Understanding consumer online shopping behaviour from the perspective of transaction costs

 et 
al.
2000). They can be reflected through internet access availability and consumer’s 
perceived Internet expertise, respectively. Conducting online shopping requires the 
connection to Internet through wired or wireless devices in the first place and it also requires 

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consumers to own basic Internet knowledge and skills. In addition, consumers may face 
challenges such as operation difficulty and online payment, which may increase their 
perceived access and payment costs. Internet access availability complemented with 
perceived Internet expertise is employed to scrutinize the role of asset specificity. 
In the original TCT, frequency is used to capture the extent to which transactions recur. In 
online shopping, this study uses online buying frequency to represent frequency in the TCT. 
When consumers are much familiar with the process after several times of successful online 
transactions, they know what the whole process of online shopping is like, hence their 
perceived TCs, such as search cost and evaluation cost, etc. would decrease. 
In summary, the above-identified aspects reflect or supplement uncertainty, assets specificity 
and frequency. Uncertainty is disaggregated into seven specific aspects, reflecting concerns 
over product quality, site design, e-service quality, reputation of online store, convenience of 
online channel, privacy and security concerns, and environmental uncertainty. Asset 
specificity is disaggregated into Internet access availability and consumer’s perceived 
Internet expertise. Finally, frequency is re-conceptualized as online buying frequency. They 
represent the meaningful dimensions of online transaction that affect consumer TCs 
associated with the entire online transaction process, such as the access cost, search cost, 
evaluation cost, monitoring cost, and adaptation cost, etc.