Estimating Chinese Online Buying Behavior With The Perspective Of Transaction Cost Economics

The Internet has developed into a dynamic virtual medium for selling and buying information, services and products. The phenomenal growth and rising popularity of the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) have attracted consumers and businesses to leverage the benefits and advantages brought on by new technology. There is evidence that some of these changes are already taking hold in China. Comparing the latest three reports of CNNIC, we find that while internet consumers are buying online in China, they mostly concerns about three factors, namely, time saving, easily operating and expenses saving. So the Chinese consumers think much of transaction cost. With the perspective of Transaction Cost Economics, this paper estimated a model of consumers'on-line buying behavior in China context. An empirical study was conducted in Harbin to test the model.Through analysis of examples, the conclusions are: The customer's perceived risk of online shopping is constituted by branding uncertainty of online stores, performance uncertainty of products, behavioral uncertainty of online stores, and environmental uncertainty of online stores. They all have positive influence on online shopping cost; Trust of online stores is constituted by the dependability of online stores, the degree of detail of privacy policy of online stores and private trust tendency. The private trust tendency is negatively related to transaction cost; Buying frequency is negatively related to perceived transaction costs; Transaction cost is negatively related to consumers'willingness to buy online; The result of regression analysis indicates that buying frequency, the degree of detail of privacy policy of online stores and private trust tendency have directly positive influence on online shopping intention.