies, and the lack of a privacy
policy. With this regard trust is defined by Eng (2007: 12) as: “Trust in online
shopping is defined as consumers’ thought about e-vendors being trustworthy, which
contains one or more aspects of trust including competence, predictability,
benevolence, and integrity.” In the e-commerce, trust is considered as a mindset
which persuades a person to do the transaction that involves risk with the reason of
positive expectations (walczuch & Lundgren, 2004). Yang (2005) suggests that
16
understanding the e-commerce market structure and entities is important to identify
the formation of trust and figures out that internet exchange process can be viewed as
an interaction among buyer, seller, third party and technology.
2.4.1 Importance of trust in e-commerce
Trust is considered as a significant facilitator of e-commerce where transactions are
more impersonal, anonymous, and automated (Lumsden, 2006). The level of
uncertainty in e-commerce environment where trustworthiness of e-vendor cannot be
accessed through body language and traditional cues makes trust is much more
important than in the traditional commerce (Khazaei, 2006 & Lumsden, 2006). Kim
& Tadisina (2005) argue that the institution-based trust which researches the
technical and environment of e-commerce supports the opportunity for customers to
enter e-market. walczuch & Lundgren (2004) also state “Trust can trigger increased
purchasing to the extent that it reduces the complexity and perceived risks of
purchasing.” For example, consumer trusts the retailer before he/she deals the
purchase, he/she will feel comfortable and provide the personal information and pay
for the product. Pu (2006) states that consumer’s trust relates to the customer’s
intention to transact, purchase and return to the website. Lumsden (2006) points there
are two types of trust: technological trust that associates with the individual’s belief
which related to the technology of website; relational trust is considered the
willingness of a consumer to adopt the online transaction which based on the positive
expectation of the vendor’s behavior.
Vendors can use Web vendor interventions to influence consumers to do business
with them. Web Vendor interventions are actions which show the vendor may
provide assurances to consumers on their web site (McKnight & Chervany, 2001).
Eng (2007) also states: “It is important to e-commerce because cybercrime is on the
rise, especially phishing; consequently, consumers somehow need to know which
shopping websites are genuine and safe for them to commit their e-transactions.”
McKnight & Chervany (2001) defined the term “Trust-Related Internet Behaviors”
17
that describes consumer is willing to do business and cooperate and share
information with the vendor. This theory just to show the actions that trusting beliefs
and intentions lead to related behaviors.
A few researchers define initial trust in the situation of e-commerce to identify the
factors which influence the trust. Initial trust has been considered as an essential
factor for the study of many types of e-commerce (Khazaei, 2006). Kim &Tadisina
(2005) state:”Initial trust is defined as one that invokes and maintains an initial
relationship before the relationship becomes a committed one. ”
Table 2 Factors impacting trust in e-commerce
sources Company
profile
Supporting
organization
Website
quality
others
McKnight &
Chervany
(2001)
Reputation
building, link
to other sites
Third party
seals
Perceived site
quality
Interacting
with
customers,
privacy
policy
Gefen familiarity Structural
assurance
Perceived
ease of use
situational
normality
Kim &
Tadisina
Company’s
size,
reputation
and history
Third party
recognition
Information
quality,
system
quality
Khazaei
(2006)
Brand,
reputation
Web site
usability
Security
Eng (2007) Third party
intervention
Web interface Control the
situation,
security
18
2.4.2 Distrust in e-commerce
Distrust of e-commerce sites is a common phenomenon with the reason of that there
are three main consumer perils in the transaction of e-commerce (Mcknight &
Choudhury, 2006). Firstly, the consumer lack of direct physical contact so they
cannot access the quality of the product (Khazaei, 2006; Wwalczuch & Lundgren,
2004). Secondly, the risk in the online shopping process will be considered by
consumers. For example, when they pay for the product or service, the e-vendor does
not deliver the product or support the service. Thirdly, the purchase online need
consumers to share they private details which include address, credit card number
and other personal information with e-vendor, it affects the consumers’ social
security. Most of the researchers view the concepts of trust and distrust are the same
and believed distrust is a low level of trust. Ma (2009) figures out that the distrust
relations among users are important as the trust relations. Mcknight & Choudhury
(2006) argue that trust and distrust have different antecedents and cause to different
outcomes. Distrust dose not propagate transitively like trust (Chua, 2010). Distrust
is a controversial issue when design the e-commerce website which refers to trust
metrics and trust propagation (Ma, 2009). Mcknight & Choudhury (2006: 489) state
“trusting intention was more predictive of willingness to follow site advice than was
distrusting intention. However, distrusting intention was just as effective as trusting
intention as predicting willingness to share personal information and willingness to
purchase.“
2.5 Interface design
Web site is designed by the vendor to affect consumers’ behaviors through
influencing customer trusting beliefs and trusting intentions in order to encourage
customers to deal the purchase with vendor (McKnight & Chervany, 2001). Web
interface plays a significant role in online shopping with the reason of that it
connects consumers and e-vendors at the beginning (Eng, 2007). Web sites are the
19
main interface for consumer use of the internet. With the rapid adoption of the
internet by consumers, the growth in business-to-consumer (B2C) electronic
commerce is dramatically. Consumer satisfaction with internet shopping has been
concerned by the web designers. Cheung & Lee (2005:327) state: “Satisfaction is
one of the most important consumer reactions in internet shipping, and its
importance is reflected in the ability to help build customer loyalty, enhance
favorable word of mouth, lead to repeat purchased and improve the company’s
market share and profitability.” In the background of internet shopping, the
interaction between consumers and the website plays an important role in the
e-commerce. Web site design is the way that e-vendor presents the contents to the
consumers. Lumsden (2006) suggests the design of e-commerce website should
incorporate circumstantial cues that perform in the form of apposite trust triggers,
which can improve the trustworthiness of offline retailers. The design of a B2C web
site is significant in attracting, sustaining and retaining the interest of a consumer
(Ranganathan & Ganapathy, 2002). The designers have to focus on the interaction
between user and system, because the website is the only approach that consumers
can search information, download and do e-commerce transactions (Cheung & Lee,
2005). The interface of e-commerce websites have to concern many elements such as
navigation, functionality, design, content and multimedia (Laudon & Traver, 2007).
Palmer (2002:152) also state:”prior to widespread use of the web, usability of
information systems was equivalent to a set of design principles, articulating five key
elements including:1)consistency of the interface,2)response time, 3)mapping and
metaphors, 4)interaction styles, and 5)multimedia and audiovisual.” A website
which has a high degree of usability should generate a desirable perception of its use
and an intention to use the site. Rayport & Jaworski (2004) figure out that customer
interface design should follow 7Cs framework which contains context, commerce,
connection, communication, content, community, and customization. Lumsden (2006)
Ranganathan & Ganapathy (2002) develop four dimensions of B2C web sites that
include information content, design, security and privacy. Cheung & Lee (2005)
point three key dimensions that affect the consumer satisfaction during online
20
shopping, which contain information quality, system quality and service quality.
Palmer (2002) points out that the successful of web site is related to web site
download delay, navigation, content, interactivity and responsiveness.
2.5.1 Context design dimension
A website’s context is considered as the functional look-and-feel which focuses on
bold graphics, colors, and design features (Rayprot & Jaworski, 2004). From
aesthetics aspect, the website need to use various art forms that includes a lot of
multimedia or other visual elements to create a satisfying escape for the user
(Rayprot & Jaworski, 2004).
Graphical design features on the web site would give consumers a deep first
impression and induce customers’ trust (Yang, 2005). Al-Dwairi & Kamala (2010)
express that graphic images have effects to capture the attention of web page visitor
and become an important part of the B2C website. Rayprot & Jaworski (2004) warn
that aesthetically dominant websites will be slow to load, limited in information, and
with less evident function than other sites.
Furthermore, a security and privacy statement have significant function that as s part
of content design on the website (Wang & Emurian, 2005). Consumers are concerned
about the data and transaction security and server security which focus on
authorization methods in accessing information, password protection and data
inscription (Khazaei, 2006). Kalakota & Wwhinston (2000: 177) defined security
threat as: “a circumstance, condition, or event with the potential to cause economic
hardship to data or network resources in the form of destruction, disclosure,
modification of data, denial of service, and / or fraud, waste and abuse. ”
The security threats not only are concerned by the consumers but also by the
e-vendors. The vendor needs to confirm customer’s identities through collecting
customer’s information, at the same time the consumers need to distinguish the
vendor are real or not (Beleanger et al, 2002). In this point the third party
intervention is significant, it verify an e-vendor and a website is safe and consumers
21
can purchase products or service from this website with low risk (Wang & Emurian,
2005). A study by Kim & Tadisina (2005) reported that 95% of consumers refuse to
reveal their personal information on the e-commerce website which does not have a
statement of security and privacy. Eng (2007: 23) also state:”web interface not only
can improve trust in e-vendors but also help consumers to perceive a higher level of
security for e-transactions and control over online environment. ”
During the purchase cycle, consumers have a few concerns about the monetary
transactions such as payment card data and the privacy of information which they
provide (Zo & Ramamurthy, 2009). Cheung & Lee (2005) state:”security can
describe as the website’s ability in protecting consumer personal information
collected from its electronic transactions from unauthorized use or disclosure.” With
the development of the technique, some new technical advancement such as
cryptography, digital signatures, certificates and authentication appear in internet
security; however people still feel fear during shopping online. In both Ranganathan
(2002) & Cheung (2005) reports, more than 70% of the participants concerned about
the internet security and expressed that the security is the main barrier to internet
shopping. Palmer (2002) also argues that security concern affects the consumer
intention to shop online significantly. To solve these problems, most of the B2C
websites support the individual accounts which contain logon-id and password.
