Consumer Behaviour in Online Shopping: A Study of China

This report delves into the realm of consumer behaviour within China's burgeoning online shopping sector, with a specific focus on the influential role of platforms like Taobao. The research investigates the various factors that shape online purchasing decisions, including the impact of technological advancements, demographic characteristics, and the characteristics of the Chinese online shopping market. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, incorporating literature reviews and surveys to gather both theoretical insights and empirical data from a sample of 150 Taobao consumers across different regions of China. The report examines how online consumer purchasing behavior is influenced by factors like price, convenience, and social recommendations. The report provides a comprehensive analysis of the market, covering research methodologies, data collection techniques, and the key characteristics of Chinese online shoppers. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of understanding consumer behaviour for businesses and offers strategies for influencing consumer buying behaviour in the context of the China's e-commerce market.

Ruining Head: CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN ONLINE SHOPPING- A STUDY OF
CHINA
Consumer behavior in online shopping- A study of China

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN ONLINE SHOPPING- A STUDY OF CHINA
1
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................1
Research title:.........................................................................................................................1
Aims and objectives...............................................................................................................1
Introduction to the research topic...........................................................................................1
Structure of Thesis..................................................................................................................1
Literature Review.......................................................................................................................2
Online consumer purchasing behavior...................................................................................2
Characteristics of the Chinese online shopping market.........................................................2
Research methodology...............................................................................................................3
Design.....................................................................................................................................4
Research participants..............................................................................................................4
Instrument...............................................................................................................................4
Procedure................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................4
References..................................................................................................................................6

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN ONLINE SHOPPING- A STUDY OF CHINA
2
Introduction
Research title:
The title of this research addresses “role of online shopping in influencing the consumer
buying behavior in the context of Taoba, China”
Aims and objectives
The main purpose of this research is to address the role of online shopping in influencing
consumer buying behavior in the context of Taoba, China. There are creation objectives that
will be accomplished by the researcher to meet the aim of research:
 To comprehend the online shopping and consumer behavior
 To discover the role of online shopping in consumers buying behavior
 To recommend strategies for influencing consumer buying behavior
Introduction to the research topic
With the increasing technological changes, online shopping has received wide attention from
the whole society. The United States and various other developed countries are majorly
considered in e-commerce. China, with its fast growing e-commerce market, included in this
list of e-commerce markets. With an increasing number of online customers in China, e-
commerce merchants are getting various opportunities as well as challenges (Clemes, Gan
and Zhang, 2014). Competition between traders is increasingly violent as soon as individuals
and enterprises start doing the trading in the e-commerce market. Therefore, it becomes
essential for dealers to identify the opportunities and its competitors in online market.
After the development of various features on internet, there are differences in traditional
purchasing situations and online consumer. Thus, it is essential to research the behavior of
online consumers and various factors that influence them in the thesis. By taking the supplier
perspective from a C2C market, a merchant does not face the problem in network sale as well
as the cost of entry and exit is also low. In this way, C2C e-commerce market is said to be

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN ONLINE SHOPPING- A STUDY OF CHINA
3
market of free competition. In the thesis, how to attract the customers to enter a shop has
been described.
Structure of Thesis
Thesis will start from a literature review that will analyze and generalize the different works
of literature. It will combine the characteristics of online consumer environment in order to
find out the elements that affect the online shopping behavior of customers. The next part that
is methodology will portray the way of research implementation by using data collection as
well as a research method. Besides this, the limitation of the survey is also elaborated that are
presented in the thesis.
Literature Review
Online consumer purchasing behavior
Online shopping that is also known as online purchasing refers to a process through which
consumer purchase products online and satisfy their demand. From the report of China
Online shopping industry, it is a founded that sellers in the online market always deliver the
necessary information. Therefore, it is a process where seller deliver the services and
products to the client with some information regarding capital flow, logistics, and information
flow that all are important in the delivering process and all processes are completed using the
internet (Hasan, 2016).
After some improvement in e-commerce market as technologies, online shopping has become
a trend for a consumer with increasing attention worldwide. Currently, there are various
scholars doing research on factors that influence the purchasing behavior of consumers in
different aspects. For example, Tian (2018) achieved a research from the customer
characteristics, demographics to dissever the factors that put an effect on the online shopping
behavior of customers. E-commerce in China is the best alternative for traditional online
shopping market. For the consumers of China, online shopping is an adventure. It is

