E-Commerce Adoption Among Chinese Consumers: An Exploratory Study

The widespread adoption of the Internet in China has made more researchers and business practitioners wonder about the factors involved in e-commerce development at the final consumer level in China. We explore and analyze the factors that are related to the Internet adoption as a medium for purchasing goods and services among Chinese consumers. Noting that these factors are likely to be different from countries like the United States, we proceed by surveying existing literature on consumer behavior from both the Chinese and United States market studies. We then examined the potential causal factors of shopping behavior in an exploratory framework. A set of data drawn from a broad spectrum of users was analyzed and the results were examined for implications in the Chinese context. (C) 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.