Determinants of Emerging e-Commerce Markets: A Developmental Perspective

摘要

From its inception, business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce has represented a vehicle for distributing goods and services where numerous forces determined the development of a new market structure. The forces include sets of supplier-related, product-related, and consumer-related factors that have shaped the market development of B2C e-commerce. In this examination of the early days of B2C e-commerce market development, it was found that low value of demonstration, high frequency of returns, high frequency of gift purchase, low purchase frequency, high sensory barrier, low immediate gratification, high value of large selection, and low shopping enjoyment product characteristics were successful in predicting online product category growth. In select data, car rentals, airline tickets, hotel reservations, books, videos, and music captured significant online market share in these early online markets. Many of these categories possess the characteristics that predicted the development of the early B2C markets. The analysis suggests that during the development of e-commerce markets, sets of e-commerce-related factors successfully predicted online product category success.