A REVIEW OF ONLINE CONSUMER BEHAVIOR RESEARCH
Ling-yu Tong, Qin-jian Yuan
Department of Information Management, Nanjing University, No.22 Hankou Road, Nanjing, China
Qian-jin Zong, Hong-zhou Shen
Department of Information Management, Nanjing University, No.22 Hankou Road, Nanjing, China
Keywords: Consumer behaviour, Online, Electronic commerce, Electronic marketplace, Review.
Abstract: As online consumer behavior is being paid more and more attentions from both managers and academic
researchers, it is urgent to understand the whole landscape of the research field. Since then, this paper, based
on knowledge metric analysis technique of mapping knowledge domains, reviews the literature of online
consumer behavior research from three perspectives – the development of the research around the world, the
theoretical foundations of the research and the focused topics, providing some insights for future studies.
1 INTRODUCTION
The exponential increases in online consumption and
the unprecedented rate of growth in the number of
commercial websites have created an extremely
competitive marketplace where most internet
companies are yet straggling to turn a profit.
Obviously, acquiring more consumers and
stimulating them to consume are the crucial key to
the success of websites. As a consequence, not only
managers but academic researchers are paying more
and more attentions to the research of online
consumer behavior. For such a newly-evolving but
rapidly-developing interdisciplinary area of research,
it is urgent to understand the whole picture of the
research, such as what are the theoretical foundations
it is established on? And what are the key topics
being heavily focused on? And how about the
development of the research around the world is?
However, there is still no study making efforts to
answer these questions. In order to make up this
void, this study, based on knowledge metric
analysis, is attempting to give a review of online
consumer behavior research.
2 DATA AND METHODOLOGY
2.1 Data
Through ISI Web of Science, we find 1584
recordings related to online consumer behavior and
the date range of them is from 1995 to 2011. (The
results were obtained on 13th Jan. 2011.) As the
documents published in 2010 and 2011 are not
completed, only recordings from 1995 to 2009 are
collected and the total number is 1348.
2.2 Mapping Knowledge Domains
The technique of knowledge metric analysis
employed here is mapping knowledge domains
aimed at easing information access and making
evident the structure of knowledge through charting,
mining, analyzing, sorting, enabling navigation of,
and displaying knowledge. (Shiffrin and Borner,
2004) Based on the core conceptions from
bibliometrics, social network analysis and so on, this
method could identify important authors and works
contributing to the foundations of a research area by
citation analysis; also, it could reveal the key topics
drawing most attentions in a research area by
keyword analysis. Different from traditional
knowledge metric methods, mapping knowledge
domains is characterized of dealing with massive
170
Tong L., Yuan Q., Zong Q. and Shen H..
A REVIEW OF ONLINE CONSUMER BEHAVIOR RESEARCH.
DOI: 10.5220/0003549101700175
In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2011), pages 170-175
ISBN: 978-989-8425-56-0
Copyright
c
 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

information and visualizing the results. In this study,
analysis tool CitespaceII developed by Chaomei
Chen in 2006 is employed.
3 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
3.1 Development of Online Consumer
Behaviour Research
After importing bibliographic information of those
collected documents into CitespaceII, we run the
country analysis function. A time-zone view of
network about the countries the researchers of online
consumer behavior are belonging to is shown as in
Figure 1.

Figure 1: Network of main countries in online consumer
behavior research.
As Figure 1 is presented, it is found that the USA
takes an essential position in the field of online
consumer behavior research, for it has not only
started the research at an early stage but also
produced the major achievements. Meanwhile, it
should be noted that later round the year of 2000
when dot-com companies were exploded, numerous
countries are involved into the research area, such as
Canada, South Korea and Austria in 1998,
Netherlands and Chile in 1999, Peoples’ Republic of
China, Taiwan, Germany, England, Japan, Israel and
Brazil in 2000. Among them, Peoples’ Republic of
China has made the second most achievements in
this field. As China has the most net users in the
world and is advancing the network construction, it
should be not difficult to anticipate that in later years
there would be a boom of online consumer
behaviour research in China.
3.2 Theoretical Foundations of Online
Consumer Behaviour Research
With the cited reference analysis function of
CitespaceII, a network of cited references is
generated as shown in figure 2. There are several big
nodes covering the center of the network, meaning
that these high-cited references establish most of the
foundation of online consumer behaviour research.
And they could be classified into three groups:
research origin, research model, and research tool.

Figure 2: Network of cited references in online consumer
behavior research.
