| E-commerce of Agricultural means of production refers to business activities, which are via information technology of Internet and focus on agricultural exchange, and it is the electron, networking and information of all sectors in traditional agricultural business activities. With the issue of a series of national supporting policies to Internet in rural areas, some well-known electronic business platform and large-scale agricultural enterprises all try to carry out E-commerce of Agricultural means of production. Limited to rural infrastructure and household characteristics, most of the existing E-commerce likes to take the model of offline service stations,such as "purchasing", "push" etc. That means through the establishment of service stations, taking purchasing consignment to help farmers do network transaction. A considerable part among them are using existing retailers to run the service stations. Therefore, the traditional agricultural marketing channel retailers’ attitude towards agricultural E-commerce and their willingness to participate in E-commerce directly affect whether E-commerce can quickly develop or not. For the reason, we based on technology acceptance model, prospect theory and channel behavior theory, and combined with the reality of current situation of retailers to construct the factors of offline retailers’ online business willingness and their mechanism of action. Meanwhile, we make empirical research based on the questionnaire data of 312 retailers in Shandong, Hubei and Anhui provinces. The study has shown that:1 At present, Agricultural retailers have certain online business willingness. In the survey subjects, there are 107 retailers have higher online business willingness, which accounts for 52.97 percent, and another 95 have lower willingness, accounting for 47.03%. Research shows that different gender, age and educational level of the retailers have different online business willingness. The male agricultural retailer’s willingness are higher than women; ages ranged from 30-50 years old’s willingness are higher than other age groups; retailers who have junior or high school education also have stronger willingness.2 Perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness have a significant positive impact on agricultural retailers’ online business willingness; while perceived risk has a negative effect. The higher the agricultural retailers sense from the perceived ease of use in online business system or platform, the higher the usefulness(profit) of agricultural online business will get, and the more the retailers’ willingness to participate in online business will have; when agricultural retailers perceive the risks of agricultural online business, then they will choose a reasonable way to avoid the risks, which thus can affect their willingness to participate in online business.3 Perceived ease of use has a significant positive impact on perceived usefulness, perceived usefulness plays a partial role of mediation between perceived ease of use and the agricultural retailers’ willingness to participate in online business. When retailers perceive that the online platform is convenient, simple to operate and easy to grasp, they will consider there is no need to take extra effort for agricultural online business, but also can lead to increased profit and lower costs. Therefore, agricultural retailers will feel usefulness of E-commerce, and thus enhancing their intention to participate in online business.4 The satisfaction of agricultural retailers’ offline business has negative correlation to their willingness of online business, and it also plays a regulatory role among perceived usefulness, perceived risk and agricultural retailers’ willingness to online business. When offline agricultural retailers(that is the traditional marketing model) operate better conditions and higher satisfaction, they will more reluctant to participate in online business. This is because the better the existing operating state is, the higher the opportunity cost of converting business mode of operation has. The satisfaction of offline business weakens perceived usefulness and retailers’ online business willingness, but strengthens perceived risk and retailers’ willingness to online business. That is, when agricultural retailers have high satisfaction for their offline business, perceived usefulness will weaken the positive impact on their online business willingness and perceived risk will strengthen the negative impact.5 In the research, the power that retailers perceive from other channel members in traditional business is divided into mandatory and non-mandatory channel power, and then further exploring its regulatory role to agricultural retailers’ willingness to online business. Mandatory channel power has a certain strengthening positive effect of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness on agricultural retailers’ willingness to online business, but the strengthening effect is not so significant. Mandatory channel power also plays a regulatory role between perceived risk and online business intention. When agricultural retailers perceive more mandatory channel power, and the risk factors will be reduced to consider. Therefore, Mandatory channel power will weaken the correlation between perceived risks and agricultural retailers’ willingness to online business.Non-mandatory channel power has not so significant regulating effect between perceived ease of use and agricultural retailers’ willingness to online business. However, it has obvious regulating effect on perceived usefulness for agricultural retailers’ willingness to online business. That is when retailers perceive large right of non-mandatory channel, they will feel that the main agents is for their sake, and their operation has great autonomy, even if they feel agricultural online business is useful, their willingness to participate in online management will be relatively weakened. When retailers perceive non-mandatory channel power is rather big, this will strengthen the impact of perceived risk on agricultural retailers’ online business willingness. |
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