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN ONLINE SHOPPING- A STUDY OF CHINA
4
providing a unique path for the consumers of China. It is growing well in today’s business
environment and likely to grow in future. It can be the future of shopping for consumers.
Chinese consumers shop online for checking what is trending as well as what is new.
Characteristics of the Chinese online shopping market
From the data published by Statistics portal, it is founded that the online shopping market of
China is booming every year. The online users are mostly from the age of 20 to 29 that
approx. occupies 56.4% worldwide. On the other hand, the ratio of online users between the
ages of 31 to 39 is only 22.5% (Statista, 2016). In this way, it is clear that youth are more
interested in online shopping who are mostly studying in schools or universities. Kloet and
Fung, (2016) believe that individual consuming, price, motivation and psychology of the
consumers are certain factors that influence the purchasing behavior of consumers.
After some years, the online market has grown widely and it provides numerous facilities to a
client to select and purchase the goods and avail the services. With the development and
changes in technology, customers are becoming cautious to get information from websites. In
this way, receiving the recommendations from friends is an important approach for customers
to make a decision. In addition to the best price and high quality, customers now a day also
pay attention to the fast delivery for the purpose of saving the time (Akram et al, 2017). Most
of the purchasers treat convenience as their main objective to buy anything online. It also
considers delight of pursuing procedure of shopping as one of best appeal on consuming good
or services online.
Spelich, (2017) stated the difference between the consuming habits of the western and
Chinese consumer. From the data published, it has been founded that millions of consumers
were founded shopping online in China. Online shopping makes the Chinese consumer
happy. Besides this, previously Chinese consumers shop online due to cheaper price and now

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN ONLINE SHOPPING- A STUDY OF CHINA
5
they said the availability of product is more important than the price of a product. Chinese
consumers pay more attention to their peers when they buy a product online.
Taobao is the largest network of online shopping as well as a business distributor in Asia that
was invested by Alibaba on 10th of May in 2013. Taobao’s business currently operates in
C2C and B2C (Lin, Xie and Lv, 2016). At the end of 2008, the total number of registered
members in “Taobao” was 98 Million by covering most of the Chinese population. From
those 98 million people, the transaction amounted to 99.96 billion Yuan. Besides this, Taobao
e-commerce also provides the third party payment system that is called Alipay (Licon, 2017).
Research methodology
Research is defined as a systemic procedure that discovers, explain, and correct the events,
facts, data and actions to draw a conclusion by analyzing them, Neuman, (2016). On the other
hand, Cho and Sagynov, (2015) state that it is the implementation of the scientific method by
data collection, analysis, and interpretation to know the answer to the research question.
According to Silverman (2016), there are three methods named quantitative method,
qualitative methods, or use of both of them.
In this research, secondary data collection method is used. Information’s are collected
through the published resources. Only reliable sources were used so that information received
is accurate to a higher extent (Cheng and Phillips, 2014).
Design
In this thesis, a qualitative method has been used to create some open-ended questions in
order to get detailed information in the questionnaire (Taylor, Bogdan, and DeVault, 2015).
The use of both the research method is to avoid the omission of any information and
guarantee the accurate and correct statistics. The aim of this research is to certify the validity
of all the influencing factors of online shopping behavior. The questionnaire mainly consists
of four phases, that are the beginning section, the background section, the screening section

