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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of buyer-seller interpersonal interactions on the purchase intention of buyers, incorporating swift guanxi as a mediator.Design/methodology/approachBased on survey data obtained from 336 Taobao Live users, PLS techniques were used to test hypotheses.FindingsSwift guanxi exists in buyer-seller interactions and matters, as it drives buyers' purchase intention in live stream shopping. Perceived expertise, perceived similarity and perceived likeability are found to be the three essential interpersonal interaction factors promoting the formation of swift guanxi. Perceived familiarity is also found to be significant but to a lesser extent. In addition, all these interpersonal interaction factors are found to significantly affect purchase intention through the mediation of swift guanxi.Originality/valueSwift guanxi has been less explored in live stream shopping. This study takes the lead in empirically examining the mediating role of swift guanxi in the relationship between interpersonal interaction factors and purchase intention and offers a description of key buyer-seller interpersonal interaction factors (perceived expertise, perceived similarity and perceived likeability), thereby helping to extend the swift guanxi literature in social commerce.

The product presentation videos on E-commerce platforms have a significant influence on consumers' purchase decisions, and enterprises have focused on choosing the type of product presentation videos. Based on the resource matching theory, mental imagery theory and cue utilization theory, this study investigated the influence of product presentation videos type (product appearance video vs. product usage video) on consumers' purchase intention and the moderating effect of product rating (low vs. high). Through three pre-experiments and two formal experiments, the results showed that the product usage video has a stronger effect on consumers' purchase intention more than the product appearance video, which is mediated by perceived diagnosticity and mental imagery. In addition, product rating moderated the influence of product presentation videos type on consumers' purchase intention. The product usage video would improve consumers' purchase intention more than the product appearance video when the product rating is high; however, there is no significant difference in the impact of two types of videos on consumers' purchase intention when the product rating is low. This study supplements the research on product presentation videos and provides a reference for online retailers to select effective product presentation videos.

Passive usage of social network services (SNSs) refers to individuals’ browsing behavior and information consumption without active interaction with other SNS users. Using the data collecte...

In the context of the rapid development of online shopping, enterprises and consumers realized the importance of an effective online short video display. However, academics rarely explored the content of a short video display and its impacts on consumers&rsquo, perceptions. This paper discusses the impacts of this display form on consumers&rsquo, perceived quality via questionnaires and scenario experiments based on the existing literature and theories. A short video of clothes was the main research object. We used an experimental design that included 2 (time: long, short) &times, 2 (display perspectives: overall, specific) &times, 2 (scenarios: outdoors, indoors) groups of experiments, for a total of eight groups of scenario experiments, to verify our hypotheses. The results reveal that the short video display makes consumers have a higher perceived quality compared with the long video display. Compared with a video that only includes an overall view of the product, a video that provides both an overall view and the details of the product makes consumers have a higher perceived quality. Consumers were found to have a higher perceived quality of products shot outdoors compared with products shot indoors.

In recent days, big data based analysis in hotel industry become popular. Merchants are attracting clients using the accurate analysis of historic data and predicting the behavior of possible clients to perform proper marketing strategy. To study the principle of the game between clients and merchants, in this work, we propose a novel two-stage game theoretic approach of decision policy for clients when choosing the suitable hotel to stay among many candidates, the merchants will provide a non-cooperative game strategy to attract the attention of potential clients. Analysis of the non-cooperative game method based on big data has been given. Simulation results indicate that, by using our proposed novel method, the average price for clients to choose a satisfied hotel is reduced and the successful rate of stay is increased for merchants, which will bring the expected income to a higher level because of the sticky phenomena of users.

Based on the signaling theory, cue utilization theory and halo effect theory, this paper establishes a theoretical model of the impact of return policy leniency on consumer purchase intention in the context of cross-border e-commerce (CBEC). The model is verified by the experimental data. Moreover, the mediating role of perceived quality and perceived risk and the moderating effects of port of shipment and product traceability code are significant. The results show that in the CBEC scenario, when the online retailers adopt a lenient return policy, the consumers have higher perceived quality and lower perceived risk, which in turn leads to a higher intention to purchase; When a consumer purchases the product which ships from domestic bonded warehouse or a product without a product traceability code present, the effect of the leniency of return policy on perceived quality and perceived risk is stronger.

