1.2 RESEARCH GAPS
The extant TC studies have emphasized the significance of TCs in influencing organisational
structures and strategies (Barney and Hesterly 2006, Steenkamp and Geyskens 2012, Verbeke
and Kano 2013). This is because TCs play an important role in predicting organizational
structure, achieving sustainable competitive advantages, and managing inter-organizational
relationship (Rindfleisch and Heide 1997, Williamson and Ghani 2012). A closer look at the
TC literature shows that most studies have focused on the firm level rather than individual
consumer level (Pitt and Foreman 1999). Although there is a growing call for a paradigm
shift in marketing from market focus to customer focus, TCs from the customer perspective
has received far less attention. Generally, consumers not only look for value superiority in
products and services, but also affordable and reasonable costs to obtain the value (Kleijnen
9
et al.
2007). Surprisingly, costs perceived by consumers during the transaction have largely
been neglected by managers although the impact of consumer perceived TCs on business
success in substantial. From an academic point of view, understanding how perceived TCs of
online shopping affect consumers’ online behaviour is an important research topic that needs
further theoretical and empirical attention (Liang and Huang 1998).
Within the limited literature on consumer TCs, researchers (Shim
et al.
2001, Lam
et al.
2004)
conceptualize the different types of TCs consumers incur, such as search cost, switching cost,
learn cost, psychological cost, time cost, and information asymmetry cost, etc. The
conceptualizations of TCs for consumers are not consistent across studies. Furthermore, as
the online environment is complicated and e-commerce has notable differences compared to
traditional marketplace, the TCs occurred in traditional markets may not be the same as those
of online markets. However, prior studies in online shopping have provided few clues in
relation to the TCs faced by online consumers. In fact, online consumer TC research is beset
by conflicting conceptualizations of consumer TCs (Liang and Huang 1998, Teo and Yu
2005, Yen
et al.
2013, Wu
et al.
2014). As such, serious issues are raised with regard to what
constitute consumer TCs in online shopping contexts. This makes it imperative to conduct an
in-depth study on the components of TCs facing consumers in online environment.
Past research has different ways of investigating factors which impact online purchase
behaviour, and there is no consensus on the theoretical models employed to describe and
predict online purchase behaviour (Li and Zhang 2002). The consumer behaviour literature
tends to focus largely on psychological factors. Although this approach has provided
interesting insights, little attention has been directed at how economic factors, particularly,
the costs faced by consumers in transactions explain consumer’s actual online purchase
10
behaviour. In addition, much of the past literature centres on the impact of the benefits for
consumers in transactions (Kim 2012). Surprisingly, prior studies have not applied the
concept of TCs to examinations of actual online purchase behaviour; but TCs may provide a
useful context in which to identify and explain criteria for consumer’s online purchase. This
area represents a key opportunity for explaining online actual purchase behaviour based on
the analyses of TCs.
The importance of customer loyalty is well documented in the consumer behaviour literature
and customer loyalty toward an online vendor is recognized as a significant factor in retaining
current consumer (Reichheld
et al.
2000, Urban
et al.
2000). In an online context, consumers
can easily switch to another service provider since they can access to information easily and
have lower searching costs, etc. compared to consumers in the brick-and-mortar offline
context. Thus, it is imperative for online vendors to take measures to improve customer
loyalty and retain customers. Customer loyalty is conceptually different from the initial
purchase (Harris and Goode 2004, Balabanis
et al.
2006). For online vendors, initial purchase
means customer acquisition and they can transform potential customers into actual customers,
whereas customer loyalty means customer retention and they can transform existing
customers into loyal customers. During the post-purchase phase, customers have more direct
knowledge about online vendors and their products, based on which they decide whether to
stay loyal or not toward the online vendors. Most e-commerce research has emphasized the
initial purchase behaviour or initial purchase intention of online customers (Koufaris 2002,
Chu and Lu 2007, Ranaweera
et al.
2008). By contrast, research on online customer loyalty is
insufficient and there is a lack of research investigating impacts of consumer TCs on loyalty.
Much focus on customer loyalty has been devoted to understanding the direct effects of other
factors, such as perceived value (Yang and Peterson 2004), trust (Harris and Goode 2004),
11
and store characteristics (Ganesh
et al.
2010) on loyalty formation in the online channel. The
extant literature demonstrates very little about how TCs perceived by consumers influence
their decisions to be loyal to an online store after they have had some purchase experiences
from the online store. Given the paucity of academic research on the effects of TCs on
customer loyalty, more research in this area is needed.
To date the pioneering work on online consumer behaviour offers little guidance on what
antecedent factors affect consumer TCs of online shopping. Indeed, the literature review
reveals an absence from the TC theory literature of any focus on the examination of the
simultaneous antecedents of consumer TCs. Some scholars (Sholtz 2001, Teo and Yu 2005,
Yen
et al.
2013) argue that there is a need to find out what factors are responsible for
consumer TCs. From a managerial perspective, understanding factors affecting TCs
perceived by the consumers becomes essential in achieving superior value for the vendors
(Chircu and Mahajan 2006). This is because, when viewed through a managerial lens,
understanding what causes the consumer TCs provides managers with guideline to reducing
and managing TCs, and thus offering value to customers. As such, a comprehensive set of
antecedent variables of TCs associated with online shopping need to be investigated from the
consumer standpoint, to better understand consumers’ perception of TCs and further help
online vendors effectively allocate their resources to reduce the TCs perceptions of online
shoppers.
Finally, while the phenomenal rise of e-commerce in developing countries is well
documented, the academic literature investigating online consumer behaviour in these
countries is relatively underdeveloped and dominated by western perspectives utilizing U.S.A
based samples. Particularly, most prior studies of TCs are strictly confined to the context of
12
developed countries (Liang and Huang 1998, Teo and Yu 2005), such as the USA and
Singapore; yielding findings that would otherwise not be generalizable in the context of a
developing economy, such as China, in which the business environment for online shopping
is constrained by different sets of cultural factors (Hofstede 1980). Since there is limited
understanding on the consumer TCs of online shopping in China, more insightful
investigation is imperative in explaining consumer TCs and their impacts on online behaviour.
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