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN ONLINE SHOPPING- A STUDY OF CHINA
6
and the main body (Brace, 2018). Beginning section explanatory notes and greeting language
is presented. Background section list all the questions that gather the background information
of participants. The screening section filters the non-target subjects from the respondents. In
the end, the main body is presented which is the main part of the questionnaire.
Research participants
The researcher will select 150 consumers of Taobao from the different region of China to
collect their responses in the context of online shopping. It will lead to obtaining positive
responses in the context of the current matter.
Instrument
In this researcher, the researcher will use survey through questionnaire and literature review
method to conduct the research and collect the reliable result. The literature review methods
facilitate the researcher to get theoretical information about the current matter. Apart from
this, a survey through questionnaire method will permit the investigator to get factual data
about the consumer behavior in online shopping.
Procedure
In this research thesis, a probability-sampling method will be used. This method will be
selected as it will provide an equal opportunity for selecting the participants in the research
(Etikan, Musa and Alkassim, 2016). This method is quite helpful as it assists in getting the
various units that all are having equal opportunities.
Conclusion
From the whole discussion, it can be concluded that E-commerce has a great potential,
especially in the online market segment. Therefore, before making any move for
development, it is essential to understand the activities of consumers in online shopping.
There are various online shopping sites in China. Among all, Taobao is one of the best online
websites that provide the buying as well as selling services to the customers. The number of

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN ONLINE SHOPPING- A STUDY OF CHINA
7
customers of Taobao is increasing day by day due to its wide variety of products and best
delivery. Therefore, it can be stated that Chinese online consumers assure the quality and its
services before purchasing a product.

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN ONLINE SHOPPING- A STUDY OF CHINA
8
References
Akram, U., Hui, P., Khan, M.K., Saduzai, S.K., Akram, Z. and Bhati, M.H. (2017) The plight
of humanity: Online impulse shopping in China. Human Systems Management, 36(1), pp.73-
90.
Brace, I. (2018) Questionnaire design: How to plan, structure and write survey material for
effective market research. Kogan Page Publishers.
Cheng, H.G. and Phillips, M.R. (2014) Secondary analysis of existing data: opportunities and
implementation. Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry, 26(6), p.371.
Cho, Y.C. and Sagynov, E. (2015) Exploring factors that affect usefulness, ease of use, trust,
and purchase intention in the online environment. International Journal of Management &
Information Systems (Online), 19(1), p.21.
Clemes, M.D., Gan, C. and Zhang, J. (2014) An empirical analysis of online shopping
adoption in Beijing, China. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 21(3), pp.364-375.
De Kloet, J. and Fung, A.Y. (2016) Youth cultures in China. United States: John Wiley &
Sons.
Etikan, I., Musa, S.A. and Alkassim, R.S. (2016) Comparison of convenience sampling and
purposive sampling. American Journal of Theoretical and Applied Statistics, 5(1), pp.1-4.
Hasan, B. (2016) Perceived irritation in online shopping: The impact of website design
characteristics. Computers in Human Behavior, 54, 224-230.
Licon, F.M. (2017) 31/31: Taobao, Chinese Online Shopping Giant. [online] Available from:
https://medium.com/shanghai-living/31-31-taobao-995d181431e2 [accessed 17/10/18].
Lin, G., Xie, X. and Lv, Z. (2016) Taobao practices, everyday life and emerging hybrid
rurality in contemporary China. Journal of rural studies, 47, pp.514-523.
Neuman, W. L. (2016). Understanding research. London: Pearson.
Silverman, D. ed. (2016) Qualitative research. United Kingdom: Routledge.

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN ONLINE SHOPPING- A STUDY OF CHINA
9
Statista. (2016) Retail e-commerce sales in China from 2016 to 2022 (in million U.S. dollars).
[online] Available from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/246041/forecast-of-b2c-e-
commerce-sales-in-china/ [accessed 16/10/18].
Taylor, S.J., Bogdan, R. and DeVault, M. (2015) Introduction to qualitative research
methods: A guidebook and resource. United States: John Wiley & Sons.
Tian, X. (2018) Escaping the Interpersonal Power Game: Online Shopping in
China. Qualitative Sociology, 1, pp.1-24.