3.2.1 Research Origin
Consumer behavior research is derived from and has
a long history in the science of marketing. The
changes in the marketing environments where
internet is becoming a powerful and promising
marketplace, of cause, entice some pioneer
researchers of marketing science to reexamine the
consumer behavior, which becomes the research
origin of online consumer behavior research.
Hoffman (1996) proposes hypermedia
computer-mediated environments (hypermedia
CMEs) where the traditional one-to-many marketing
communications model for mass media is changed
into a many-to-many one, and develops a process
model of consumers’ network navigation in
hypermedia CMEs by employing the flow construct.
From a different aspect, Alba (1997) examines the
effects of consumer, retailer and manufacturer
behavior on the diffusion of interactive home
shopping (IHS) and the impact this new retail format
could have on the retail industry, concluding that the
growth of IHS is dependent on the consumer needs
of vast selection, screening, reliability and product
comparison, and that a successful IHS retailer must
seek one or more competitive advantages such as
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distribution efficiency, assortments of
complementary merchandise, and so on. Those early
studies provide useful enlightenments for later
studies.
3.2.2 Research Model
As consumer behavior is human behavior in
consumption settings, lots of literature of
Psychology about human behaviours are drawn to
develop research models in online consumer
behavior research, such as the theory of reasoned
action (TRA) which suggests that a person’s
behavioral intention depends on the person’s attitude
about the behavior and subjective norms (Fishbein
and Ajzen, 1975), and the theory of planned
behavior (TPB) which argues that behaviour
intentions can be predicted from attitudes toward the
behavior, subjective norms, and perceived
behavioral control which accounts for variance in
actual behaviour together with those intentions.
Based on the two models, researchers develop a
variety of measurement scales to explain and predict
consumers’ intentions to take online behaviors, and
the most widely used model scale might be
technology acceptance model (TAM) proposed by
Davis et al. (1989) from the respective of
information system, within which perceived
usefulness and perceived ease of use are considered
to be the fundamental determinants of user
acceptance of information technology. Later, the
TAM has been continuously studied and expanded,
such as TAM 2, UTAUT, TAM 3 and so on.
(Venkatesh and Davis, 2000; Venkatesh, 2000;
Venkatesh et al., 2003; Venkatesh and Bala, 2008)
Meanwhile, some studies combine the TAM with
other theories to present a more comprehensive
picture of online consumer behaviors. Gefen et al.
(2003) creatively introduces trust theory into the
TAM to examine not only the interface between
consumer and website but also the relationship
between consumer and e-vendor similar to
traditional business settings.
3.2.3 Research Tool
Structural equation models (SEMs) with unobserved
constructs and measurement error are considered to
be a powerful tool of analysis in theory testing and
model building for online consumer behavior
research, for its unique characteristic of bringing
together psychometric and econometric analyses.
However, it had several severe limitations and could
give misleading results. To overcome the problem,
Fornell (1981) proposes a more comprehensive
testing system based on explanatory power for
structural model, measurement model and overall
model, leading to a wide application in online
consumer behavior research.
3.3 Focused Topics in Online
Consumer Behaviour Research
As running the keyword analysis function of
CitespaceII, we get a network of keywords in online
consumer behavior research as shown in figure 3. In
the network of keyword, it is clear that “behavior”
and “internet” the two biggest nodes in the center
link to numerous smaller nodes around, due to their
direct relation with the core topic online consumer
behavior. Apart from them, there are still other
high-frequency keywords mainly revealing the
following five topics: “consumer trust”, “consumer
satisfaction & service quality”, “acceptance of
information technology”, “consumer choice &
consumer decision-making”, and “consumer
loyalty”.
Figure 3: Network of keywords used in online consumer
behavior research.
3.3.1 Consumer Trust
Lack of interpersonal communication on the
Internet, online consumers face even more
uncertainties and risks in the electronic environments
as the problems of asymmetric information between
consumer and e-vendor and undesirable
opportunistic behaviors become worse than those in
traditional business settings. Thus, consumer trust is
a critical issue in the context of E-Commerce. Chircu
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et al. (2000) empirically find that trust has a
significant positive impact on intention to take
online behavior. Cho (2006) investigates the way
consumers’ evaluations of an e-vendor’s business
operations relate to their judgments of
trustworthiness in the context of B2B internet
exchange relationships. Understanding the impact of
trust on online behavior is obviously important, but
it is also important to understand how to build trust
online. Hoffman et al. (1999) suggest a short-term
solution of giving consumers the opportunity to be
anonymous or pseudonymous when engaging in
information exchanges and online transactions, and a
long-term one of allowing the balance of power to
shift toward a more cooperative interaction between
an online business and its customers.