With the high popularity of the Internet, online trading has gradually replaced the traditional shopping model and extended to every corner of social life. However, online trading cannot avoid failures, thus, understanding how firms can best recover customers in online contexts to keep customer loyalty is very important. This study investigates the mechanisms by which customer participation types (physical, mental, and emotional) promote customers’ perceived justice and post-recovery satisfaction from a mental accounting perspective. Furthermore, the moderating effects of two modes of online apology speech acts (direct and indirect) on customer participation and perceived justice are investigated. A total of 1083 Chinese tourists who have purchased a Wi-Fi rental service in the past year were contacted according to the database provided by two travel agencies, and 329 stated having experienced an online recovery service and participated in the survey, 297 valid questionnaires were collected. Among them, 48.82% were males and 51.18% females. Most of the respondents were aged 20–35 years. By carrying out data analysis by partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS, the results show that, first, only mental and physical participation can enhance perceived justice, while emotional participation does not influence perceived justice. Second, the positive influence of mental participation on perceived justice is most significant. Third, only when the service staff adopts the indirect mode to express an online apology, mental and physical participation can enhance perceived justice.

Online service recovery is directly related to customer follow-up behavior and plays a central role in the sustainable service-oriented enterprise development. This study explored the influence mechanism about how the type of customer participation (physical, mental, and emotional) improves customers&rsquo, post-recovery satisfaction by reducing negative bias. Furthermore, the moderating effect of the information format of opening remarks (informal, formal, or hybrid) on the relationship between customer participation and affective misforecasting was investigated. A total of 720 Chinese individuals participated in an online experiment. The results show that, first, only mental and physical participation can improve customers&rsquo, post-recovery satisfaction, whereas emotional participation cannot. Second, the direction of affective misforecasting is a mediator between customer participation and post-recovery satisfaction, and compared with negative bias (feeling worse than forecasted), when customers form positive bias (feeling better than forecasted), their post-recovery satisfaction is higher. Third, the fit of the information format of the opening remarks and customer participation type can make customers feel better than forecasted&mdash, to generate higher post-recovery satisfaction, for physical and mental participation specifically, the formal format of opening remarks is most suitable, whereas for emotional participation, the hybrid format of opening remarks is most suitable.

The influence of consumer reviews on hotel reservation has been addressed in both practical and theoretical fields. Most previous studies focus on the volume and score of reviews, little about the score of hotel attributes. This paper focuses on that how the variance of the hotel dominance attribute ratings affects the consumer recommendation rate to economy hotels and luxury hotels respectively. Research model has been developed based on Elaboration Likelihood Model and tested with the data from Ctrip.com in China. The results show that the variance of economy hotels has positive effect on the consumer recommendation rate, while that of luxury hotels has negative effect. Furthermore, results also indicate that the volume and score of reviews have different moderating effect.

With the increasing number of mobile users and applications, data services and on-demand suggestions gradually play an important role in mobile life. In this work, based on the wireless personal communication network, we propose a novel prediction method of user traffic density and personal interest based on real time mobile traffic data and wireless positioning information. Service provider could send precise information to target users based on the prediction to ensure the quality and push service. Then we execute a simulation using real traffic data around Tsinghua University obtained from network service provider, and evaluate the accuracy of the prediction. Simulation results indicate that, our proposed method by using the traffic data and position jointly can significantly increase the rate of successful recommendation.

Crowdsourcing comprises a variety of creative contests, and its success is closely related to the quantity and quality of solvers. The research model of factors influencing the quantity and quality of solvers with respect to contest arrangement attributes and market competition situation has been developed in this paper, and the model has been tested with data from a crowdsourcing website in China. The results show that higher awards, easier tasks, longer duration and lower competition intensity lead to a higher number of solvers. Higher awards, longer duration and higher difficulty level of tasks lead to higher ability level of winners, but competition intensity and market price for other competing projects do not show significant correlation with the ability level of winners.

PurposeAs a type of electronic commerce, online C2C markets have experienced a rapid growth in both sales volume and user numbers. Buy‐it‐now (BIN) auction is a mechanism to facilitate online auctions, and is adopted by the major online C2C marketplaces. This study aims to investigate consumers' purchase and adoption of risk relief service in BIN auctions in the online C2C market from the perspective of perceived risk.Design/methodology/approachA research model is developed based on relevant theory. Data are collected from American and Chinese consumers through a web‐based experiment system that simulates the transaction process on online C2C markets. The proposed hypotheses are tested with logistic and multiple linear regressions.FindingsThe results show that buyer's purchase behavior and usage of risk relief service for a transaction in BIN auctions are determined by the perceived risk, which is influenced by the buyer's risk attitude, seller online reputation, and the product price and type.Practical implicationsThis study provides an in‐depth understanding of consumers' behaviors on online C2C markets at transaction level, and makes implications for online marketplace operation and business strategy making.Originality/valueThe primary value of this paper lies in providing a better understanding of consumers' behaviors on online C2C market, and investigating the factors that influence the consumers' purchase and adoption of risk relief service in online BIN auctions from the perceived risk perspective.