Miller (2004) argues that websites post privacy policy which explains how they use
information that support by the customers can reduce customers’ fears.
2.5.2 Structure design dimension
This dimension is essential to induce customers’ trust in the web site design which
related to the overall organization and accessibility of displayed information (Yang,
2005). Rayport & Jaworski (2004) suggest that a well-designed website should
organize vast amount of information explicitly into sets of pages which assists
customers navigate topics conveniently. Consumers will lost in space when they
search information in the website that without an easy use of navigation (Cheung &
22
Lee, 2005). Websites’ usability depends on both the content and the navigation tools
(Al-Dwairi & Kamala, 2010; Rayprot & Jaworski, 2004).
The ease of navigation supports the opportunity to the consumer to search
information and evaluation before they do the purchase. Ranganathan & Ganapathy
(2002:330) state:”Navigation deals with the sequencing of pages, the organization of
layout, and consistency of navigation tools.” A simple navigation will be easy for the
consumer to find the product information and place the order; it also enhances
customer satisfaction of website (Ranganathan & Ganapathy, 2002; Cheung & Lee,
2005). Zo & ramanurthy (2009) argue that poorly designed in navigation is
considered as a barrier for online shopping on B2C web site. Easy-to-use navigation
gives consumer chance to find appropriate information in the website. Ranganathan
& Ganapathy (2002:460) state:”Consistent navigation links to each page of the web
site, useful navigation buttons, and index to the web site have been suggested as
important issues when designing a B2C web site.” Cheung & Lee (2005) urge that
navigation should be efficient which is used by consumer to obtain information in
fewest steps. Furthermore, the hyperlinks which perform with relevant descriptions
should be provided on every web page. Palmer (2002) suggests that consistency
needs common placement of navigational tools that like buttons and bars.
In the e-commerce context, the e-vender has to provide convenient functions to
consumers during information-seeking and order-processing stages (Zo &
Ramamurthy, 2009). Ease of use is defined as the level of the system is user-friendly.
Another main function of B2C e-commerce websites is to handle purchase
transactions (Zo & Ramamurthy, 2009). For example, most of websites uses of the
shopping cart function and provide payment process. E-commerce simplifies the
ordering process and the checkout process of consumers; this is why they favor
shopping online. Consumer may access a website with the reason of that it is easy to
use and it will be helpful for them to accomplish their online shopping (Cheung &
Lee, 2005).
Response time is an important part should be considered in the interface design when
the website uses a few complex graphics which will reduce the speed to display a
23
page on the user’s screen (Rayprot & Jaworski, 2004). Cheung & Lee (2005) explain
response time as the speed of access and information downloading and the
availability of the websites. The download speed for web pages is regarded as the
critical factor to evaluating websites. Palmer (2002) suggests that information on the
operational efficiencies on web sites should include download delay (speed of
response). Zo & Ramamurthy (2009:824) state:”consumers’ waiting times affect
their retrospective evaluation of websites and waiting time negatively (albeit, not
always) affects their evaluations of websites.” Waiting times of 10s is considered to
be the maximum duration before users lose their attention and more than 30s should
be unacceptable (Ranganathan & Ganapathy, 2002; Zo & Ramamurthy, 2009). When
the web site has delay in searching or downloading consumers will go away to other
websites which have faster download and display times. Ranganathan & Ganapathy
(2002) state:”the download time is dependent on the size of the page, the extent of
multimedia content in it, presence of applets or other programs, and technical
parameters like the networking infrastructure, bandwidth connection between nodes,
and infrastructure, etc.” the speed of access and information downloading are related
to the consumer evaluation of a website quality and impact on consumers’ shopping
satisfaction (Cheung & Lee, 2005).
2.5.3 Content design dimension
Another issues is considered by majority of research is representation quality which
focus on how the informational content presented in the website (Cheung & Lee,
2005; Zo & Ramamurthy, 2009). Wang and strong (1996) state:”information quality
can be identified in four dimensions: 1) intrinsic; 2) contextual; 3) representational;
and 4) accessibility. Among these four dimensions, intrinsic quality and contextual
quality are related to the information quality of websites. Intrinsic quality includes
accuracy, objectivity, reputation, and believability; contextual quality includes
value-added, relevancy, timeliness, completeness, and amount of data.” Cheung &
Lee (2005) summarize the information quality in to four key dimensions: accuracy,
24
content, format and timeliness.
The content of a B2C web site impact the consumers’ purchase decision process.
When consumer purchases product online, consumers have the right to locate and
select the merchandise which suit their need. Before dealing purchase online,
consumers search the information of the required product which contains quality,
price and brand, etc (Ranganathan & Ganapathy, 2002; Al-Dwairi & Kamala, 2010).
Accuracy of information refers to the reliability of website content which affects
consumer to evaluate the website. Cheung & Lee (2005) argue that the reliability of
website content affect consumers to perceive lower risk and better justifications for
decisions, it also improve the customers’ satisfaction and intention to shopping
online. The websites provide the relevant information to the consumer will decrease
the concerns or fears about internet shopping. Different consumers look for different
information and have special behavior. B2C web sites provide information through
hyperlinks which can support further detailed product information that meet
consumers’ need (Ranganathan & Ganapathy, 2002).
Rayprot & Jaworski (2004) suggest that the content of e-commerce website should
use digital subject matter which includes text, video, audio, and graphics to present
information of the company’s products and services. B2C web sites often use video,
music, flash, and other multimedia effect to catch the attention of the consumer.
Palmer (2002) suggests that media rich theory which means the information
exchanged across a medium are critical. Cheung & Lee (2005) also state:”Media
richness theory suggested that the multimedia interactive format provide capabilities
richer than the text, making information more attractive and useful to
users/consumers.” Ranganathan & Ganapathy (2002) suggest that multimedia which
combines dynamic images, sounds, and text can attract the consumer’s attention
more determinedly than these elements separate present on the website. Song &
Zahedi (2001) suggest that multimedia can increase the visual appeal but keep the
balance of the multimedia elements and download times are more significant.
Timeliness of information that concerns about the information up-to-data on the
website plays an important role in the information quality (Cheung & Lee, 2005).
25
Rayprot & Jaworski (2004) suggest that information content in websites should
consider with time sensitivity, if not do that the information will be little value.
Timeliness is related to currency and the information of product affects the purchase
decision making (Zo & Ramamurthy, 2009).
2.5.4 Social-cue design dimension
Rayprot & Jaworski (2004) state that community is interaction which can be
one-to-one interaction or one-to-many interaction between users to share common
interests, it plays an important role in the e-commerce. Social cues such as
face-to-face interaction and social presence will improve the human touch and reduce
the barrier which emerges during the customers shopping online (Yang, 2005). With
the development of the social network, only considering communication between the
website and users is not enough, consumers’ network value which refers to the
community among consumers should be considered (Richardson & Domingos, 2002;
Rayprot & Jaworski, 2004).
Professional e-services are important in the website design, because the consumers
cannot physically interact with the e-vendor to gather trust-information cues
(Lumsden & Mackay, 2006). There are many differences between traditional retailing
and online selling, essentially, there are fewer interactions during the consumers
shopping online. In the context of shopping online, Consumers normally have a few
of questions about the shipping, service, payment and product return policies. In
order to improve the trust of consumer during they shopping online, the frequently
asked questions (FAQs) is necessary which can improve the interactivity more
effectively. The communication features which are used to send information from
organization to user is an important part of website design (Rayprot & Jaworski,
2004). In Ranganathan (2002) study shows that web sites get more consumers
visiting with a FAQ section than those do not offer FAQ section.
Word of mouth (WOM) is an informal channel which appears as a feedback form for
consumers to communicate about the quality of products and service (Khazaei, 2006;
26
Mcknight, 2006). Li & Bernoff (2008) defines the groundswell as “A social trend in
which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather
than from traditional institutions like corporations.” Community in e-commerce
website benefits the users to share experiences and information and foster a sense of
belonging (Rayprot & Jaworski, 2004). Li & Bernoff (2008) suggests that ratings and
reviews are part of variety of web site and they are easy to use and to set up.
Participators read ratings and reviews commonly, but 60% trust reviews on
e-vendor’s site are from consumer whom they have never met. The website should
support the function of reading and posting information, stories or pinions, such as
Amazon is a website where users can post product reviews (Rayprot & Jaworski,
2004).
