Am I an Online Shopper After All? A Paradox on Definition of e-Commerce from the Consumers’ Perspective

Abstract

Retailing marketplace today is composed of traditional and electronic retailers. Facing to the evolutionary transformation arose from electronic commerce (EC), this article attempts to establish the elementary understanding on EC and modern consumers’ behavior. The authors examine the gap between practitioners’ and academics’ perception about EC and get a clear look from consumers’ perspective. Four behavioral patterns with different tendency to online activities are further identified. They are product-, price-, convenience-, and service-orientation. Additionally, an industrial demonstration of consumer electronics retailing is presented to show the gap and to exemplify an application of consumers’ behavioral patterns proposed in this paper. For people involved in the marketing and EC fields, this article suggests that consumer behavior should be reexamined according to the specific product categories under appropriate EC definition. Keywords: Electronic Commerce, Consumer Behavior, Online Retailing