Electronic commerce marketing strategy and its influence on purchase decisions of consumers Likun Xing 1, Chuanchen Bi 1 1 College of Graduate Study in
Management, Khon Kaen
University, Thailand
1. INTRODUCTION At the beginning of the 21st century, China's electronic commerce platforms underwent the beginning stage. Since Taobao was founded in 2003, in the following decade, various electronic commerce platforms, taking the advantage of this trend, have emerged in the public's vision. The electronic commerce in China has formed a complete industrial system. It has penetrated into all aspects of people's lives through the scheme of innovation and coordinated development. People can shop by using computers or mobile phones rather than going out. What's more, the price is even lower. China's electronic commerce transaction amount reached 21.8 trillion yuan in 2015. Du et al. (2016), Dong (2022). Moreover, the development speed of China's electronic commerce became faster in recent years. In 2019, the total amount of domestic electronic commerce transactions reached 34.81 trillion yuan, which was 6.7% higher than the last year. However, the customer acquisition cost of traditional electronic commerce is becoming higher and higher, and user dividends are gradually disappearing. Online electronic commerce is facing the bottleneck of its development. With the development of new technologies such as big data and AR, online electronic commerce is gradually expanding to new areas. Group shopping services, livestream marketing, virtual experience, etc. energize electronic commerce platforms. New growth points of the Internet economy appear. Started in 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic also influenced the development of physical stores, while transforming to electronic commerce can not only meet the policies of epidemic prevention and control, but also ensure the operation of stores. Electronic commerce directly connects consumers with commodities, realizing the unity of "people, good and market", which provides a larger development space for marketing. Although there is an influence of the epidemic, online shopping became the important content in consumers' life in 2020, with a transaction scale of more than 40 trillion yuan. Chen and Liu (2021), Huang et al. (2016). The revolution of electronic commerce marketing modes will inevitably influence consumers' purchase decisions. To enhance the degree of activity of live broadcasting platform and the host interface is conducive to increase consumers' happiness and the sense of immersion, thus, to stimulate consumers to impulsively purchase. On the contrary, consumers' consumption behaviour can also bring new problems to enterprises and consumers themselves. Therefore, to study and focus on electronic commerce marketing strategies and maximize their influence on consumers' purchase decisions can contribute to solving the problem of electronic commerce enterprise marketing bottleneck and promoting the healthy and sustainable development of electronic commerce economy. 2. THE CURRENT
STATUS OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MARKETING AND ONLINE CONSUMERS During the period of "the 12th Five-Year Plan", China's electronic commerce developed rapidly. The annual sales amount rose from 4.6 trillion yuan in 2010 to 21.8 trillion yuan in 2015. The largest market with the fastest development speed in a global scale was formed. At the same time, online retail, as the most active member of China's electronic commerce market, has a gradually increasing transaction scale, whose proportion of 11.2% in 2010 rose to 17.8% in 2015. In 2013, China's online retail transaction market transcended that of the United States and became the largest online retail transaction market in the world. In the meanwhile, under the background of the global market shrink, economic depression and import and export pressure increase, China's enterprises continuously expand the market at home and abroad through electronic commerce platforms. During "the 13th Five-year Plan" period, China's electronic commerce kept a good development trend, and its total transaction amount rose to 2.8 times of the previous record. The number of consumers of electronic commerce reached 413 million, and one third of people in China took the online shopping as their daily ways of consumption and living. 2.1. EXISTING
PROBLEMS OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MARKETING Electronic commerce has been a kind of "normalized" lifestyle, which is closely related to people's life. However, during its quick development, a series of problems also emerge. 2.1.1.
ELECTRONIC COMMERCE LACKS
EFFECTIVE SUPERVISION, AND PRODUCTS HAVE POTENTIAL SAFETY HAZARDS The current admittance threshold of the electronic commerce area is relatively low. There is a lack of explicit commodity grading system and the quality of products is not unified. Besides, there are some potential safety hazards in the industry. A series of problems and disordered phenomena, including exaggeration and crooked promotion, unqualified product quality, copyright infringement, misleading and deceiving consumers, also followed and appeared. The number of audiences in live broadcasting rooms is counterfeited. Various data, such as online user number, "likes" for livestreams and online gifts are also forged, which deceives and causes damage to consumers. Guo (2021), Zhou and Fan (2021). 2.1.2.