Internet banking allows companies to access banking services via the Internet without traditional temporal and spatial limitations. From a bank's viewpoint, Internet banking provides opportunities to expand markets, increase service efficiency, lower the cost of operations, and improve customer loyalty. However, the enterprise adoption of Internet banking in China is still low, compared to the developed countries. Therefore, understanding the factors that influence the adoption of enterprise Internet banking will help both service providers and enterprise clients develop strategies for incorporating Internet banking into their businesses for new opportunities. This paper investigates Internet banking adoption by Chinese companies. An empirical study is conducted using data from 174 Chinese companies. The results indicate that perceived benefits, perceived transactional risk, organizational readiness, and external pressure exert significant effects on enterprise adoption of Internet banking in Chin...

We sought to gain understanding of voluntary developers' involvement in open source software (OSS) projects. Data were collected from voluntary developers working on open source projects. Our findings indicated that a voluntary developer's involvement was very important to his or her performance and that involvement was dependent on individual motivations (personal software needs, reputation and skills gaining expectation, enjoyment in open source coding) and project community factors (leadership effectiveness, interpersonal relationship, community ideology). Our work contributes theoretically and empirically to the body of OSS research and has practical implications for OSS project management.

In 1998, China launched a programme to close tens of thousands of small-scale coal mines within just three years. Few measures were put in place to mitigate the negative impacts. This paper reports on a study in the Chongqing Municipality of south-west China, with the aims of identifying the economic impacts of the mine closure campaign and examining what factors permitted some localities to respond more successfully to the resulting economic challenges. Those areas with greater wealth and more diversified economies were able to absorb the shock of mine closure more effectively than poorer areas and those with less diversified economies. These latter groups either failed to respond to mine closure or reacted by increasing output from the remaining mines. In the successful cases, though the economy of the area as a whole was able to withstand the impact of the mine closure campaign, no evidence was found of any attempts to assist those in the local communities directly affected by mine closure.

Consumer trust plays an important role in adoption of any technology. This study targets to determine the psychological elements that affect the consumers’ trust in adoption of m-commerce. Many researchers investigate the said factors in e-commerce and online retailing, m-commerce in broad sense resembles with e-commerce but since mobile device is smaller in size so the psychological factor specifically consumer trust becomes more critical. This study focusses on partition of psychological factors that revolve around three main categories, i.e., personality-based, internal perception-based and external perception-based factors. Data is collected from 222 university students having temptation and experience of m-commerce. Subsequently, regression analysis is made in order to test the hypothesis. The research carried out on the element of psychological factors of consumers in m-commerce, reveals that among the said categories while adopting m-commerce, internal perception-based factors are the key determinants of consumer trust.

The aim of this study is to find whether the h- index and Schubert-Glanzel model which was originally used in bibliometrics can work in the broader social and information systems, such as e-commerce. This study introduces the popularity index (h P ) to profile on-line sellers and products and tests the accuracy of the Schubert-Glanzel model of the h P index using the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. The h P index was tested on Taobao, a leading Chinese e-commerce marketplace. About 300 products on Taobao were randomly selected from 10 categories of the most popular on-line products as samples for this study. It was found that h P is consistent with the Schubert-Glanzel model the h- index. This shows that the existing theoretical bibliometric model which was originally used in the scientific literature, could be helpful in the broader social or information systems.

Despite the rapid growth of electronic commerce in recent years in China few studies have been published to assess the efficacy of current governmental Web sites. In this paper, a detailed and original assessment index is suggested to measure the Web sites of Chongqing foreign trade enterprises focuses on three categories: site content, functional service and construct quality. The suggested methodology is equally valuable for analyzing commercial, educational and non-profit making organizations. The scoring mechanism is explained by using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The result indicates that the development of foreign trade enterprise Web site is in a nascent stage as a whole. Finally, a series of implications of this study are presented.

Influence of the electronic commerce initiatives on firm performance has always been a hot and important subject in the e-commerce field. This paper focuses on the empirical research of the effect of the e-commerce initiatives on firm performance, with data from 64 Chinese listed companies in the IT industry. The results showed that e-commerce tends to be associated with the increased revenue, improved company efficiency, and increased cost of goods sold, with a positive relation between the e-commerce and the integrated firm performance.

Online trust crisis restricts consumers to conduct online business. The authors undertake an empirical research in the influenced factors to the online companies. The research findings show that consumer privacy protection, security control measurements, brand and size of the companies are most important factors, while consumer's characteristics and perceived easiness of using the Web site that have no significant influences on consumer trust.