UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Dang Thi Tuong Vi THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL PRESENCE IN THE WEB INTERFACE ON CUSTOMER’S PURCHASE INTENTION TOWARD ONLINE STORE MASTER OF BUSINESS Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Dang Thi Tuong Vi THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL PRESENCE IN THE WEB INTERFACE ON CUSTOMER’S PURCHASE INTENTION TOWARD ONLINE STORE ID: 22120080. MASTER OF BUSINESS SUPERVISOR: Dr. VO NGOC THUY Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This thesis could not be finish without the help and support of many people who are gratefully acknowledged here. At the very first, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr.
Vo Ngoc Thuy. With their guidance, I could have worked out this thesis. They had offered me valuable suggestions and criticisms with his profound knowledge in rich research experience. I am grateful to express my sincere to Prof.
Nguyen Dinh Tho. I have learned from him a lot not only about research design, but also data analysis technique. I am also extremely to give thankful to UEH – International School of business (ISB) supported me in all process. I would like to extent my sincere thanks to all my classmates and friends.
Their kindness and supports have contributed very much in my working process. Most important, I would like to express my most sincere thanks to my family for their continuous encouragement and support. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis, to the best of my knowledge and belief, is my own work and effort and that is has not been submitted, either in part or whole, anywhere for any award. Information and ideas taken from other sources as cited as such.
This work has not been published. Signature Dang Thi Tuong Vi Date: 09/03/2015 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Table of Contents ABSTRACT.2 Problematic of Research.4 Significance of Research .5 Scope of Research.6 Structure of thesis. 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .3 Trust in an online environment .5 Attitude and its determinants .3 Research Model and Hypotheses Development .1 Social presence and Perceived of usefulness .2 Social presence and trust in an online shopping .4 Perceived of usefulness and attitude’s customer .5 Trust in an online shopping and attitude’s customer. 16 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.6 Enjoyment and attitude’s customer .7 Perceived usefulness and Purchase intention .8 Enjoyment and purchase intention .9 Attitude and purchase intention.
18 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHOD.6 Data analysis method .2 Contruct validity - Exploratory factor analysis (EFA).4 The structural equation model (SEM). 26 CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND RESULTS. 31 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.4 Modified research model .1 Test of mediating effects. 41 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND LIMITATIONS .1 Discussion and conclusions .3 Limitations and future research.
47 REFERENCES APPENDICES TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.4: Modified research model .2: SEM result of research model (Standardized). 38 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF TABLE Table 4.1: Cronbach’s alpha result .2: Rotated Component Matrix .1: The mediator test .2: Relationship between constructs in research model (standardized) .3: Bootstrap estimate result with N = 1000 .6: Result of hypotheses testing. 40 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATION ANOVA Analysis of variance AVE Average Variance Extracted B2C Business to customer CFA Confirmatory Factor Analysis CFI Comparative fit index CR Composite Reliability EFA Exploratory Factor Analysis E-commerce Electronic commerce GFI Goodness-offit KMO Kaiser-Myer-Olkin ML Maximum Likelihood OSAM Online Shopping Acceptance Model SEM Structural Equation Model SPSS Statistical software package SRMR Standardize root mean square residual RMSEA The Root mean square of approximately TAM Technology Acceptance Model TLI Tucker & Lewis index () TPB Theory of Planned Behavior TRA Theory of Reasoned Action VECITA Vietnam E-commerce and Information Technology Agency TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 4 ABSTRACT The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the impact of social presence in the web interface on the purchase intention of customer in online store. In framework of e-commerce, many previous researchers have been conducted to test the influence of social presence on online buyer.
To date the expansion of information systems in the way friendlier and closer to human feeling, however, some elements of social cue are still not studies. For this reason, the author decided to test further social cues in web interface, with the aim of evaluating the manipulation of these social elements to purchase intention for further development. This thesis first presented discussion of previous literature in order to identify the definition of concepts in research model included social presence, perceived usefulness, enjoyment, trust, attitude and purchase intention. EFA method was used with 22 original observed variables but only build up five constructs because “Trust attitude” formed a concept.
With modified model, SEM test showed the significant relationship between the factors of model, social presence was infused through perceived usefulness and enjoyment then directly affected to purchase intention and indirectly through attitude. Besides that, the statistic results of Anova test proved the difference influences in manipulation of social cues such as social rich picture, text, customer rating and recommendation in turn of three levels web interface. An interesting discussion disclosed adding social rich picture and text are supported to push a higher purchase intention, the customer rating and recommendation does not work. The results of the experiment reveal that social presence is effective elements to enhance purchase intention.