THE PROFESSIONAL TALENT SYSTEM
OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MARKETING HASN'T BEEN COMPLETED After the outbreak of the epidemic, attracted by the policy dividend, the number of practitioners of content oriented electronic commerce, especially the number of livestream hosts shows a trend of rocketing. However, most practitioners have no experience of professional training and have a poor business performance. In order to complete the task assigned by the platform, they provide various novel and stimulating content and forms by all manner of means to merely satisfy people's senses and entertainment requirements, while they don't have spiritual characteristics and responsibilities that should be borne by practitioners of the media industry. At present, various "online celebrities" strive for attracting attention, traffic, or being prominent. They act vulgarly, play to the gallery and show the lower limit of morality, which restricts the development of electronic commerce.
2.1.3.
THE HOMOGENEITY OF ELECTRONIC
COMMERCE MARKETING The most different place between the operation of electronic commerce and that of traditional physical stores lies in the high-quality content. However, such kind of content is naturally hard to be copied. Electronic commerce parties strive for imitating the high-quality content that successfully becomes popular, and optionally sign sales contracts before learning the product performance and the strength of the manufacturer, or even experiencing the product and manufacturer's service. The platforms are full of online water armies, and various kinds of evaluation and recommendation make people feel confused and can hardly distinguish true and false. The phenomenon of homogeneity in terms of product marketing content also appears, causing aesthetic fatigue of consumers. Wang and Du (2020).
2.2. THE
INFLUENCE OF BRAND IMAGE AND PURCHASING BEHAVIOR OF ONLINE CONSUMERS 2.2.1.
BRAND AND BRAND IMAGE "Brand" refers to the degree of consumers' understanding and recognition towards a certain kind of product or service. The brand's characteristics and value are generated from the brand's external representation and internal significance, which is an important link connecting enterprises and consumers. The brand has been a kind of intangible asset of the enterprise. Xu et al. (2021) The brand image can be composed of physical attributes of the product or its functional conditions, and it may also be composed of humanistic factors, such as social factors, psychological cognition, etc. Physical factors and humanistic factors are more likely to complement each other and constitute the brand image together. 2.2.2.
BUSINESS IMPACT OF BRAND IMAGE It is generally believed that the brand model has four dimensions, which are Product dimension, enterprise dimension, personalization dimension and symbol dimension. The four dimensions constitute a brand image of a product together. Figure
1
The brand image has an important effect on attracting or retaining customers. Firstly, the brand image is an intuitive form to reflect the product. It shows the internal attributes (such as appearance, materials, etc.) and external attributes (such as origin, fame, service, etc.), which directly influences the purchasing psychology of consumers. Secondly, the brand image has different patterns and carriers for manifestation, which shows in forms of attraction and price for consumers. They can influence the consumption judgment of Thirdly, the brand image determines the sales channels and dissemination paths of the product, which has an extremely important effect on the formulation of appropriate sales strategies. Finally, the way the brand image transmits information determines the content provided to consumers. This way may cause emotional resonance and build a stable relationship between the brand and consumers. Ma (2020), Li et al. (2021). 2.2.3.
ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MARKETING
MUST ATTACH IMPORTANCE TO THE BRAND IMAGE OF THE PRODUCT Therefore, when conducting electronic commerce marketing, the brand image has relatively great influence on the marketing effect of the commodity, The main body of brand image is products, and the expression form pays more attention to the transmission of values and culture. Electronic commerce enterprises can create and publish different types of product brand images, convey information on product quality and use, and enhance consumers' awareness of products, thus enhancing their purchase willingness and promoting purchase behavior. Therefore, electronic commerce marketing must attach great importance to the brand image of products, diversify the image expression forms, make the content interesting and educational, and pay attention to the connection with consumers, so that they can spontaneously generate the psychology of identifying with commodities, form external stimuli, and finally influence consumers' emotions and behaviors to realize the purpose of transactions. Li (2016), Luo and Fan (2006). 2.3. CONSUMER
DEMAND AND ONLINE PURCHASE INTENTION Purchase intention belongs to the category of behaviour
intention, which is the psychological embodiment of consumers. It comes into
being before the implementation of purchase behaviour and indicates the
possibility of consumers buying a certain commodity. Online purchase intention
still belongs to the subjective action tendency of consumers to purchase
products or services, or the possibility of consumers to purchase certain
products. In a sense, online purchase intention can be understood as a
subjective psychological probability, which can be used to predict the
possibility of consumers taking actual purchase behaviour. Sun
and Liu (2014), Guo
(2021). 2.3.1.