Product recommender system is frequently used in e-commerce website, which is
important in the explanation interface to increase user acceptance (Pu, 2006).
Recommender systems are popular techniques which use collaborative filtering to
reduce information overload and assist user to find products (Miller, 2004).
Recommender systems are extensively used in e-commerce web sites (e.g.:
Amazon.com) to give advices to consumer which product they may like or feel
useful (Massa & Avesani, 2004). Victor (2008) stats:”recommender systems are
which given some information about their users’ profiles and relationships, suggest
items that might be of interest to them. One of the most widely used recommendation
techniques is collaborative filtering, which typically works by identifying users
whose tastes are similar to those of the particular user and recommending items that
they have liked.” Collaborative filtering is one of the most successful technologies
which used in recommender systems (Miller, 2004). Kitisin (2006) also states that
using collaborative filtering is a prominent strategy which applies in recommender
systems in order to solve the information overload problem. The function of
collaborative filtering is to look for patterns of agreement among the ratings from
groups of people (Miller, 2004). Collaborative filtering is used to create
recommendation for a certain user; it is to look for patterns of agreement among the
rating from groups of people who have similar opinions to her and recommends to
27
her items that have been choose by those similar users in past (Avesani, 2005). Sites
collect preference information from two ways that contain explicit ratings of
products from users and implicit preference information such as uses the shoppers’
purchasing history and browsing behavior (Miller, 2004).
Rating system affects the recommender system deeply in the process of finding
similar users. It is impossible for the recommender system to find users similar to the
current one when no ratings which express the interest of users with the items are
available (Avesani, 2005 & Miller, 2004). Thoms (2010) expresses that ratings
systems is useful in common e-commerce sites, which can engage consumers in
online learning networks. Raters can access trust and distrust on items and they also
can benefit from a few rating from others to do the decision (Chua, 2010). Thoms
(2010) states ratings are often the first piece of information that is viewed by
consumers, which plays a pivotal role between consumer and post-consumer in
e-commerce. Avesani (2005) points that if user A trusts B at a certain level and B
trusts C at another level, then the level of trust of A in C can be inferred. Alshabib
(2006) states:”the key idea is that if a user A purchased or viewed item X, and if
users A and B share some common interests (i.e. have purchased similar items in the
past) then user B should also be provided suggestions for items that A purchased.
The motivation for this is therefore to reduce the time a user would need to spend to
search through on-line catalogues, and simultaneously increase sales at the
e-commerce site.” Chua (2010) argues that the existing works about trust is well
studied in the management and social science domain but not considering the factors
of trust links and trust prediction methods. Kitisin (2006) states that recommender
systems can use social network that is a new way for collecting and distributing trust
information to propagate trust. Alshabib (2006) also claims that collaborative
filtering approaches is difficult to match similar users with the reason of sparseness
of ratings and social network can help the system to aggregated ratings based on the
structure of the network. Beyond ratings, users express whom they trust or distrust so
they can choose to view content from users they like and ignore content from
disliked users (Chua, 2010). Kitisin (2006) states that the useful and trustworthy of
28
the recommendation will be improved when there are the higher the number of
positive vote given to the recommendation.
The limitation of recommender systems is that they need the user to trust the owner
of the recommender who supports the personal preference data (Miller, 2004). The
issue of trust plays an important role when use recommender systems in e-commerce
where the product recommender agent replace the traditional salesperson (Pu, 2006).
Trust is a key issue which refer to the problems appear from the centralized nature of
most recommenders, it remain to be solved in recommenders (Miller, 2004). Miller
(2004) state that there are four factors determine user’s decision to share data with
website which include that whether the site shares the information with other
organization, whether the information is used identifiably, the kind of information
that website collected, the purpose of collecting these information. The
recommendations from friends will be more trustworthy than the information that is
supported by the company selling the product (Richardson & Domingos, 2002).
Richardson & Domingos (2002) state:”in presence of strong network effects, it is
crucial to consider not only a customer’s intrinsic value (his value as a customer
based on the products he is likely to purchase), but also his network value. The
network value of a customer is high when he is expected to have a very positive
influence on others’ probabilities of purchasing the product.” The customer’s trust
that relates to the integrity and benevolence aspects will be built not only associate
with recommender system’s ability to express its result but also refer to the
e-vender’s ability to ensure security, privacy and reputation (Pu, 2006). When use the
recommender systems, the user must share his opinions with the website and trust the
site to protect their personal information and use the data appropriately. Users find it
hard for them to prevent the abuses of their trust, when they share the opinions with
the website (Miller, 2004).
2.6 Summary
In this chapter, the definitions of trust were stated in several different disciplines.
29
After that, the trust in the e-commerce environment was reviewed. Moreover, the
distrust in the e-commerce scope also was provided. Finally, the design of website
interface had been discussed in four dimensions.
30
Chapter 3
Methodology
3.1 Introduction
In this chapter, the methodology and research approach will be detailed. Then, the
method of data collection, analysis processes will be expressed. In brief, this study
applies questionnaire as the general research approach which adopts mixed methods.
After that, the design and analysis detail of the questionnaire are stated.
3.2 Research approaches
3.2.1 Deductive versus Inductive
The online oxford dictionary defines the research as the investigation and study of
the materials and sources to produce facts and achieve new conclusions. There are
two broad methods that often be used in research, they are deductive and inductive
approaches.
The deductive approach focuses on logic and mathematics, it starts with a theory or
concept then creates specific hypotheses in a narrow aspect to test further (Bryman,
2008). The research scope will be narrowed by using deductive approach which
begins with a concept or theory that concluded from literature. The progress of
deductive approach is tested predictions that developed from hypothesis through
experiments. A new hypothesis will be established when the existing predictions
were proved false with the experiments. The hypothesis was examined with the
direct observation which explored with empirical evidence from experiments.
The inductive approach relates to the collection of empirical evidence from specific
observation to make broader theories (Saunders, 2007). Thomas (2003) defined
31
inductive approach as a systematic procedure which analyzed qualitative data with
specific objectives. This approach observes and assesses new findings to develop
new themes and tentative hypothesis. Then these tentative hypotheses will be
evaluated with factors which were already existed and some general theories will be
concluded finally. The limitation of this research approach is that the conclusion of
the research cannot be proved by test.
This research adopts the deductive approach to explore the research objectives. Both
primary research and secondary research are adopted in this study. The research
starts with the literature observations and survey results and finally gives the new
conclusions.
3.2.2 Quantitative and Qualitative
Silverman (2002) states that the choice of applying qualitative, quantitative or using
both method depends on the purpose of research. So the methods that are used in the
research should be suitable for the research aim and research objectives.
Saunders (2007) argues that quantitative method is the way to gather individuals’
perception of the fact and use analysis techniques such as graphs, charts and statistics
to describe and examine relationship of the data. Quantitative methods are used to
ascertain facts and explore the relationships between them. It is suitable for research
which collects and analyzes quantifiable data and presents descriptive information
(De Vaus, 2002). Quantitative research collects numerical data which focuses on
participants’ beliefs, perceptions, values, etc. This method is suited for finding out
generalization of the phenomenon under the scope of study. On the other hand, the
qualitative approach concerns about the data with descriptive nature, this approach
allow researcher to develop theory from the data (Silverman, 2002).
This research focuses on the elements of the website interface which affect
consumers’ trust. So this study adopts the quantitative method to collect the opinion
of the consumers and conclude statistic results.
32
3.3 Methods of Investigation
Different methods which contain literature review and survey (questionnaire) have
been used in this research study.
3.3.1 Literature Review
Literature review plays an important role in the research project; it provides an
over-all of the background and the situation of the topic. Furthermore, literature
review supports basic theory to do the research and helps to determine the nature of
the study. Literature review plays a significant role in the science investigation which
used to seek and analysis relevant research review. By doing this, researcher can
recognize the questions which proofed by other researchers and avoid re-research. In
addition, the process of investigation that used by other researchers can be learned to
do the further study in the same scope. In this research, several kinds of sources that
relate to online shopping and website design were used which contain academic
books, research articles, journals and some related reports.
3.3.2 Quantitative Survey Method
In this research, the quantitative research method is adopted which used survey
questionnaire to collect online shoppers’ opinion and trust levels on the Chinese
e-commerce website interface. By using this quantitative approach, statistical data
that related to consumers’ attitudes, behavior, and perceptions can be gathered easily.
Generalizations can be produced based on the survey data. By using this method, it is
convenient for the study to explore the variables which are concerned by participants.
Moreover, the research can discover the degree of participants’ concern about
specific variables.
The quantitative approach is suited to gather demographic information which are
important for this study to predict the trend of the consumer groups. In addition, the
participants should be a large number of people who have online shopping
33
experience and are familiar with Chinese e-commerce environment. Therefore, the
study used quantitative method to collect rich data about people’s perceptions and
their behavior. With this purpose, several factors which influenced consumers’ trust
in online shopping were concluded from the literature review and examined in the
survey to gather consumers’ general attitudes and views.
