Empirical Study of Influential Factors of Online Customers’ Repurchase Intention

There is not a unanimous conclusion about the influential elements of online customers’ repurchase intention. We established a concept model and discussed how utilitarian values (perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness), social values (satisfaction and trust) and the hedonic value (perceived enjoyment) directly and indirectly influenced customers’ repurchase intention in the context of online shopping. It adapted questionnaire to collect data and testified the hypothesis by structural equation model. The results showed that perceived usefulness, online customers’ satisfaction and perceived enjoyment had significantly positive impact on online customers’ repurchase intention. Moreover, we found that compared with utilitarian factors, the hedonic factor had a stronger positive impact on repurchase intention.

With the development of the Internet, e-commerce has changed the people how to buy and customers become accustomed to using the Internet instead of the store to make purchase. Compared with the traditional business model, online shopping has a wide range of selectivity and “one-stop” shopping; moreover there aren’t the obstacles of time, space and circulation, etc. Klopping and Earl pointed out that the previous literature focused on the first use of information technology or explored the influencing factors of the first purchasing behavior on online shopping, and these findings could increase customers’ usage of information technology and guide the development of online shopping. Along with the increase of the number of the online shopping, the online shopping market had become more and more familiar by customers and turned into a relatively mature market. From the perspective of marketing, the cost to retain an old customer is five times of developing a new customer and the main task of e-commerce businesses has been transformed from attracting new customers and improving the growth rate of customers to enhancing the repurchase intention. Lee et al. suggested that the growth rate of 5% in customer retention could make the profit increase from 25% to 75%, so it is necessary to identify the influencing factors of online customers’ repurchase intention. Online shopping customers have dual identities as both buyers and computer users, therefore the influencing factors of online customers’ repurchase behavior are complex and different from the traditional purchasing activities.

The online customers’ repurchase intention is the current hot research issue because most Internet users have online shopping experiences and retailers begin to focus on the post choice behavior. The results show that the e-commerce websites should emphatically consider the hedonic value of customers, whether they can offer interest and joy in online shopping is the most important factor, however, functional factors are also important to online customers because perceived usefulness also has a significant positive effect on online customers’ repurchase intention. So when improving the hedonic value of the site is a priority, online vendors also need to consider how to meet the functional value of the customer.

E-commerce enterprises should focus on improving perceived enjoyment of websites. Firstly online shopping websites ought to timely introduce some fashion merchandise. In browsing the sites many customers don’t have a certain purpose and they are just looking whether there are any new styles. When customers find commodities they prefer, they are likely to have impulse buying behaviors, so in a timely manner to launch trendy merchandise can increase the desire to buy more and stimulate consumption; secondly the e-commerce websites should do some promotional activities: 1) in a period of time different discount is implemented for different commodities and consumers need to purchase at specific times, for example, Taobao’s bargain activity is a limited-time discount of successful cases and customers purchase goods at a discount within 24 hours. 2) Tmall double 11 is the full reduction by using coupons. Before double 11 arrival, customers can receive different coupons by browsing the website and coupons can stimulate consumption and increase the numbers of purchasing or collocation purchase. Finally, e-commerce sites can increase the interaction between the customers, such as in the form of online chat rooms and online forums. In a word, e-commerce companies can use these methods to increase the hedonic value of online shopping.

E-commerce enterprises should focus on improving perceived usefulness of websites. E-commerce companies should consider the interface design of online shopping which tries to make customers comfortable and the interface design contains graphic design, structural design and content design. In graphic design, the websites should be customer-oriented and the graphics is easily clicked and processed, even the websites should avoid using fancy patterns and colors in selecting the image; in structural design, the classification of goods should be scientificly divided and the layout of sites should not only meet the customer’s buying habits, but also be easy and clear to under-stand, moreover the navigate and the link ought to reflect the consistency because it helps customers to purchase the good quickly and effectively; in content design, the description of goods tries to be clear and concise and distinguish the priorities, future the websites can use a different font in the important and attractive products and do a detailed presentation for attracting customers attention.

Article by Yuping Li from Chongqing Technology and Business University, China.

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