FACTORS AFFECTING CONSUMERS'
ONLINE PURCHASE INTENTION Under the network environment, consumers can't get in touch with physical goods, so when consumers buy goods online, they often shop around, and their willingness to buy is most vulnerable to the influence of the outside world. Generally speaking, consumers' online purchase intention is influenced by electronic commerce platform, network page layout, purchase process and personal charm of network anchor. Therefore, electronic commerce enterprises provide abundant information, which is convenient for consumers to compare and measure goods, facilitate information search, and help consumers to have purchasing impulse. Zhang (2000). 2.3.2.
CONSUMERS' ONLINE PURCHASING
LOYALTY Consumer loyalty is the most important part of a commodity, which is the embodiment of consumers' comprehensive satisfaction with enterprises, products, and services. Loyal consumers can not only create great wealth for enterprises, but also help enterprises spread the image of enterprises and products, which is conducive to enterprises to carry out greater marketing in the market. Consumers' online loyalty is reflected on the basis of double recognition of online platform and goods. The proportion, frequency and amount of purchases are most affected by the attitude of consumers' supervisors, and have a direct relationship with other consumers' preferences and recommendation willingness. Therefore, to attach importance to network marketing, they must attach importance to cultivating loyal network consumers. 2.3.3.
CONSUMERS' ONLINE PURCHASING
BEHAVIOR Consumers' online purchasing behaviour is a series of processes from accepting the influence of network, listening, or agreeing to product recommendation, selecting products, implementing purchase, payment, logistics and transportation, accepting products and product evaluation, etc. Consumers' purchasing behavior is influenced by cultural background, gender, age, education level, third party purchasing behaviour and so on. Therefore, in order to achieve marketing success, electronic commerce enterprises must pay attention to and master consumers' behaviour and psychology to ensure the ultimate marketing success. 3. STRATEGIES
FOR ELECTRONIC COMMERCE MARKETING TO INFLUENCE ONLINE CONSUMERS' PURCHASE
DECISIONS 3.1. ELECTRONIC
COMMERCE MARKETING AND MARKETING Electronic commerce marketing must pay attention to
marketing, which includes four factors: product, price, promotion, and channel,
which stimulate consumers from different angles and attract consumers to buy
products. Electronic commerce marketing is the synergy of the four factors of
marketing, which affects consumers' choices and realizes the final sales. Skadberg and Kimmel (2004). 3.2. ELECTRONIC
COMMERCE MARKETING STRATEGY 3.2.1.
ATTACH IMPORTANCE TO PRODUCT
MARKETING Brand marketing is an important part of electronic commerce marketing. Electronic commerce enterprises take products as the core of their business, continuously extend outward, improve the effectiveness of product marketing, and achieve the purpose of sales by building product systems, developing products, diversifying groups, paying attention to consumer needs and other practical factors. 3.2.2.
STRENGTHEN PRICE MARKETING Electronic commerce platform should gradually adjust pricing strategy, optimize product quality, and adopt multi-level pricing strategy based on current user scale to ensure that product price matches product quality. At the same time, new value transmission lines will be introduced to transform the huge user base into substantial wealth, enrich value propositions from tourism products, movie tickets, overseas purchasing, take-out and other aspects, and enhance customer stickiness. 3.2.3.
INCREASE PROMOTIONAL MARKETING Improve social functions, strengthen community construction, and set up diversified user communication methods, so that users can not only communicate product information with merchants, but also share and discuss with other consumer users. Through social communication among consumer users, group effect can be formed, which lays a foundation for the effective implementation of promotion strategies. Electronic commerce platform should adjust the previous marketing methods, simplify the promotion rules as much as possible under the condition of protecting the rights and interests of both parties, and clearly point out the key points of the promotion rules in detail, so as to ensure that consumers and users can accurately interpret the promotion activities of electronic commerce platform and prevent users from having wrong expectations. Murdock (2012). 3.2.4.
COOPERATE WITH CHANNEL
MARKETING Based on the channel marketing strategy, strengthen cooperation with supply chain merchants and urge platform merchants to upgrade and reform. Optimize product quality in essence, streamline intermediate links in supply chain, take consumer demand as the guide, provide substantive guidance for product suppliers, introduce big data technology, do a good job in consumer demand analysis, and realize production according to demand under the guidance of demand data, thus enhancing the trust of consumers and users in the platform. Pul Izzi and Barrett (2009). 3.2.5.