3.4 Questionnaire
3.4.1 Pilot Study
Before starting the survey, the survey questionnaire has been distributed to small
group of Chinese who used the online shopping. The questionnaire only needs 20
copies to do the pilot study to find some practical issues for the survey to large
number of people. Because the surveys will administer online, it is hard for
researcher to answer queries from respondents. So this pilot study is an important
part, it helps researcher to produce a suitable questionnaire for participants and to
collect accurate data from respondents. The pilot study was successful, and Web
survey started which distributes the questionnaire to large population.
3.4.2 Distribution and Sampling
The purpose of gather data from survey sampling is to user the sample to produce
precise inferences of the target population. It is important to pick the correct sample
when the researcher conducts the survey. The sample of this study is clear and the
participants are the people who have the B2C e-commerce shopping experiences.
The research only focuses on the relationships between the web interface design and
trust; it is a small scope to investigate. In order to explore consumer behavior
towards e-vendor and consumer attitude towards the design of interface, the study
only chooses the people who conducted the transaction online before. This study
only research Chinese’s online shopping behavior, so the participants only choose
from china.
34
The choice of data collection instrument is an essential part of the success of the
survey. This study chooses Web surveys which are increasingly popular these years
to distribute the questionnaires. The sample of this research only focus on the people
who purchase products online, so they have the ability to access to the internet. The
methodology of Web surveys is cheap to administer and convenient for researcher to
do live check. Furthermore, it can avoid sample selection bias and protect the privacy
of participant. 138 questionnaires were collected from population of internet users in
china who interest in this topic and are willing to help this study. Further deep
analysis of demographic-information with graphs and figures will be presented in
Chapter Four (Data analysis).
3.4.3 Questionnaire Design
Questionnaire is an essential part of a research which assists the research to gather
useful data. A suitable questionnaire can be accepted by the participants and more
feedback can be collected. Gillham(2002) states that data collection is an important
part of good research which helps researcher to get a perfect outcome. The
questionnaire started with the introduction of the survey that gives respondents basic
information which contains the purpose of the survey and how the data will be used.
The questionnaire in this study which contains 27 questions has two main sections.
The first section has 9 questions which relate to personal information; the second
section includes 18 questions that focus on the respondents’ attitudes towards the
design of interface in e-commerce. This research focuses on the Chinese online
shoppers’ attitude, so the final questionnaire uses Chinese language for the
participants to understand the questions easily.
The questionnaire mainly adopted closed questions which are easy to collect and
code. Nichols (1995: 39) stated: "The answer list is a way of measuring strength of
feeling among a standard range of possible answers". And another two closed
questions had been added in the questionnaire to gain other answers from
respondents. Furthermore, attitude questions are adopted which answers have a scale
35
of six degrees to determine the strength of participants’ opinion. Scales that construct
an ordered list of opinions are used as the common method for collecting data on
attitudes (Nichols, 1995).
In section 1, the first four questions which relate to respondents’ Gender, Age,
Education background, and Monthly income are designed to enquire the
demographics of the participants. The following three questions focus on the
information about respondents’ level of using internet and purchasing online in order
to explore respondents’ internet behavior. In addition, another two questions
concentrate on the type of product that purchase online and the reason their purchase
online. These nine questions are easy for participants to answer and attract them to
complete this survey.
The second section is designed to explore respondents’ online shopping experience
and their attitude towards e-commerce website interface. Question 11 is a
contingency question that can be with no answer if the respondent who did not have
any unpleasant online shopping experience. The questions which refer to the security
such as payment system and safety of personal information are asked in this part.
Moreover, next three questions focus on the design of website that contains
professional of design, response time, and stability of website. The questions relate to
the attitude towards systems which used in the interface of website are added.
Question 26 contains several variables which affect consumers’ choice of new
e-commerce website and can be answered with more than one option. Finally, an
open question is presented in order to gather more reasons which influence
consumers’ choice of e-commerce website. Nichols (1995: 40) stated: "While
structure surveys should use closed questions as much as possible, open questions
are very useful in exploratory and pretesting work, when you want to find out and list
the full range of possible answers".
3.4.4 Data analysis
After the data had collected from the survey questionnaires, the data was decoded on
36
to the excel spreadsheet. The statistic which contains percentage was calculated by
excel automatically. The response from each question was analyzed and presented
with the graphical format which will be easy for reader to understand the result of
question. The data was analyzed against each question and will be complicated
analyzed latter with the assumptions that summarized from the literature review. The
statistic results will be developed with the trust issues and interface design of
Chinese e-commerce.
3.5 Ethical Issues
This research is a low risk, it do not relate to the sensitive issues to participants. The
research follows the university’s ethics guidelines. All of the participants are
voluntary who want to help the research. The research detail will explain at the
beginning of the questionnaire, the participants have the right to decide to complete
the questionnaire or not. This study only gathers the participants’ age, sex and the
opinions about the research questions. All of the data which collected from the
participants will be security and only used of this research.
3.6 Summary
This chapter introduced the methodology used in this research. The research
approaches have been analyzed in this chapter with purpose of choosing a suitable
approach for this study. The study adopts quantitative approach to conduct this
dissertation. The chapter also presented the questionnaire design which explored the
frame of the questions that related to the e-commerce interface design.
37
Chapter 4
Data analysis
4.1 Introduction
This chapter expresses the findings which collected from survey. The survey was
administered through questionnaires which contain 27 questions. Section two
presents the respondents’ demographics which contain gender, age, Educational
Background, and Monthly Income. Section three presents the respondents’ shopping
behavior which relates to the trust issues and attitude to the design of interface.
Moreover, the relationships between trust and several variables in interface design
were examined. All questions that used in the questionnaire are developed from the
aspect of Chinese consumers’ attitudes and beliefs which influence their choice of
e-vender when shopping online.
4.2 Demographics of the sample
Table 3 Respondents personal information
Respondents=138 Frequency
(No. of respondents )
Percentage %
Gender
Male
Female
75
63
54.35%
45.65%
Age
18-24
25-30
57
78
41.3%
52.52%
38
30-40
>40
0
3
0%
2.17%
Educational Background
Under High School
High School
Undergraduate Postgraduate
Master or Above
6
9
96
27
4.35%
6.52%
69.57%
19.57%
Monthly Income
<2000
2000-5000
5000-8000
>8000
63
60
12
3
45.65%
43.48%
8.7%
2.17%
(Question 1-4)
The survey collected 138 feedbacks which are the completed questionnaires.
Demographic characteristics of the respondents are important in the analysis of the
sample. This table presents the results from question 1-4 which contain gender, age,
educational background and monthly income. Among these 138 respondents, the
gender distribution was balanced which contain 54.35% male and 45.65% female.
The majority of the respondents were aged between 18-30 years old, and 41.3% of
the respondents are 18-24 years old. 25-30 years old participants accounts for the
largest proportion (52.25%), over 40 years old participants only makes up 2.17% of
the total population in the survey. More than half of the respondents were well
educated, 69.57% of the respondents placed their educational background at the
undergraduate postgraduate level. And 27 participants have master degree or above
qualification. The table demonstrates that there are only 4.35% participants have
under high school background. According to the table, 45.65% of the sample placed
their monthly income in the under 2000 RMB, while 43.48% participants’ income
arrived 2000-5000 RMB. Only 8.7% participants have 5000-8000 RMB income
monthly, and respondents who have more than 8000 RMB is rare (2.17%).
39
As shown in the table that People who have well educated are more willing to make
online purchases. Question 3 asked respondents’ educational background, and the
result shows that most of them have high degree and master computer and internet
skills which can improve their confidence in online shopping. Furthermore, the
monthly income does not influence the participants’ online shopping behavior deeply.
45.65% participants’ monthly income is under 2000 RMB, but they still like to
purchase products through e-commerce website.
Figure 1 The period of using internet by respondents
According to the figure 1, most of the participants of the survey have been using the
internet more than 3 years. Specifically, 48% of the members of the sample have
used the internet more than 8 years, and 43% of the members have used internet in
the range of 3 to 5 years. The participants who have used internet under 3 years only
make up 9% of all participants. With the development of the internet in china, more
and more people have the chance to use internet. It is easy for people to accept the
new way that shopping online when they have more internet skills.
7%
2%
43%
48%
how long have you been using the internet?
1 year 1-3 years 3-5 years more than 8 years
40
Figure 2 Level of internet usage by respondents
Bar chart shows that accessing internet becomes one of the most important part of
people’s daily life, 126 respondents placed they used the internet daily. It is clear in
the figure 2 that only small part of participants used internet 3 times a week (0.06%).
There were few respondents used the internet weekly, it is only 0.02%. In this survey,
all of the respondents have the online shopping experience, so the majority of the
participants used the internet frequently.
Figure 3 Level of online purchasing by respondents
126
3 9 00
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
Daily weekly 3 times a week very rarely
How frequently do you use the internet?
35%
43%
13%9%
How frequently do you shopping online monthly?
