| With Internet technology increasingly penetrating every area of human society, politics, economy and culture, digital business has become what every people and every organization should face to. E-commerce and online shopping are no longer an option, but a necessity. In2012, the proportion of online shopping transaction amount in the retail volume of social consumer goods has risen to6.2%. At the same time, consumers’expectation for the quality of goods is also rising. According to the survey of iResearch consulting Group, the most important factor which online shoppers pay attention to is "product quality" in2012. As a consequence, the demand from consumers and market requires the government regulatory agencies, online shopping platform, seller and other parties to attach more importance to product quality control. Therefore, this study about the product quality control in online shopping market is based on the realistic problem, which has strong practical significance. On the other hand, the online shopping market in China has a late start, but developed rapidly. Furthermore, there is a big difference between Chinese online shopping market and developed countries. Due to the above reasons, the academic field about the product quality of Chinese online shopping is still a virgin land to be developed. This article fills the theory gap.Through the literature review, this article hasn’t finds an existing model to be referred. Therefore, this article builds the model of three-level product quality control system of Chinese online shopping. Then aiming at the online shopping platform-the core subject of three-level product quality control system, the study puts forward the concept of product quality control ability of online shopping platform, and builds the index system of product quality control ability of Chinese online shopping platform. Next, Taobao’s product quality control ability is evaluated using the above index system. Finally, the article analyzes the evolution process and the the law of action of product quality control of online shopping platform. Specifically, the main contents of the article include the following:Firstly, research on the model of three-level product quality control system of Chinese online shopping. This article analyzes the differences between the product quality control of online shopping and traditional shopping context. Combing systematically the processes of online shopping, the study reveals product quality control measures of every transaction processes implemented by three control subjects, and builds the model of three-level product quality control system constructed by the government regulatory agencies, online shopping platform and the seller. Furthermore, the study analyzes the different role and function assumed by three parites, and depicts the current product quality control measures.Secondly, research on the index system of product quality control ability of Chinese online shopping platform. The article puts forward and explains the concept of product quality control ability of online shopping platform. According to the literature review and the experts’opinions, the index system of product quality control ability of Chinese online shopping platform is built. The article also explicits the meaning of every index, determines the index weight through the judgement of experts, and reveals the guiding significance to the action of online shopping according to the order of index weight.Thirdly, research on the evaluation of Taobao’s product quality control ability. Using the above index system, the article evaluates the product quality control ability of Chinese largest online shopping platform. Through the empirical survey to the sellers and buyers in Taobao, the article comprehensively assesses Taobao’s current product quality control ability applying Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation and Importance-performance analysis method, and analyzes the improvement direction of Taobao’s product quality control measures.Fourthly, research on the the evolution process and the the law of action of product quality control of online shopping platform. According to the life cycle theory of the business ecosystem and e-commerce eco-system, this article divides the development of Chinese online shopping ecosystem into four stages:market rise, market expansion, relationship coordination and sustaining evolution. Combined with existing literature and data, the theory analysis about revolution process of product quality control of online shopping platform is developed. Next, the article builds population dynamical model of good-faith-seller population and bad-faith-seller population, and explores the inner mechanism and the law of action of the revolution of online shopping platform’s product quality control using analog simulation method.Based on the above contents, the article draws the following conclusion:Firstly, the purpose of product quality control in online shopping can be divided into two aspects:one is to reduce the uncertainty of product quality, and the other is to improve product quality. The seller must bear the responsibility of improving product quality to win in the intense competition. At the same time, government regulatory agency, online shopping platform and the seller bear the main responsibility in reducing quality uncertainty of online shopping. Therefore, product quality control in Chinese online shopping is conducted by the three-level product quality control system, which is composed of government regulatory agency, online shopping platform and the seller. The three-level product quality control system constructed by this article is full-subjects, full-process and full-scale. That is, the product quality control is conducted by all related parties, covered by all transaction process and involved all objects. In the three-level control system, online shopping platform plays the most important role and is the key to the smooth running of this system. On one hand, it connects with policies and regulatory measures of government regulatory agency and designs them into its own quality control mechanism; on the other hand, the platform also controls and guides the sellers’ activities in reducing quality uncertainty and improving product quality.Secondly, this article considers trust, information display and communication, product diagnosis and social presence as the first-level index for the evaluation of the product quality control ability of online shopping platform, and determines17second-level indexes through theory selection and expert consultation under the above four first-level indexes. In the index system, trust plays the most important role in, mitigating product quality uncertainty, which is far more important than the other three factors. But the weight of website informativeness, social presence and product diagnosis can not be ignored and lack of any factor can affect the platform’s product quality control ability. In trust dimension, the online reputation feedback system is the most important and the text comments ranks first in terms of the weight of index with the quantitative scores followed. The online reputation feedback system has once been criticized for seller credibility hyping and reputation collusion. But as the first adopted product quality control mechanism, it