The objective of this study is to identify the factors that influence customers in choosing to purchase products on an e-commerce platform and to understand the unique selling advantage of an e-commerce platform. In Thailand, Shopee and Lazada are the two biggest key players that penetrate most of the e-commerce market. Following the smaller e-commerce that is still developing to compete with big players like Line Shopping and Shein, it has also started to become more popular with consumers these days.
Most platforms are likely to be similar in terms of product launches, stores, communications, and campaign periods, and some are the same in terms of promotions. Therefore, if we zoom out to the big picture of the e-commerce industry, it's mostly identical. Identify factors that influence customers' choice to purchase products on an e-commerce platform.
When talking about e-commerce or online shopping, promotions are one of the very first things that come to mind. Even though this is a strategy, there are still many consumers who buy something just because of the promotion. There is also a study by Jadhav which also supports that promotion is also one of the factors that motivate consumers to buy products online.
Each of these dimensions is important and, once combined, can predict the platform's user experiences (Parker & Kuo, 2022).
Price
Dong mentioned that according to their findings, the website system has a positive relationship with consumer trust, which can be related to purchase intention.
Word of mouth
Consumers believe that the ease of purchasing products is the most important factor when purchasing something online (Glińska & Ryciuk, 2018). Zeba's study also supports this idea and shows that word of mouth has a positive influence on online purchase intentions, which is related to trust (Zeba, 2016). Due to the importance of WOM, we can conclude that WOM is one of the factors that influence consumers' purchase intention.
Convenience
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Methodology
Quantitative Method
Potential Output
FINDINGS AND RESULTS
Respondent Profile
According to the occupation of the respondents, it is similar to the gender in which over 73% of the respondents are employed. For the average monthly income, it can be seen that most of the respondents make more than 50,000 THB per month.
Factors that influence consumers to purchase via an e-commerce platform
For user experience, the bar graph represents the overall average score of respondents on experiences in the interface of e-commerce platforms. The highest score is on 'I prefer a platform that is less complex to use' which counts for 3.4 while the lowest score is 3.0 on 'The interface of the e-commerce platform is very important to me when it comes to buying a product online.' The average score is 3.2 which is on "The e-commerce platform that gives me a lot of product recommendations, gives me a good user experience". Thus, the respondents of this study also perceive user experience as an essential factor when they are purchasing products from e-commerce platforms.
When it comes to price from the bar graph that shows the average scores of all statements under the price factor, the result is interesting. Each of the statements, 'Price is the most important factor for me when shopping.', 'Price of e-commerce is much cheaper than an offline store.', and 'E-commerce platforms offer me various price ranges from different sellers. to choose the best one.' is 3.5 which means that for the respondents of this study, price is important to them when they buy products from E-commerce. Referring to the bar graph in figure 4.8 which represents the average scores of respondents' answers to the WOM factor, it can be seen that similar to price, the scores are the same at 3.5.
That being said, since the scale in the online survey is from 1 to 4, and in this case the average score is 3.5, we can conclude that WOM is also important to the respondents. All the statements in the section "Recommendations and reviews are inevitably important for purchasing a product," "A positive and credible product recommendation will make me buy products in an e-commerce store," and "Word of mouth is important to me in making purchase decisions." are the same. The highest average score is 3.8 from 'I can buy e-commerce products anywhere without having to go out', while the lowest average score is 3.3, which is from 'E-commerce platforms offer different ways payments that I think are very important.' .
On the other hand, the second highest is 3.7 from 'Buying products through e-commerce helps me save time'. Compared to the highest, the difference is only 0.1 point. According to the bar graph, convenience is still considered an essential factor for the respondents, even though there is a difference between each statement, as the average scores are higher than 3. The respondents believe that when it comes to purchasing products from ecommerce platforms, convenience is another factor influencing them.
Therefore, when all factors are combined together with an average score of 3.5, it can be seen from the figure below that factors that have an average score below 3.5 are considered unimportant factors for participants for this study. Out of 5 factors, there are 4 important factors that impact the intention to purchase via an e-commerce platform - promotion, price, convenience and WOM. On the other hand, user experience is considered an unimportant factor for participants who participated in this study.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
- Conclusion
- Recommendation
- Limitation
- Future Study
The promotion shouldn't be too price-related, but should somehow be something that encourages customers to buy more and feel it's worth paying. This is to maintain the branding of the platform and keep the platform sustainable. The user experience is also an important factor for customers, which is why the platform should keep its design simple yet creative for customers to use.
A less complex platform would lead to a better user experience, so the platform should continue to optimize and perform AB testing regularly to achieve this part. To maintain this standard, the platform should maintain its relationship with brands and sellers and offer a win-win solution. An example is offering lower commissions if brand sellers can set a discounted price of xx.
The platform can connect with the brand and merchant to create a co-campaign, such as having influencers review the product and purchase channel. This would be beneficial for all parties, which could lead to a higher WOM towards the platform. It scores highest of the other factor; that's why customers choose to buy in e-commerce because it's convenient, that's why the platform should maintain its platform stability by ensuring that the platform doesn't crash easily during the day.
As well as keep updating new payment method regularly for better payment selection choices from customers. Finally, consider having a faster delivery period, such as same-day delivery or one-hour delivery to better assist with the customer's convenient mindset towards the platform. In this paper we found some time constraints that allowed us to collect only 100 sample sizes, 78% of which are female.
Finally, 73% of the sample size is an employee, if we could reduce the limitation with the timing, we could collect more sample sizes from more variety of average income and equal gender amount. Therefore, for the benefit of future studies, we need to collect more sample sizes that include higher male respondents. In addition, we can also collect sample sizes with varieties of occupations and income ranges to get a deeper insight into the studies as well as a result of different types of people.
Word of mouth, trust and perceived risk in online shopping: An extension of the technology acceptance model.
APPENDICES
Appendix A: Survey Questions
- Screening Question
- General Questions
- Specific Questions
- Demographic
- โปรดระบุเพศของคุณ
- โปรดระบุอายุของคุณ
- กรุณาระบุอาชีพของคุณ
การส่งเสริมการขายเป็นปัจจัยสำคัญสำหรับการตัดสินใจซื้อของฉัน - อินเทอร์เฟซของแพลตฟอร์มการซื้อขายมีความสำคัญมากสำหรับฉันเมื่อพูดถึงการซื้อสินค้าออนไลน์..) - แพลตฟอร์มการซื้อขายที่ให้คำแนะนำผลิตภัณฑ์มากมายแก่ฉัน มอบประสบการณ์ที่ดีในแง่ของการใช้งาน)
ราคาเป็นปัจจัยที่สำคัญที่สุดสำหรับฉันเมื่อซื้อสินค้า) แพลตฟอร์มอีคอมเมิร์ซเสนอช่วงราคาที่แตกต่างกันจากผู้ขายหลายราย เพื่อให้ฉันสามารถเลือกราคาที่ดีที่สุดได้) คำวิจารณ์หรือปากต่อปากเป็นสิ่งสำคัญ (การอ้างอิงและบทวิจารณ์มีความสำคัญต่อการซื้อผลิตภัณฑ์อย่างหลีกเลี่ยงไม่ได้) (ปากต่อปากเป็นสิ่งสำคัญสำหรับฉันในการตัดสินใจซื้อ)
มีช่องทางการชำระเงิน คุณสามารถเลือกวิธีการชำระเงินต่างๆ ได้ และฉันคิดว่านี่เป็นสิ่งสำคัญ (แพลตฟอร์มอีคอมเมิร์ซมีวิธีการชำระเงินที่แตกต่างกัน ซึ่งฉันคิดว่าสำคัญมาก)