<1 1 4 >4
41
Question 7 is designed to distinguish the internet users and online shoppers. It is
clear that not all the internet users purchase products online, so this question is useful
for the study to explore online shoppers’ habit. As can be seen from the pie chart that
43% of participants purchased online once every month. The second largest portion
of respondents placed that they shop online less than once per month (35%) while 13%
of participants claimed that they purchase online weekly. 9% of respondents stated
that they shop online frequently and it is more than 4 times every monthly.
Figure 4 Respondents and types of products which were purchased online
Consumers’ preferences in terms which they regularly purchase from e-commerce
websites is an important factor that helps to discover the attributes of the product.
This data can improve the design of the e-commerce website and encourage
consumers to do more purchase in the online environment. Question 8 is designed
with the check list that contains several types of products, and respondents can
choose one or more options if they want. It is clear from the bar chart that the
majority of the respondents reported that they purchased clothes online (58.7%).
45.65% of respondents claimed that they bought others which include travel ticket,
discounted gift certificates, cosmetics products etc. A significant segment of
respondents regarded that they purchased second hand goods (43.48%), while 2.17%
of respondents replied that they purchased groceries online. The books bought by
respondents placed as 26.09%.
36
81
3
60 63
0102030405060708090
Books Clothes Grocery Second hand goods
Others
what products do you purchase online normally?
42
Figure 5 The reason of purchasing online by respondents
This question asked respondents to explain the reason why they purchase online. As
shown in the figure 5 that 76% of respondents choose the convenience. The option of
money-saving makes up 15%, while the option of for fun and for curiosity only
accounts for 7% and 2%. It is clear that online shopping attracts respondents because
purchasing online let them feel convenient. By this way, they can save time and do
not need to be at the shop physically. Furthermore, online shopping supports the
channel for them to conduct the purchases at anywhere and from any store online.
Another reason why respondents purchase online is that it can save money.
76%
15%
2%7%
why do you purchase online?
Convenience
Money-saving
For curiosity
For fun
43
4.3 Online shopping behavior
Figure 6 Unpleasant experience
Consumers’ online shopping experiences affect their decisions when they choose an
e-commerce vendor. Moreover, it also affects their attitude towards the e-vendor and
influence assessment whether to trust a vendor or not. With this purpose, the question
10 is designed to explore whether respondents had an unpleasant online shopping
experience. If the respondent place no, he has to explain the reason in the question 11.
61% of respondents reported that they did not have unpleasant online shopping
experiences while other respondents complain they had bad experiences.
There are four main reasons that result participants did not feel pleasure and
satisfactory. Most of the participants replied that the qualities of the products are
dreadful. Others complained the products that they received did not meet the
information in the website. Furthermore, the delivery time is a critical aspect which
has been considered by the respondents. Customer service is an important part which
affects consumers’ feeling during they purchase online.
39%
61%
Have you ever had unpleasant online shopping experiences?
Yes
No
44
Figure 7 The important of the factors which affect consumer confidence
There are many important variables which influence consumer confidence during
they purchase online. Question 12 listed five most important variables that
considered by the consumer, and this question is designed with the purpose of
examining which element is more essential in china. This question has five options
and respondent can choose more than one option which affects them deeply. The
quality of product got the highest mark in this question; it had been placed by 108
respondents. Security of payment system was considered as another important
variable when they purchase from e-commerce website. As can be seen from the
figure 7, the safety of personal information is as important as the delivery time which
marked by 36.96% of respondents. However, only 19.57% of participants reported
that they will evaluate the security of website.
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
Safety of personal
information
security of payment system
quality of product
security of website
Delivery time
What factors affect your online shopping confidence?
45
Figure 8 The effect of the information of product on consumers’ purchase decision
This question collected the participants’ attitudes toward product information on the
e-commerce website followed by the question 12 that explored the variable which
was concerned by most participants. There are six levels from strongly agree to
strongly disagree can be choose in this question. The product information which
contains quality, price, brand, etc plays an essential role in the online shopping. Most
part of participants agreed that the information of product is important when they do
the purchase decision (54.35%), while 4.35% of participants disagreed with this
opinion. The numbers of strongly agree and somewhat agree are similar with 20%.
Figure 9 Payment method
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Strongly agree
Agree Somewhat agree
somewhat disagree
disagree strongly disagree
35%
7%
4%
54%
Which payment method do you prefer?
Credit card
Debit card
By remittance via post office
Third-party payment platform
46
Question 14 developed from the question 12 which refers to the main variables that
concerned by the consumers, it focused on the payment method. This question
related to the security and privacy aspect. As been shown in figure 9, more than half
of participants replied they used third-party payment platform to complete the
transaction. 35% of participants chose credit card to pay for the bill when they
purchased online. Alipay is one of the most popular third-party payment platforms
that have been used in e-commerce in china. It is easy to use and the consumers can
get a refund when they unsatisfied with the goods or did not receive product.
Figure 10 The reason of choosing this payment method
Table 4 the numbers of respondents who chose different payment method with each
reason
Convenience Least risky Most secured
Third-party
payment platform
43 20 12
Credit card 25 1 22
Debit card 4 3 2
By remittance via
post office
0 3 3
According to the figure 10, 52% of participants replied that they choose the payment
52%
20%
28%
Why you choose this payment method?
Convenience
Least risky
Most secured
47
method with the reason of convenience. It is clear from the table that more than half
of users who chose third-party payment platform reported that it is convenient to use
this payment method. 52.1% of participants placed convenience and others replied
with the reason of most secured. As shown in the table that paying through
third-party payment platform had been considered as the way with lowest risk in all
payment methods. In the situation of china, the largest proportion of online shoppers
purchased online with the purpose of convenience and they chose third-party
payment platform to complete the transaction.
Figure 11 The effect of the professional design on consumers’ choice of website
Web site is the basic platform for the consumers to gain information in e-commerce,
so the relationship between interface design and trust has to be considered
significantly. Question 16and 17 dealt with the respondents’ opinion on professional
design of interface and stability of shopping platform. According to the bar chart
participants had the same opinions in these two questions. Around 55% of
participants regarded that these two factors of website is important in e-commerce.
Especially, more than 25% participants replied that they strongly agree with these
standpoints. However, there are small part of participants a little disagreed with the
opinion that the professional design of interface influenced their choice of
e-commerce website.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
professional design of interface
stability of shopping platfrom
48
Figure 12 The effect of response time on consumer’s trust
When design the e-commerce interface, the response time which related to the
consumers’ satisfaction of online shopping should be considered. 80% of participants
agree with that the response time affects consumer’s trust, while others did not agree
with this standpoint. The majority of participants cannot accept the low speed of
display, 17.39% of participant claimed it was a very important factor which
influenced the trust to the website.
Figure 13 Reading comments and ratings
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Strongly agree Agree Somewhat agree
somewhat disagree
disagree strongly disagree
To what extent do you agree the response time of website affects consumer’s trust?
91%
9%
Did you read other consumers’ comments and ratings when you shopping online?
Yes
No
49
With the development of e-commerce the group of online shoppers has increased
rapidly, and the communication between online shoppers is more essential than
before. It is clear from the figure 13 that the participants who read other consumer’s
comments and ratings accounts for the largest proportion (91%) while 9% of
participants did not do that. As shown in the figure 14, 70% of participants had
presented their attitudes toward the products and e-vendors after their purchased
online. Others’ comments and ratings becomes an important factor that used to
evaluate the product and e-vendor. Moreover, the majority of participants were
willing to give comment and complete the rating. According to bar chart 95% of
respondents replied that the poor comments and ratings influenced their purchase
decision while 5% of respondents disagree with this opinion. Other consumers’
feedbacks played an essential role in the e-commerce, and they had been used to
assess the reliability of e-vendor.
Figure 14 Comment and rate for products and e-vendors
70%
30%
Did you comment and rate for the products and e-vendors when you shopping online?
Yes
No
50
Figure 15 The effect of negative comments on consumer’s choice of product
Figure 16 The effect of customer service on consumers’ trust
Figure 17 Communication method
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Strongly agree
Agree Somewhat agree
somewhat disagree
disagree strongly disagree
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Strongly agree
Agree Somewhat agree
somewhat disagree
disagree strongly disagree
9%
11%
80%
0%
Telephone
online communication (QQ or MSN)
No need
51
Question 22 asked participants to give their opinion about the relationship between
customer service and trust. Question 23 followed by the last question to explore
which type of communication method that respondents used to contact with vendor
frequently. 95% of respondents reported that customer service would improve
business confidence. Furthermore, 80% of respondents chose online communication
to gain detail of the product with vendors. Around 10% participants placed email and
telephone while no respondent purchased online without communication with
vendor.
Figure 18 The effect of recommendation system and navigation on consumer’s trust
Recommendation system was frequently used in the design of e-commerce website;
it supports products which consumer will prefer. Navigation is used by consumer to
find the products that they desire to purchase. So these two questions are asked
participants to express to what extent they agree with these two variables affect their
trust of the website. As shown in the figure 18 most of the participants stated that
they agree recommendation system and navigation will influence they trust.
