An Empirical Study On Motivating Mechanism Of Customers' Participation In Online Transaction

As competitions in the online shopping market present fierce in our country, how to acquire customers is critical for e-commerce companies to get and maintain the advantages of competition. How much traditional marketing strategies motivate online customers? Can marketing mix still keep advantages in the online shopping context? At present few scholars specialize in this, especially the mechanism on how e-marketing strategies motivate online buying by normative and empirical research.Based on literature reviews, given to models of consumer behavior, hypotheses concerning direct effect, mediator effect and moderating effects on online transaction intention are supposed, and a model for researching motivating mechanism of online customers is suggested, which includes three predictor variables (financial incentive, convenience, value-added incentive), one mediator(customer trust) and one moderator(online transaction cost).Then, operational definitions of the five variables in the model are given and the research questionnaire is designed. People who have online buying experience are participants in the survey. 465 valid questionnaires were collected by both online surveys and traditional surveys. The data is analyzed by Reliability Analysis and Exploratory Factor Analysis, which show the scales for the constructs appear acceptable reliability and good validity. Then, Correlations Analysis is engaged and suggests all relationships in the research model are remarkable linear relationship, providing conditions for Multiple Linear Regression (MLR). MLR is employed to test hypothesis of the research model. According to the reports, the paper analyzes tests of hypotheses and draws three conclusions as follows:Firstly, both financial incentive and convenience perform a positive significant influence on online transaction intention and the impact of convenience is greater than that of financial incentive. Though value-added incentive has a remarkable positive linear relationship to online transaction intention, direct influence is not significant.Secondly, customer trust is a vital mediator in motivation mechanism of online customers. The mediator effect of customer trust in the relationship between convenience and online transaction intention is more than that in the relationship between financial incentive and online transaction intention. As the coefficient of value-added incentive in MLR do not reach a significant level, the assumption that customer trust mediates the relationship between value-added incentive and online transaction intention is not supported.Thirdly, online transaction cost negatively moderates the relationship between financial incentives and online transaction intention. And it positively moderates the relationship between value-added incentives and online transaction intention and the relationship between value-added incentives and customer trust. However, the moderating effect of online transaction cost in other relationship studied in this paper is not remarkable.This paper probably has theoretical meaning that an all-around and deep research is carried out on the motivating effect of e-commerce incentive to online buying. Conclusions also give practical implications for e-commerce companies to attract and retain customers. Suggestions are made in five ways: (1) properly taking use of financial incentive; (2) making online transactions more convenient; (3) taking value-added incentives to build customer loyalty; (4) enhancing credibility to get more trust from customers; (5) carefully considering online transaction cost to achieve an optimal marketing mix.Innovations of this article probably perform in the following sides: (1) verifying that both financial incentive and convenience perform a positive significant influence on online transaction intention, but value-added incentive does not have a significant effect; (2) verifying that customer trust has mediator effect in the relationship between convenience and online transaction intention and the relationship between financial incentive and online transaction intention, but in the relationship between value-added incentive and online transaction intention; (3) verifying that the moderating effect of online transaction cost in the relationship between financial incentive and online transaction intention, value-added incentive and online transaction intention, value-added incentive and customer trust.