The findings contribute to confirm the earlier theories and supply a significant implication in form selection of web design which support e-business has effectively investment in marketing and better customers approach. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Research Background E-commerce has been becoming an effective trading channel for many companies, beside traditional stores, to sell their products and services, and to interact with customers. That are stores open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year, a sales person who doesn’t need breaks or holidays. With low running cost, online stores create opportunity to reach the new markets because of unlimitedness for any customer who wants to find the products over the world.
Increasing of internet users, extend to over the world, has been predicted for a tremendous development of e-commerce. According to Tran (2014), head of VECITA (Vietnam E- commerce and Information Technology Agency), cites that Vietnam is one of the potential markets of growth e-commerce in South Eastern Asia. Vietnam is the highest internet user in area of South East Asia with 16.1 million users by the time of July 2013. The internet users in Vietnam gain 36 percent of population, relevant to 32 million users.
Company with increment of internet user, e-commerce also makes a strong and effective growth. Survey of VECITA in 2013 in two big cities of Vietnam (Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City), 57 percent Internet users purchase items through online channel, and the business to customer e-commerce sales are estimated USD 2. Forecasting by 2015, goes along with the increment of 40-45 percent of Internet users in Vietnam, the rate of Internet user purchasing item online is predicted to reach around USD 4 million. This is “a delicious pancake” for any companies who want to raise their revenue and expand their market.
Aim to foster the possibility of rising profit and growth of business, many companies are more and more interested in e-commerce and identify it take a critical role in strategy of most enterprises over the world. Therefore, none of business can ignore this idea if they want to exist and develop in future. However, the key point is how businessman to apply e-commerce effectively as well as suitable with model and strategy of company. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.2 Problematic of Research E-commerce in Vietnam, however, is still earlier market, not reach its full potential yet.
Some companies have been successful in building an online shopping channel or thriving in business by attracting more and more customers. While the other just pause at install and experiment a website, revenue from selling online is still low. In accordance to VECITA report, survey result in Vietnam in 2013, 41 percent of businesses only announce their increased through the e-commerce channel, 13 percent is decrease and 46 percent almost is unchanged. In framework of B2C e-commerce, no mention to software transaction, hardware and travel service, online shopping is still not widely and familiar with internet users.
Although, buying product or service through internet, customers have benefit due to opportunities of assessment of the global market and various choices from difference of e-retails, customers often do not trust on the vendors who supply product and services. Explain for this issue, Gefen and Straub (2003) believe that lack of human interaction or at least the belief that system has characteristics of social presence is the main reason. This is one of the major different between physical store and its electronic counterparty (Suki, 2007). Going to the physical store, customer can touch the real product and communicate directly with the seller.
Meanwhile, online shopping is impersonal, anonymous, and automated because computer controls it, in result consumer cannot feel human warmth, physical face-to-face contact and sociability (Gefen and Straub, 2003). In fact, most of e-commerce website space tends to display the product and exhibit little emotional or social appeal (Hassenein and Head, 2005). Hence, a challenge for businessperson is to indentify how to design and adopt online transaction to as close as traditional store and provides for a socially rich. Finding solution for this issue requires a deeply understanding attitude, intention, and behavior of customer.
This study investigates how social presence, which is one of factors enhance human warmth of e-commerce, through the web interface influence to consumer attitudes and purchase intention towards online shopping store. Numerous of prior researches (Gefen and Straub, 2003; Hassanein and Head, 2007, Shen, 2012) find out the impact of social presence on trust, TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 3 perceived usefulness and enjoyment as “a catalyst” to increase the positive attitude of online shopping customer. These studies also show the different results when analysis the impact of each factor in various character product and diverse cultural country (Hassanein and Head, 2005; Hassanein et al. However, these researches still do not examine the potential impact of social presence on purchase intention, which implies promise to one’s self to buy the product again whenever one makes next trip to the market (Hassanein et al., 2009; Tarig et al.
Besides that, in perspective of social cue design, little researches detect the influence of social media such as customer rating and customer recommendations. As such, this thesis supplements these social elements in the website interface to investigate their impact to attitude, and then explain to purchase intention of online customers in the end.3 Research Objectives This study is critically assessing the purchase intention of online buyer underlying the impact of perceived social presence in website interface. As discussion in section 1.2, although many empirically researches study about this matter, the widely implications and diversify of information system still motivate the expansion approach to discovery. In view of Vietnam market, this thesis aims: - To identify the effect of social presence on purchase intention through perceived usefulness, enjoyment, trust and customer’s attitude.
- To evaluate how the elements of social presence contribute to enhance purchase intention of online customers.4 Significance of Research This research is a review the theory related to social presence, particularly in the e- commercial website. Through testing the effect of perceived social presence on attitude and purchase intention, this study would be beneficial to businessperson to recognize which the element of social presence is the impact to the purchase decision of their customers.