3.3.2 Consumer Satisfaction & Service
Quality
Similar to the research in traditional marketing,
consumer satisfaction and service quality are also
critical topics in the field of online consumer
behavior research. Regularly, service quality has
great impact on consumer satisfaction while
consumer satisfaction is an important index of
service quality, so they are often discussed jointly.
Szymanski and Hise (2000) examine the role that
consumer perceptions of online convenience,
merchandising, site design, and financial security
play in e-satisfaction assessments. On the other side,
Garrity et al. (2005) argue that the three fundamental
user satisfaction components of task support
satisfaction, decision support satisfaction and
interface satisfaction have a good explanation for
web-based information systems success. Besides,
some researchers are engaged in developing different
scales to measure the quality of a website or the
services provided by a website. Yoo and Donthu
(2001) provide SITEQUAL to measure the perceived
quality of an internet shopping site. Loiacono,
Watson and Goodhue (2002) present a Web site
quality measure with 12 core dimensions and refine
it using two successive samples.
3.3.3 Acceptance of Information Technology
Since the primary interface with an online consumer
is a website or an e-commerce system, essentially an
information technology, a consumer on the internet,
before taking any online behaviors, should firstly be
willing to use the technology. Hence, extensive
efforts are put into explaining and predicting
consumers’ acceptance of information technology,
with fundamental disciplines from psychology and
technology, such as TRA, TPB and TAM. Gefen,
Karahanna and Straub (2003) join the theory of trust
into the TAM to examine online consumer behavior
from an integrated perspective. Considering some
unique characteristics of the internet, Vijayasarathy
(2004) incorporates additional constructs like
compatibility, privacy, security, normative beliefs
and self-efficacy into the TAM. Pavlou and
Fygenson (2006) extend TPB to explain and predict
the process of e-commerce adoption by consumers.
Hsu and Lu (2007) combine the TRA and the TAM
to bring out a research model for examining
consumer behavior in online game communities.
3.3.4 Consumer Choice & Consumer
Decision-making
Either visiting or returning to a website, a consumer
should make a choice or a decision, so understanding
the online consumer behavior of choosing or
decision-making is crucial. Some studies have
investigated the factors influencing consumer choice
or decision-making from different perspectives. Choi
and Geistfeld (2004) examine how cultural values
affect consumer decision-making with respect to
e-commerce like online shopping. Constantinides
(2004) attempts to identify the Web experience
components and understand their roles as inputs in
the online consumer’s decision-making process.
Some researchers have approached the topic under
particular settings. Ariely and Simonson (2003)
propose an analytical framework including a series
of propositions relating to the auction entry decision,
bidding decisions during the auction for studying
online bidding behavior. Dholakia and Simonson
(2005) examine the effect of explicit reference points
on consumer choice in online auctions.
3.3.5 Consumer Loyalty
With the increasingly intense competitions and the
awareness that attracting new consumers is
considerably more expensive than retaining
consumers in electronic commerce, researchers are
paying more and more attentions to consumer
loyalty. Reichheld and Schefter (2000) find that
online consumers exhibit a clear proclivity toward
loyalty which could be reinforced by correct web
technologies and explain the enormous advantages
of retaining online consumers at length through
analyzing the strategies and practices of many
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leading Internet companies and surveying thousands
of their customer. Then a series of studies have
investigated the factors that affect online consumer
loyalty. Wang, Pallister and Foxall (2006) propose a
consumer Website loyalty model to describe how
consumer transfer their existing brand loyalty in the
traditional retail market to the same brand’s website
in the B2C e-commerce market and how their
perceived risk at the brand’s Website mediates this
loyalty transformation. Kim, Shin and Lee (2006)
find that three key variables – customer satisfaction,
attractive alternatives and switching cost, are
strongly associated with intention to switch email
services.
4 CONCLUSIONS &
IMPLICATIONS
Though the online consumer behavior research is a
newly evolving research field with less than two
decades history, more and more countries, especially
China, have been contributing increasing efforts to
it. And it is also an interdisciplinary area based on
the science of marketing, information system and
psychology. In the past, researchers are focused on
the topics of “consumer trust”, “consumer
satisfaction & service quality”, “acceptance of
information technology”, “consumer choice &
consumer decision-making”, and “consumer
loyalty”.
With the unending innovation in the electronic
marketplaces, like micro-blogging, group-buying
and so on, there would be new issues need to
address. Therefore, a review of online consumer
behavior research describing the whole picture of the
field would help researchers better understand and
deal with the current and future online consumer
behavior.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research is included in the programme
“Research on the Marketing Model of Digital
Publication” supported by National Funds of Social
Science. And the number of the programme is
07BTQ003.
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