ENHANCE BRAND IMAGE In order to achieve sustainable development, electronic commerce enterprises need to take certain measures to change the previous brand image, build the brand image with preferential treatment and honesty as the core, optimize the interface of electronic commerce platform, focus on platform construction, and introduce innovative, accurate and clear marketing schemes to eliminate over-marketing, so as to gradually optimize the brand image. 3.2.6.
STRENGTHEN MARKETING MANAGEMENT
The effective management of electronic commerce enterprises is an important factor to break through the development of enterprises. It is necessary to supervise false propaganda and other phenomena to prevent information asymmetry from affecting consumers' shopping experience. In addition, it is necessary to strengthen services, improve and enhance consumers' shopping experience, and make consumers feel valued and service quality, so as to strengthen consumers' purchasing trust and build loyal online consumers.
4. CONCLUSION 4.1. PAY ATTENTION TO THE
BRAND IMAGE CONSTRUCTION OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE PLATFORM Electronic commerce platform should attach great importance to the construction of brand image, improve the brand awareness and brand emotion of online consumers, and enhance consumers' purchasing behaviour decision-making. When shaping the brand image, it is commanded to take the promotion of consumers' purchasing behaviour as the starting point, and provide consumers with the required products, services and brand information through high-quality services, barrier-free communication, brand packaging, platform advertising, marketing channels, etc., so as to gain consumers' trust, assist consumers in making purchasing decisions and enhance consumers' purchasing willingness. 4.2. IMPROVE
ELECTRONIC COMMERCE PLATFORM SERVICES Electronic commerce platform has the greatest influence on online transactions, Therefore, electronic commerce enterprises should focus on platform services, optimize consumers' purchasing process, improve consumers' awareness of electronic commerce brands and products, and deepen the attitude change from brand to brand emotion, so as to form an impact intensity on consumers' purchasing behaviour, enhancing consumers' online purchasing attitude. 4.3. ENHANCE
THE INTERACTION BETWEEN ELECTRONIC COMMERCE AND CONSUMERS The interaction between electronic commerce enterprises and consumers has a positive effect on the relationship between consumers' purchasing behaviour. Therefore, electronic commerce companies should increase interaction with consumers by increasing multiple channels and constantly innovate forms of interaction, such as online live broadcasts by weblebrities, graphic web links, offline consumer days, prize draws, free shipping and building interactive communities to improve the stickiness of electronic commerce consumers, create loyal consumers and increase the positive impact of consumer purchasing behaviour. Fishbein and Ajzenl (1975), Bourdeau et al. (2002) 4.4. MASTERING
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ONLINE CONSUMERS When online consumers purchase online, their psychology has the subjective will of comparison and convenience. Therefore, electronic commerce enterprises attach importance to the psychological construction of consumers, and use external means such as good social image, high-quality products and prices, convenient services, and excellent shopping experience to promote topics to consumers, so as to satisfy the attention, image psychology and loyalty of consumers to a certain extent and attract more online consumers who are willing to understand products and buy products. Bagozzi et al. (1991), Itzmaurice (2005). 4.5. ATTACH IMPORTANCE TO THE COMPREHENSIVE
MANAGEMENT OF NETWORK MARKETING Network marketing is a modern manifestation of marketing, electronic commerce platform and online consumers are connected through the network. Therefore, electronic commerce enterprises should build platforms, products, services, and consumers as indispensable and necessary links. They should not only pay attention to platform factors, but also pay attention to consumers' psychology and shopping experience. On the premise of constantly meeting consumers' new needs, they should implement scientific and accurate network marketing strategies, win the trust of consumers, and finally achieve better marketing performance.
CONFLICT OF INTERESTS None. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS None. REFERENCES Bagozzi, R. P., Baumgartner, H.,
and Yi, Y. (1991). Coupon Usage and the Theory of Reasoned Action[J]. Advances in
Consumer Research, 43(5), 41-47. Bourdeau,L.,Chebat,J.C.,and Couturier,C. (2002). Internet Consumer Value of University Students: E-Mail-VS-Web Users,Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. Chen, X., and Liu, W. (2021). Analysis of Network Marketing Strategy of E-Commerce Platform [J]. Fortune Today (China Intellectual Property), (01), 81-82. Dong, Q. (2022). Problems
and Improvement Measures In
E-Commerce Marketing [J]. Journal of Economic Research, (03), 77-79. Du, X., Ding, X., Xie, Z., and Lei, L. (2016).