has been the most important approach to mitigate product quality uncertainty. The factor of information display and communication ranks second in evaluating the product quality control ability of online shopping platform, in which website’s display technology is the most important. Therefore, Chinese online shopping platform should learn from foreign counterparts or develop new technology on its own, to enhance the visuality and applicability of the website. In the total sorting, the third-party quality inspection ranks third after the two factors in the online reputation feedback system. It was introduced into online shopping market as an important quality control measure by Taobao in2010, and it became a necessary supplement of the online reputation feedback system. But this mechanism still has many defects in its rules, system and process design, which cause some problems like the unconformity of the product sent for test and that for sale. The online shopping platform should improve this situation. The results also show that in the total sorting, the index of offline serviceholds the lowest weight. Therefore, in the case of limited resources, it can be postponed.Thirdly, according to the result of the Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation and Importance-performance analysis method, the score of Taobao’s product quality control ability is good. The scores of its4first-level indexes are also good, including trust, website informativeness, social presence and product diagnosis. The above results state since Taobao strenthern the product quality control measures in2010, the measures have achieved remarkable results and the fraudulent behaviors have restrainted effectively. Comparatively speaking, the product quality control measures that Taobao needs to improve now, are online reputation feedback system (including quantitative scores and text comments), reputation of the cooperative institutions, a third party quality inspection, quality sampling of online shopping platform and punishment for frauds and violations. Although the search function for product quality, seller access, quality assurance and commitment and opening of physical stores, which are in opportunity region, do not need to be addressed currently, their importance might raise in the near future. Taobao should prepare for these factors in order to keep its competitive advantage. A third-party payment with guarantee, website’s display technology, communication channels between buyers and sellers and product trial enjoy higher importance and evaluation, which should be maintained and carried forward. Online business alliance, rules of display format for website and cash on delivery are in maintenance region. The improvement of these factors can be postponed on the premise of limited resources.Fourthly, this article divides the development of Chinese online shopping ecosystem into four stages:market rise, market expansion, relationship coordination and sustaining evolution. During the market revolution, the product quality control measures are also continuously developed and improved. The main product quality control measure of the first stage is online reputation feedback system. The measures of second stage include the third-party payment, instant communication tools to communicate and online business alliance except online reputation feedback system. In the third stage, the uncertainty of product quality was more and more serious. Therefore, online shopping platform takes quality assurance and commitment, turns up the threshold of seller access and takes third-party product quality inspection to strengthen product quality control. In the forth stage, online shopping platform should improve the existing measures and introduce innovative measures. At the same time, the platform should also devote to build a kind of culture of pursuing excellent quality, and construct full-staff and full-process product quality control system.Fifthly, through the model construction and analog simulation, this article draws the following conclusion. If online shopping platform doesn’t take any product quality control measure, bad-faith seller population acquires higher earnings because of fraudulent behavior, thus possess higher competition. So after a period of revolution, good-faith seller population tends to die out, and bad-faith seller population tends to have maximum capacity. The online shopping market breaks down. Because every business ecosystem has a threshold value of stability, the control to system needs to be moderate and reasonable. If online shopping platform takes product quality measures too late, the online shopping system is inevitable to fall into collapse. The later the platform takes control measure, the bigger the strength of controlling. While online shopping platform take control mearsures at an early stage, makes the amount of good-faith seller population maintain a higher place and the amount of bad-faith seller population a lower place, the online shopping ecosystem would healthily develop and increase like a combining S curve. These conclusion help online shopping platform to take more active attitude in product quality control mechanism. This paper studies product quality control in Chinese online shopping market using the methods of inductive reasoning, evolutionary dynamics, analog simulation, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation importance-performance analysis etc. The innovation points are as follows.First of all, this paper comprehensively and systematicly studies the product quality control system the first time. In the academic field, product quality is taken into consideration as one of the influencing factors under the framework of online trust and e-service quality. This article fills the theory gap and forms a relatively systematic framework so far. The study constructs an analysis framework for the future research.Secondly, this paper builds the index system of product quality control ability of Chinese online shopping platform, and evaluates comprehensively Taobao’s product quality control ability applying the index system. The article puts forward and explains the concept of product quality control ability of online shopping platform. According to the literature review and the expert’ opinions, the indexes reflected product quality control ability of Chinese online shopping platform are extracted. Then the weight of indexes is determined using AHP. On that basis, the paper evaluates Taobao’s product quality control ability and reaches some guiding suggestions. Therefore, this study not only innovates in theory, but also makes for the practical activity of online shopping market.Thirdly, this paper analyzes the four-stage evolutionary process of product quality control of Chinese online shopping platform, and reveals the inner machnism of evolution and the action law of quality control. Specifically, based on the analysis about the evolutionary process of online shopping ecosystem, the article explores the evolutionary process of product quality control of online shopping platform. Meanwhile, according to the constructed population dynamics model and the analog simulation results, this article analyzes the inner mechanism of evolution and the action law of quality control. |
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