The role of information technology use for increasing consumer informedness in cross-border electronic commerce: An empirical study

The volume of cross-border electronic commerce (CBEC) is quickly becoming a new form of international trade. Behind this development, information technology plays a critical role in developing consumer informedness. However, due to a lack of explicit understanding of the evolving role of information technology, an underlying mechanism that explains why and how international consumers develop informedness in CBEC has not been identified. To resolve this issue, we establish a cross-border electronic commerce dedicated research model that theorizes links between different types of CBEC motivations (utilitarian, social, and hedonic), information technology use patterns (exploitive and explorative), consumer informedness, and purchase intentions. Based on a theoretical lens of adaptive structuration theory, we employed partial least squares structural equation modeling to analyze 271 samples from South Korea. The empirical test results supported our research framework. We thus acquire an explicit underlying mechanism of CBEC informedness development of international consumers.