Comparing with these two data in the figure 18, it is clear that Chinese online
shoppers paid more attention to the usefulness of navigation than the
recommendation system.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Recommendation system
Navigation
52
Figure 19 Respondents and elements which affect choice of new e-commerce
website
This question is a recall question which used to gather data more accurately from the
respondents. Hyndman (2008) stated “Respondents tend to remember what should
have been done rather than what was done.” The question listed seven options and
participants can choose more than one option which was important and affected to
their choice of new e-commerce website. 105 participants claimed that security
which associated with the online shopping is very important. Around 80 respondents
placed reputation and customer service while 69 respondents recognized the design
of website as important when they evaluated one e-commerce website. 41.3%
respondents reported that they considered the third party recognition while only one
third participants placed search function and return policy.
The last question of the survey asked the respondents to express other issues that not
include in the survey which affect consumers’ choice of new e-commerce website.
This is an open-ended question so participants can state factors which relate to the
trust issues of Chinese e-commerce websites. More than 20 participants reported that
the new e-commerce website is recommended by their friends. Another factor that
influences consumer’s choice is the price which would be compromised their trust.
The reputation of vendor is an essential variable which is considered by consumers
020406080
100120
Which of the following elements will affect your choice of new e-commerce
website?
53
because there are few laws that refer to e-commerce which protect the welfare of
online consumers. Moreover, some participants argued that a protection system
should be built to improve the security of the transaction. Furthermore, the types of
products are mentioned in the survey and they required the e-commerce platform be
more professional which contains special kind of products such as shoes. Sales
record is another factor which reported by several participants. Chinese consumers
worried about the quality of product and the reliable of e-vendor so they did not want
to do the first person who purchased this product.
4.4 Summary
In the chapter the data that collected from the survey was presented with two sections.
Demographic findings were described firstly. Chinese online shoppers were young
and purchased online frequently with the reason of convenience. After that, Chinese
consumers’ online shopping behavior that related to the design of website interface
was expressed. Consumers’ opinions of several main elements that related to the
design of interface were represented.
54
Chapter 5
Discussion
5.1 Introduction
This chapter will discuss all the research findings which presented in chapter 4.
Several main elements which referred in the survey will be analyzed deeply with the
environment of china. The purpose of this survey was to explore the relationships
between consumer trust and the design of website in e-commerce. In this chapter, the
results from the survey will be combined with the research objectives. Then, some
solving approach for the issues that appeared in this study will be presented with the
analysis of literature. Finally, a brief summary will be stated.
5.2 The environment of e-commerce in china
The survey revealed that the Chinese shoppers are younger, educated, and
high-income. The majority of them have used internet more than 3 years. Especially,
there are numerous of participants stated that they used internet every day. This
means they have higher degree of familiarity with the internet and have more
confidence when they purchase products in online environment. The demographic
analysis indicated that most of the shoppers are younger who have better educated
and plenty disposable income. Palmer (2002) also pointed that the personal factors
such as age, gender, and income level would influence choice behavior. Furthermore,
the demographic data reveals that most of Chinese internet users are experts who
master computer skills and knowledgeable with the processes of e-commerce.
The majority of Chinese internet users purchased products and services via internet
with the reason of convenience. Survey data reveals that most of the online shoppers
purchased online monthly. According to CNNIC (2011) report Chinese online
shoppers purchased online 12 times in half year on average in 2010. With the
55
development of e-commerce in china, more and more internet users had the
experiences of online shopping. Moreover, online shoppers changed their purpose of
online shopping which is only for fun or curiosity. Chinese internet users are not
hesitant when they conducted the transaction online. Groupon was launched on 2008.
In 2010, numerous of deal-of-the-day website which support discounted gift
certificates and discounted products appeared in china. The type of products which
purchased by Chinese online shopper has increased. They did not only purchase
books and clothes, but also bought travel ticket, discounted gift certificates,
cosmetics products. With the development of e-commerce, online shoppers required
more kind of products. Product variety related to the range of products which
influenced consumers’ perception of product. E-commerce is now in growth phase in
china, the competition between e-vendors has become fierce and how to attract
consumer’s attention and improve their trust to the e-commerce website is a critical
issue. Zo & Ramamurthy (2009: 2) stated “In the context of conventional retail
markets, the key independent variables of retail patronage include product quality,
price, and product selection/assortment as product-relevant factors and convenience,
service quality, friendliness of salespeople, store image, store atmosphere, and fast
checkout as store-relevant factors”.
5.3 Experience
This part discusses the impact of past shopping experience on consumer behavior
and trust. Consumers’ pleasant experience will improve their confidence of shopping
online, while if the consumer had an unpleasant experience they will be more
hesitant. According to the survey there are one third of respondents replied that they
had an unpleasant online shopping experience. The respondents who had unpleasant
experience reported that they would not purchase from this e-vendor. The majority of
respondents stated the reasons of unsatisfied were that the quality of products was
poor. Moreover, some participants argued that the products which they purchased
online were not consistent with the description in the website. So the website
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information quality should be considered by e-vendor, which should be more
accurate and reliable. When the participants were asked what factors affected their
confidence in online shopping, 80% of participants placed the quality of product. The
participants also stated that they did not satisfy with delivery time and customer
service. In addition, the security of payment system and security of website also
affected the consumers’ choice of e-commerce website. Zo & Ramamurthy (2009)
argued that information quality and system quality played an essential role in
generating web-customer satisfaction. The aim of this research is to explore the main
elements which influence consumers’ trust in the design of e-commerce website. In
next section, these key elements will be analyzed with the situation of Chinese
e-commerce.
5.4 Website characteristics
There are several website characteristics that associate with the trust issues in online
shopping which include security, structure of website, content of website, social-cue
design dimension.
5.4.1 Security
According to the survey, the majority of respondents worried about the security of
website. Security of online transaction is an essential part to build trust and maintain
long-term relationship (Cheung, 2005). Most of Chinese online shoppers concerned
about the disclosure of their personal information when they completed the
transactions in e-commerce website. Therefore, it is critical for the online vendors to
provide a security statement which presents their ability in protecting consumer’s
information. Consumers are curious with that how secure the web site is, so the
security statement will positively improve the consumers’ trust of website.
Furthermore, the recognition of third party is another method can be used to present
the website with low risk in security. Especially, new e-commerce website needs the
third party seal to show they have the ability to protect their consumers’ information
57
during the electrical transaction. When the website does that, the consumers will
decrease the worry about the security issue and admit the vendor as integrity and
benevolence one.
Another critical issue revealed from the survey was that the security of payment
system. More than half of respondents reported that they used third-party payment
platform when they purchased online. Alipay is the most popular third-party payment
platform which has been used by vast of Chinese online shoppers. It was considered
a low risk way to complete the transaction with the reason of that they can get money
back easily if there are some quality problems with the products. One third of
respondents used credit card to pay for the bill. The reason of Chinese shoppers did
not use the credit card for online shopping is that the limit of the payment is low and
it is difficult for them to purchase expensive items. Another reason is that the
Chinese bank did not like western countries’ bank which have refund policy. These
two types of payment method were accepted with the majority of online shoppers
with the reason of low risk and convenience. Lumsden (2006) stated that most of
initial trusting decisions are spontaneous and they are difficult for vendors to
establish levels of experiential trust. When the website supports more payment
methods which are familiar by consumers, the consumers’ trust towards the website
will be improved. Most of the consumers chose the payment method with the reason
of convenience, so it is clear that the shoppers are willing to choose the payment
method which they used before or used by most of online shoppers with great
reputation. The strategy of the vendor support more selection of payment methods
for the consumers, it will enhance consumers’ confidence and trust.
5.4.2 Structure of website
The study findings show that 95% of respondents pointed the professional design of
interface affected their choice of e-commerce website. The interface of e-commerce
is the main way to display the information to consumers and promote consumers’
58
trust. There are three key elements that contain stability, response time, and
navigation which are used by consumer to evaluate the website.
Stability of website is also discussed by researchers as accessibility which was
frequently mentioned as a core factor to enhance online trust. Consumers will be not
satisfactory with a website interface which contains broken links, out of work
functions, meaningless images, etc. for example, a respondent stated: “when I use the
shopping cart to review my selected items, the products which I chose before were
disappeared. I tried three times, but it still did not working. With this reason, I
stopped purchased on this website.” The above respondent’s viewpoint reveals that
the stability of the interface is significant for consumers and influences their trust of
the website. There are several functional services that include powerful search
function, secure payment processes, shopping cart and so on had been used in
e-commerce, but the designer should maintain the stability of these functions.
The majority of online consumers are shopping online with the reason of
convenience, so the response time of website is important which influence
consumers’ emotion. Cheung (2005) pointed that speed of access and information
downloading is an important determinant which used by consumer to evaluate the
quality of website. Zo & Ramamurthy (2009) also argued that web quality should be
evaluated with several factors which include usability, functionality, reliability, and
efficiency. 80% of participants reported that the response time will affect their trust
of the website. Especially, 17% of participants strongly agree with opinion. The
hardware of network has been improved dramatically these years; internet users
cannot accept a website with slow download speed. If the website cannot support a
consistently download speed, the consumers will abandon this website and search a
new website. Therefore, response time of the website will positively induce
customers' trust when they visit the website.
