Understanding consumer online shopping behaviour from the perspective of transaction costs

2.4.3 Limitations of the Research on TCs 
Although some earlier research has investigated the TCT in the e-commerce contexts, the 
conceptualization and application of TCT in the B2C online shopping context remains far 
from complete. There are several limitations in the existing literature on TCs in online 
shopping.
Firstly, the conceptualizations of TCs are not consistent across studies as displayed in Table 
2.1. Different studies employ different components to conceptualize and operationalize TCs. 
This inconsistency would limit our understanding of the influences of TCs on consumers’ 
online shopping behaviour, and subsequently would confound the mechanisms of costs 
evaluation on consumer adoption of online channel for purchasing products and services. 

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Moreover, the extant literature demonstrates little about how TCs vary between online and 
traditional shopping environments (Wirtz and Lihotzky 2003, Kim and Li 2009b). As such, 
the conceptualization and operationalization of TCs associated with online shopping need to 
be re-considered so that a valid instrument can be developed for measuring costs-related 
variables and offer a better understanding of their roles in online shopping behaviour.
Table 2.1 Summary of the Findings of the Effect of Online TCs on Behaviour-Related 
Consequences 
Dependent variables 
Independent variables 
Result 
Studies 
Customer acceptance of 
online purchase 
TCs 
Negative correlation 
(Liang and Huang 
1998) 
Consumers’ 
willingness to buy 
online 
TCs Negative 
correlation 
(Teo
 et al.
2004);
(Teo and Yu 2005) 
Customer satisfaction 
TCs 
Negative correlation 
(Kim and Li 2009b); 
(Kim
 et al.
2011) 
Customer loyalty 
TCs 
Negative correlation 
(Kim and Li 2009b) 
E-shopping value 
TCs 
(Wu
 et al.
2014) 
--Information searching cost Negative 
correlation 
--Moral hazard cost 
Negative correlation 
--Specific asset investment 
Negative correlation 
Repurchase intention 
TCs 
Negative correlation 
(Yen
 et al.
2013) 
--Information searching cost 
Negative correlation 
(Wu
 et al.
2014) 
--Moral hazard cost 
Negative correlation 
--Specific asset investment 
Negative correlation 
Trust TCs 
0 
(Kim
 et al.
2011) 
--Transaction security 
Positive correlation 
(Kim
 et al.
2013b) 
--Navigation functionality 
Positive correlation 
--Cost effectiveness
Positive correlation 
 
 

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As described earlier and shown in Table 2.2, many attempts have been made to identify the 
antecedents of TCs. However, there is no agreement in the literature as to what factors may 
lead to TCs of consumers in online shopping. The study conducted by Liang and Huang 
(1998) found that uncertainty and asset specificity increase the perceived TCs for the 
consumers in online shopping while Teo et al. (2004) observed that product uncertainty, 
behavioural uncertainty, asset specificity, convenience, economic utility, and dependability 
significantly affect TCs. This implies that there is a lack of consensus on this issue. In 
addition, the identified antecedents can only account for a relatively small percentage of the 
total variance in TCs in the studies, which suggests that there might be some other potential 
antecedents that have been overlooked in prior studies. Scholars (Sholtz 2001, Teo
 et al.
2004, 
Wu
 et al.
2014) have called for more research on exploring antecedents of TCs of online 
shopping. A comprehensive list of antecedent factors affecting TCs associated with online 
shopping should be explored and tested simultaneously in an integrated framework. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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