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4.6 MEASURES
A survey instrument for this study was developed based on both the use of existing validated
questionnaire items and the extant literature providing theoretical definitions and domains of
the other constructs of interest (for measuring internet access availability and environmental
uncertainty). The existing items with minor modifications in wording were adapted to
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increase their applicability to the Chinese context and the purposes of the study. For the items
that were not previously verified, they were carefully designed based on the relevant
literature, evaluated by field experts and pre-tested by real online shoppers to ensure their
validity.
The measures of consumer TCs are discussed first in this section. Following this discussion,
the next portion focuses on the measurements of Internet access availability, perceived
Internet expertise, online buying frequency, product quality concern, site design, e-service
quality, reputation of online store, perceived convenience, privacy and security concerns,
environmental uncertainty, online purchase behaviour, customer satisfaction, customer
loyalty, risk-bearing propensity and perceived enjoyment. Finally, the operationalizations of
the demographic variables (including gender, age, education and household income) not
central to the hypotheses are presented.
4.6.1 Consumer TCs
Consumer TCs are defined as a respondent’s perceived TCs associated with an online
transaction with an online store. Since it is difficult to obtain the actual TCs in an online
transaction, the study focuses on the perceived information of the consumer. This is
appropriate because it is, in fact, the perceived information that leads to consumer decisions
due to bounded rationality, in this case refering to the fact that people have limited memories
and limited cognitive processing power. Generally, they cannot digest all the information
they have and cannot accurately work out the consequences of the information. In the context
of online shopping, due to the limited memories and cognitive processing power, consumers
would not be able to accurately measure their TCs during the online transaction process.
Therefore, measuring perceived TCs is deemed as appropriate. In addition, the literature
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shows that there is a high correlation and concurrent validity between subjective and
objective data on TCs (Teo and Yu 2005), implying that both are valid when calculating the
consumer TCs (Teo
et al.
2004, Wu
et al.
2014). In this sense, the perceived TCs can reflect
the actual TCs in online shopping.
Consumer perceived TCs are related to consumers’ perception of time and cognitive effort
expended during the online transaction process. Such perceived TCs associated with the pre-
purchase, purchase and post-purchase process constitute nine components: access cost, search
cost, evaluation cost, ordering cost, payment cost, delivery cost, monitoring cost, post-sale
cost and adaptation cost as identified in the last chapter. To simplify the measurement model
of consumer perceived TCs, this study aggregates all of these costs under a common
construct, and then categorizes them with respect to their communalities and differences with
regard to the impact they bear on consumers in online shopping context.
According to Chen (2007) and Dyer and Chu (2003), consumer perceived TCs can be
disaggregated into three major parts, namely, pre-TCs (perceived costs of obtaining the
information necessary for purchasing the product prior to transaction), contemporaneous TCs
(perceived immediate costs involved in the transacting with a specific online vendor for
making that purchase), and post-TCs (the costs which arise as a consequence of transacting
with the online vendors for the products/services). In line with these studies, the researcher
groups the nine components of consumer perceived TCs into the three parts. More
specifically, pre-TCs include access cost and search cost; contemporaneous TCs consist of
evaluation cost, ordering cost, payment cost and delivery cost; and post-TCs constitute
monitoring cost, post-sale cost and adaptation cost. The perceived TCs can be measured
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using the mean of items measuring pre-TCs, mean of items measuring contemporaneous TCs,
and mean of items measuring post-TCs.
Building on Chen (2007), Kim and Li (2009b) and Teo and Yu (2005), 17 items were
employed tapping three dimensions of consumer TCs, as shown in Table 4.1, Table 4.2, and
Table 4.3, respectively. Specifically, pre-TCs were measured via five-item scale taken from
Teo and Yu (2005), contemporaneous TCs were measured via a four-item scale derived and
refined from Chen (2007) and Teo and Yu (2005), and post-TCs were measured via an eight-
item scale adapted from Chen (2007) and Kim and Li (2009b). Respondents were asked to
think of the most recent online purchase they made from an online vendor, and respond to the
items focusing on their perception of pre-, contemporaneous, and post-TCs based on that
particular purchase experience. All the items were measured using a seven-point scale
anchored by 1 ‘strongly disagree’ and 7 ‘strongly agree’. A high score was indicative of high
TCs.
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