The navigation of website interface that personalizes the customers’ special needs is
essential which increase the ease of use and enhance the effectiveness of the
information presentation (Song & Zahedi, 2001). 54.35% of respondents agreed that
ease of navigation increased their trust to the website. A simple navigation helps
59
consumers to gain the product information and place an order (Cheung, 2005). Yang
(2005) also pointed that navigation that contains guides, tutorials and instructions
which aid consumers to search for information and complete transactions. CNNIC
(2011) reported that Chinese online shoppers used navigation more frequent than
used search function in e-commerce website. Therefore, the design of navigation of
website is a critical element which attracts consumer’s attention and improves their
satisfaction.
5.4.3 Content of website
The content of website is the main channel for online shopper to obtain the product
information which affects consumers’ purchase decision significantly. 78% of
respondents reported that they concerned with the quality of products, and 95% of
respondents stated that the product information would impact their purchase decision.
Zo & Ramamurthy (2009) stated “Product information should be accurate, current,
complete, consistent, and reliable”. This information is essential because it is
difficult for consumers to examine the nature and features of product. Some
respondents complained that the products which their purchased online were not
matched with the description in the website. Product information should be accurate
and can present with picture or video which can support the opportunity for
consumer to evaluate the feature of products directly. Cheung & Lee (2005) stated
“The media richness of the web facilitates the provision of graphics, text, sound, and
video, making information attractive as well as useful”. The shoppers who purchased
clothes online accounted for a large part of all online shoppers. The consumers
cannot examine the product physically, so the product information should be
complete and reliable. For instance, one respondent sated “I bought trousers from
TaoBao, I checked the size in the website. However, it was still too small for me and
the sizes in the website were not reliable”. Complete information supports more
details of a product or service and can decrease consumers’ concerns about online
shopping.
60
5.4.4 Social-cue design of website
In this section, three main elements that contain customer service, rating system, and
recommender system will be discussed. In the context of e-commerce, the purchase
process is different from the traditional one retailing which lacks of communication,
so the interaction between consumer and e-vendor plays an essential role in the
online shopping.
Customer service is an important part in the design of website which is used to
interaction with consumer. There are two types of customer service that include
FAQs (frequently asked questions) and online customer service which had been used
frequently in e-commerce. FAQ section is essential in the website which contains lots
of questions that meet by consumers during they purchase online. However, Chinese
online shoppers are more like to use online customer service to solve the problems.
93% of respondents reported that the online customer service increased their trust of
vendor. The data of survey revealed that 80% of respondents want to communicate
with vendor through online chat such as QQ or MSN while small part of respondents
used email or telephone to interact with vendor. It is convenient for new consumers
to evaluate the vendor’s reliability. Furthermore, the questions that related to
shipping, payment process, and after-sale service can be solved easily. Online
communication can improve vendor’s reliability which attributes to build trust.
With the development of social network, consumers not only obtain information
from vendor but also gain feedbacks from other consumers. 91% of respondents read
other consumers’ ratings and comment of product which they want to buy. Song &
Zahedi (2001) stated “Informational interpersonal beliefs regarding purchase
intention could be influenced by customers’ ratings, customers’ comments, customer
testimonials, experts’ comments, and sales ranking of the product”. Word of mouth
becomes an important factor which has been used by consumers to evaluate the
quality of products and service. Most of the customers review other customers’
feedback in order to improve their online shopping experiences. In addition, the
majority of consumers are willing to rate for products and vendors and express their
61
opinions after purchase process. Rayprot & Jaworski (2004) pointed that
communication among consumers can enhance the sharing of experiences and
information; it also benefits the e-commerce website which foster a sense of
belonging with consumers. Avesani (2005) declared that trust can be considered as a
three-place predicate that trustor A trusts trustee B with valued thing C. Feedbacks
from other consumers impact new consumer’s trust of the vendor. However, a few
respondents stated that they cannot trust the vendor who had poor ratings. The poor
rating negatively affects customers’ perceived risk of e-transaction and decreases
their trust. Overall, rating system can help e-vendor to attract new consumers and
enhance their confidence to complete the transaction.
The survey conducted for this study revealed that Chinese online shoppers did not
agree that the recommender system was helpful when they search the products in the
e-commerce website. Most of the consumers considered that recommender system
was an advertisement approach because the products which were recommended
cannot meet the consumers’ expectations. Miller (2004) stated that recommender
system needs the consumers to trust the owner of the system firstly. Moreover, the
data of consumers’ ratings is sparse and it is difficult for collaborative filtering to
match similar consumers (Alshabib, 2006). Most of consumers did not want to share
data with website with the reason of that the vendor did support methods which used
to reduce administrative security risk. The social network can be used in
recommender systems to collect data from consumers and improve the trustworthy of
systems (Kitisin, 2006). However, the recommender system which replaced the
function of the traditional salesperson is still important in the e-commerce website.
The higher number of positive vote will increase the consumers’ trust to the product
and vendor. The social network has developed speedily, the recommendation advised
by friends are more trustworthy than that support by the vendor. So it is essential for
the website to collect the data of consumers who have the same preferences. Then the
result from the recommender system will be more accurate and consistent with the
needs of consumers.
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5.5 Summary
In this chapter, the findings presented in chapter four are analyzed and discussed
deeply with the context of china. Firstly, the environment of e-commerce in china has
changed dramatically in these years and the Chinese online shoppers accepted the
online shopping greatly. Then some main elements that affect consumers’ trust were
discovered from the online shoppers’ experiences. Finally, each element that related
to the consumers’ trust was discussed and some solving approaches were presented.
63
Chapter 6
Conclusion
6.1 Introduction
The final chapter will review the achievement of the aim and objectives which were
presented in the chapter 1 at first. Then, limitations of the research which appeared in
the processes of the research are pointed. Finally, some recommendations that help
further studies are stated.
6.2 Aim and Objectives Achievement
6.2.1 Aim
The aim of the research was to: research the consumer shopping behaviors
during them purchase online and explores the relationship between the website
interface and consumers’ trust.
In order to fulfill this aim, it was not practical to directly assess consumers’ shopping
behavior in the situation of environment. Therefore, some main variables which
determine consumers’ trust to online shopping were presented in the questionnaire.
The investigation focused on the Chinese attitudes toward variables that related in
the interface design. This was achieved and met the research objectives.
6.2.2 Objectives
In order to achieve the research aim, several specific objectives were developed in
this study. This section will review each objective and discuss whether they have
been fulfilled.
64
1. Provide a critical literature review on the e-commerce which focuses on the
issue of trust and the design of website. Furthermore, the relationship
between distrust and e-commerce will be related in the literature review.
The literature review was presented in the chapter 2 which critically stated the
background knowledge of trust. In addition, it covered the concept of trust in
e-commerce environment. After that, the literature review expressed the main
elements that affect consumers’ trust of e-commerce website. So the requirement of
the first objective was achieved in the chapter of literature review.
2. Find out the trend of online shopping in china which contains the feature of
consumer group and online shopping behavior. The e-commerce portals
should meet Chinese consumers’ shopping habit and decrease the
consumers’ distrust in order to attract the potentials for the further
development of the e-commerce in the country.
Objective two was investigated through the survey that was conducted with the
distribution of questionnaires to respondents. Demographics of the sample were
analyzed with the data of survey. Furthermore, Chinese online shoppers’ perception,
attitude, and behavior of e-commerce were collected from the survey. Online
shoppers’ negative shopping experiences were gathered by the open question in the
survey which used to explore consumers’ requirements. The completion of the survey
satisfied the second objective in this study.
3. Explain the constitution of a good e-commerce web design which relates to
the consumers’ trust.
In order to complete this objective, several main elements that influence consumers’
trust to the interface of website were listed in the questionnaire. Participant’s
perception of each element was collected in the survey. The importance of each
element was discussed followed by the data from the survey. Moreover, trust issues
which related to the design of interface were analyzed.
4. Provide recommendations that focus on solving the trust issues which
appears during the design of the interface.
65
The recommendations of the study outlined with the purpose of that support
strategies for the e-vendors to build a trustworthy e-commerce website. The
strategies addressed with the issues that concluded from the findings and combined
with literature review. This was carried out in order to meet the fourth objective.
6.3 Limitation
Firstly, with the reason of lack experience on design interface of website, more time
was spent on study literature. So the time frame cannot work perfectly and the time
for design questionnaire is limited. The stage of collecting data was conducted with
short period of time; therefore the sample is small for the research.
Secondly, distributing the survey was another limitation of the study. The survey was
conducted through internet, only 138 responses were collected. In addition, most of
the samples are from the same province in china, so the data cannot explain the
problems in different regions comprehensively.
Thirdly, the respondents is also a limitation of this study, the majority of respondents
are young people aged 18-30. Lack of data from different age range should lead the
results with more bias. Furthermore, the survey was launched with my social
network, so the majority of participants are educational class in china.
