The Development and Status of Automobile E-Commerce in China

Abstract

Although the hype surrounding the promise of electronic commerce seems all pervasive currently, there is an absence of research on automobile eCommerce, especially in developing countries, which covers wide-ranging issues beyond contextual imperatives. This paper tries to fill in the gap, by analyzing the impacts of eCommerce on automobile industry in China, and the factors of eCommerce adoption and development of automobile industry in China from internal, external and contextual perspectives, after describing the internet and ecommerce in china. From the situation of automobile ecommerce in China, the paper finds that the automobile industry in China, especially automobile sales, remains only superficially affected by the ecommerce. This is a big difference from the developed countries such as U.S. The paper also displays the important aspects to the development of automobile ecommerce in China such as infrastructure, role of the central government, serving the customer better, security, customer trust, delivery, and so on.

Individual consumers' trust in B2C automobile e‐commerce in Tanzania: Assessment of the influence of web design and consumer personality

“…The findings on the basis of regression analysis, indicated a positive and significance influence of both website design and personality characteristics on trust building towards automobile B2C e‐commerce. The study's findings are in line with Gan and Liu () study conducted in China, which revealed that one reason why Chinese‐based automobile sites, in general, might attract only 2% of sales was, very often, because of their poor design and user‐unfriendliness of websites.…”

“…According to Gan and Liu (), system assurance of a car web vendor is a unique determinant of consumer trust and has the strongest influence on consumer trust among all the antecedents of trust across countries. For example, Gan and Liu () asserts that one reason why automobile sites in China, might attract only 2% of sales is, very often, due to their poor design and user‐unfriendliness compared with books, CDs, and PC sites, without photo and additional product information; and generally non‐existent easy‐access hotlines. The study on automotive online sales conducted by the Capgemini Consulting () in China, Germany, and the United States, found that one of the reasons mentioned by 41% of respondents is that customers tend to avoid sales pressure at the dealerships.…”

“…Consumers would want to be guaranteed that an electronically sold product such as a car is free from vulnerability or risks, if any, or at least minimized. In order to reduce the barriers and encourage automobile consumers to conduct transactions online, car vendors must make efforts to minimize consumers' risk perception with online purchase, including provision of accurate product information through well‐designed automobile sites (Gan & Liu, ; Capgemini Consulting, ).…”