Research on the Impact of Online Reviews
on Consumer Purchase Intention [J], Management Review, 173-183. Fishbein and Ajzenl (1975). Belief,Attitude,Intention and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research[M].Addison-Wesley,Reading,MA. Guo, Li. (2011). Research on Influencing
Factors of Consumer Purchase
Behavior Under Internet Conditions [J]. Jiangsu
Business Theory, (1), 23-26. Guo, Y. (2021). Research on Optimization of E-Commerce Marketing Management Strategy in the Age of Big Data [J]. Research on Industrial Innovation. (20) Huang, J., Liu, H., and Guo, Y.
(2016). Research on The
Impact of Online Promotion Restrictions on Consumer Purchase
Decision-Based on The Perspective of Elaboration Possibility [J]. Business Economics
and Management, (05). Ke, Q. (2004). A Study on Online Consumer Purchase Behavior Model [D]. Central China Normal University. Li, Meng. (2016). Research on The Impact of Service Guarantee on Consumer Purchase
Intention in online Shopping Environment [D]. South
China University of Technology.
Li, Z., Xiao, R., and Zhao, X. (2021). Research on Influencing Factors of College Students 'Use of E-Commerce Live Broadcast Platform--Taking Taobao Live Broadcast as
an Example [J]. Intelligence Discovery, (01), 72-78. Luo, H., and Fan, X. (2006). Relationship
Marketing Mechanism Based
on Psychological Contract: Empirical Research on Service Industry [J], Business Economics
and Management, 25 (5), 574-580. Ma, X. (2020). On Celebrity Advertising Effect and its Psychological Impact on Consumers in the New Media Era--A Case Study of Netizens "Li Jiaqi"[J]. Modern Marketing (Business Edition), (03), 100-101. Murdock, T. (2012). Content Marketing VS. Social Media Marketing : What's
The Difference ?,02. Pul Izzi,
J.,and Barrett, N. (2009). Get Customers--How to use Content Marketing to Deliver Relevant,Valuable,and
Compelling Information That Turns
Prospects Into Buyers[M],Bonita Springs. Skadberg, Y.X., and
Kimmel, J.R., (2004). Visitors' Flow Experience while Browsing a Web
Site : Its Measurement,Contributing Factors and
Consequences[J]. Computers in Human Behavior,20(03), 403-422. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0747-5632(03)00050-5. Sun, Y., and Liu, X. (2014). Research On Factors
Influencing Online Consumer Purchase
Behavior Under The New Trend of E-Commerce [J].
Journal of Beijing Technology and Business University (Social Science Edition), 29 (4), 93-101. Wang S., and Du J. (2020). Impact of Live
Webcasting on College Students
'Consumption [J]. Marketing World, (51), 5-6. Wang X. (2020). Research
on The Influence of Online Live Broadcast With Goods on Consumers 'Purchase Intention Based on Hierarchical Regression Analysis [J]. Gansu Science and Technology,
49 (11), 76-80. Xu, M., Cui, W., and Wei, Z. (2021).
Consumer Flow Mode and Scenario Marketing Under The Influence of Mobile Live Video Broadcasting--Taking
Customer Perceived Risk and Customer Perceived Value as Mediating Mechanism [J]. Market Weekly, 34
(01), 91-94. Zeithaml, (1988).Consumer Perceptions of Price,Quality And Value : A Means End Model and Synthesis of Evidence.Journal of Marketing.52(7). https://doi.org/10.2307/1251446. Zhang, B. (2000). Analysis of Online Consumer Groups and Purchase Behavior [J]. Journal of
Donghua University, Natural
Science Edition, (5), 53-57. Zhou, Li, and Fan, J. (2021). Shaping Trust : Scene Framework
and Emotional Logic of Online E-Commerce Live
Broadcasting [J]. Journal of Southwest University For
Nationalities (Humanities and
Social Sciences Edition), 42 (02), 142-147. Itzmaurice, J. (2005). Incorporating Consumers' Motivations Into The Theory of Reasoned Action[J]. Psychology and Marketing, 22(11), 911-929. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.20090.
This work is licensed under a: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License © IJETMR 2014-2022. All Rights Reserved. |