6.4 Recommendations for further research
As the limitations referred in the last section, this study only collected the data from
specific group of online shoppers. With the purpose of solving these limitations, the
possible recommendations for further investigation have been mentioned as follows:
Further studies should make the survey sample more balanced which including wider
range of ages. Moreover, the sample should be broader which contains different
regions in china.
The participants should include some professional designers who have experiences in
the design of e-commerce website interface and some e-businessmen who understand
the e-commerce environment deeply.
66
Further research should be conducted with some interviews which can help the
researcher to gather more data about the participants’ attitudes that of the identified
factors related to trust issues. Qualitative research methods can be used to collected
more information about respondents’ views and perceptions.
Consumers’ distrust of the website which influences consumers’ choice of
e-commerce website should be investigated in the further study.
6.5 Summary
This chapter assessed the fulfillment of the research aim and research objectives of
the study and expressed that they have been achieved. The limitations of this research
were outlined briefly. After that, the appropriate recommendations for further
research are stated which would help other researchers who investigate the similar
study in future.
67
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Appendix 1
Questionnaire (English Version)
Section 1
Respondents’ background
Q1 Your gender:
□ Male □ Female
Q2 Your age:
□ 18-24 □ 25-30 □ 30-40 □ >40
Q3 Educational background:
□ Under high school
□ High school
□ University
□ Further higher education (e.g. Master, Doctoral degrees)
Q4 Monthly income (￥)
□ < 2000
□ 2000-5000
□ 5000-8000
□ >8000
Q5 How long have you been using the internet?
□ < 1 year □ 1-3 years □ 3-5 years □ >8 years
Q6 How often you use the internet?
□ Daily
□ Once a week
□ More than 3 times per week
□ Very rarely
Q7 How frequently did you purchase online monthly?
□ <1 □ 1 □ 4 □ >4
Q8 What products do you purchase online normally?
□ Books □ Music □ Clothes □ Grocery
□ Second hand goods □ Others: __________
Q9 why do you purchase online?
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□ Convenience □ Money-saving □ For curiosity □ For fun
Section 2
Online shopping experience
Q10 Have you ever had unpleasant online shopping experiences?
□ Yes □ No (to question )
Q11 Please describes your unpleasant online shopping experience.
____________________________________________________
Q12 What factors affect your online shopping confidence?
□ Safety of personal information
□ Security of payment system
□ Quality of product
□ Security of website
□ Delivery time
Q13 To what extent do you agree that the information of product on the website will
affect your purchase decision?
□ Strongly agree
□ Agree
□ Somewhat agree
□ Somewhat disagree
□ Disagree
□ Strongly disagree
Q14 Which payment method do you prefer?
□ Credit card
□ Debit card
□ By remittance via post office
□ Third-party payment platform
Q15 Why you choose this payment method?
□ Convenience
□ Least risky
□ Most secured
Q16 To what extent do you agree that the professional design of interface affects the
decision when you choose the e-commerce website?
□ Strongly agree
□ Agree
□ Somewhat agree
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□ Somewhat disagree
□ Disagree
□ Strongly disagree
Q17 What is your opinion about the stability of shopping platform influences the
consumer’s choice of the e-commerce website?
□ Strongly agree
□ Agree
□ Somewhat agree
□ Somewhat disagree
□ Disagree
□ Strongly disagree
Q18 To what extent do you agree the response time of website affects consumer’s
trust?
□ Strongly agree
□ Agree
□ Somewhat agree
□ Somewhat disagree
□ Disagree
□ Strongly disagree
Q19 Did you read other consumers’ comments and ratings when you shopping
online?
□ Yes
□ No
Q20 Did you comment and rate for the products and e-vendors when you shopping
online?
□ Yes
□ No
Q21 What is your opinion about the negative comments affects the consumer’s
choice of product?
□ Strongly agree
□ Agree
□ Somewhat agree
□ Somewhat disagree
□ Disagree
□ Strongly disagree
Q22 To what extent do you agree that the online customer service enhances
consumers’ trust of the e-vendor?
□ Strongly agree
74
□ Agree
□ Somewhat agree
□ Somewhat disagree
□ Disagree
□ Strongly disagree
Q23 Which type of communication method do you prefer when you communicate
with the e-vendor?
□ Telephone
□ Online communication (QQ or MSN)
□ No need
Q24 To what extent do you agree that recommendation system of e-commerce
platform is important to consumers?
□ Strongly agree
□ Agree
□ Somewhat agree
□ Somewhat disagree
□ Disagree
□ Strongly disagree
Q25 To what extent of you agree that an easy to use navigation affects consumer’s
trust of e-commerce website?
□ Strongly agree
□ Agree
□ Somewhat agree
□ Somewhat disagree
□ Disagree
□ Strongly disagree
Q26 Which of the following elements will affect your choice of new e-commerce
website?
□ Design of website
□ Security
□ Reputation
□ Third party recognition
□ Search function
□ Customer service
□ Return policy
Q27 Other reasons affect consumers’ choice of new e-commerce website.
___________________________________________________
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Appendix 2
Questionnaire (Chinese Version)
大家好！ 我是谢菲尔德大学的学生，正在进行一项调查研究。想通过这次调查掌握一些关
于电子商务网站界面设计和信任的关系的信息。此问卷不记名，请大家选出符合你们实际
情况和真实感受的选项，谢谢参与！
一．基本信息
1. 您的性别：A. 男 B. 女
2. 您的年龄段：A. 18-24 B.25-30 C. 30-40 D. >40
3. 您正在攻读或已获得的最高学位：
A. 高中以下
B. 高中
C. 大学本科
D. 研究生或研究生以上
4. 您目前个人月收入：
A. 2000 以下
B.2000-5000
C.5000-8000
D.8000 以上
5. 您的网龄？
A. 1 年 B. 1-3 年 C. 3-5 年 D. 8 年以上
6. 您多久上一次网？
A.每天 B.每周 1 次 C.每周 3 次 D.很少
7. 您上每月网购物的次数？
A. <1 B. 1 C. 4 D. >4
8. 您上网购物的商品种类？（可以多选）
A．书籍 B.衣服 C.杂物 D.二手商品 E.其他
9. 您上网购物的原因：
A．方便 B. 省钱 C. 好奇 D. 娱乐
二．在线购物经历
10. 您是否有不愉快的在线购物经历？
A. 有 B. 没有
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11. 请简要描述你的不愉快购物经历。
____________________________________________________
12. 在线购物时，您最关心什么问题？（可以多选）
A．个人信息的安全
B．支付的安全性
C．商品的质量问题
D．网页安全性
E．快递的时间
13. 在线购物时产品的描述信息会影响你的决定？
A．非常同意 B. 同意 C. 有点同意 D. 有点不同意 E. 不同意 F. 非常不同意
14．您喜欢通过以下哪种方式付款？
A．信用卡 B. 借记卡 C. 邮局汇款 D. 第 3 方支付平台（支付宝，PayPal）
15. 您选择这种付款方式的原因？
A．方便 B. 低风险 C. 比较可靠
16. 网页设计的专业性会影响你对购物网站的选择？
A．非常同意 B. 同意 C. 有点同意 D. 有点不同意 E. 不同意 F. 非常不同意
17. 购物平台的稳定性会影响你对购物网站的选择？
A．非常同意 B. 同意 C. 有点同意 D. 有点不同意 E. 不同意 F. 非常不同意
18. 网页的刷新速度会影响用户对此网站的信任度？
A．非常同意 B. 同意 C. 有点同意 D. 有点不同意 E. 不同意 F. 非常不同意
19. 在购买商品时您会关注其他用户对此产品的评分和评论吗？
A．会 B. 不会
20. 您会在完成购物后对此商品和卖家做评分和评论吗？
A. 会 B. 不会
21. 商品的不好评价会影响用户对产品的选择？
A．非常同意 B. 同意 C. 有点同意 D. 有点不同意 E. 不同意 F. 非常不同意
22. 在线客服会提高用户对商家的信任度？
A．非常同意 B. 同意 C. 有点同意 D. 有点不同意 E. 不同意 F. 非常不同意
23. 在线购物时您喜欢以下哪种方式与卖家沟通？
A．电子邮件
B．电话
C．在线沟通（QQ 或 MSN）
D．不需要
77
24. 购物平台的推荐系统对用户非常重要？
A．非常同意 B. 同意 C. 有点同意 D. 有点不同意 E. 不同意 F. 非常不同意
25. 网页的刷新速度会影响用户对此网站的信任度？
A．非常同意 B. 同意 C. 有点同意 D. 有点不同意 E. 不同意 F. 非常不同意
26. 以下方面哪几个会影响你选择新的购物网站？（可以多选）
A．网站的设计 B. 网站的安全性 C. 网站的知名度 D. 第三方认证
E．网站的搜索功能 F. 网站的客户服务 H. 网站的退款条列
27. 其他会影响你选择购物平台的因素：
____________________________________________________
