عوامل موثر بر نیازهای مشتری از نظر قابلیت دسترسی جغرافیایی در تجارت الکترونیک

Although, it is generally asserted that electronic commerce (EC) can overcome barriers of distance and lead to the dramatic expansion of markets relative to traditional brick and mortar companies, customer needs of geographical accessibility varies according to characteristics of product, service processes and other relevant factors. In this study, we developed six factors affecting customer needs of geographical accessibility in EC: degree of product tangibility, product standardization, on-line interaction and customization, off-line interaction and customization, price level, and firm reputation. Data for analyses were collected through customer surveys and statistically analyzed through exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis.

The need for geographical accessibility between service provider and customer is a basic characteristic of traditional service industries resulting from the need for face-to-face contact in transactions. However, electronic commerce (EC) and new technologies have changed the concept of geographical accessibility by expanding the reach of market areas. More specifically, many service industries such as retailing, tourism, education, consulting services, and financial services have the opportunity to expand the reach of market areas from the EC environment due to the unique characteristics of ‘intangibility’ in services. In such transactions, many of the service processes can be substituted efficiently by EC applications, increasing customer convenience. However, overcoming the barriers of distance from using EC will be largely dependent on the characteristics of product, service processes, and other relevant factors such as price level and firm reputation. Closely related to these characteristics, customers can prefer services delivered from an accessible point arising from the need for face-to-face interactions, maintenance of service quality, and avoidance of perceived risk in delivery. Thereby focusing on customer needs of geographical accessibility in EC, this study aims to contribute to the understanding of the effects of EC on service industries. Meeting customer needs of geographical accessibility is a critical factor in establishing EC operation strategies for customer contact and service delivery [1], customer support and logistics [6], and distribution channel strategies and network design [16]. In this study, we developed six factors affecting customer needs of geographical accessibility. In this study, a written survey was conducted on customer groups to measure their perceptions on the characteristics of product, service processes, and other independent factors such as price level and firm reputation as well as customer needs of geographical accessibility as a dependent variable. Collected data were analyzed with the application of statistical methods – exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis. This paper is organized into five sections. The first section presents the introduction. The second section provides an overview of the representative characteristics of product, service processes and other relevant factors. In addition, the concept of customer needs of geographical accessibility is introduced in this section. In the third section, a description of the data and methods used in the analysis are presented, and the resulting factors identified by statistical analysis are reported. Also, the results of the analysis on the relationships between the selected independent factors and customer needs of geographical accessibility are explained in this section. In the fourth section, the overall results are summarized and implications of this research are discussed. And lastly, concluding remarks are provided in the fifth section.

Although EC can overcome barriers of distance and lead to the dramatic expansion of markets relative to the traditional brick and mortar companies, customer need of geographical accessibility varies according to the characteristics of product, service processes, and other factors such as price level and firm’s reputation. As such, customer needs of geographical accessibility are a critical factor in building EC operations strategies. We developed six factors from the review on previous literature and verified that the factors have a significant effect on customer needs of geographical accessibility. The results of our study will contribute to greater understanding of EC operations for academics and practitioners alike. However, there are also challenges for future research due to the limitations in our study. First, a limitation of the research design is the possibility of common method biases. This study used a single questionnaire to measure all constructs, which will inflate the strengths of the relationships among constructs. Therefore, further research in the future need to try to improve the measures’ objectivity through a new research design. For example, a cross-survey design that measures multiple constructs from different respondents could be adoptable for this purpose. Second, this study did not provide the taxonomy of product/service processes concerning customer needs of geographical accessibility, focusing on the relationships between factors. However, empirical taxonomy on product/service processes can give greater understanding and discriminating insights to academics and executives on the characteristics of transaction concerning customer needs of geographical accessibility. Therefore, the research on the taxonomy of diverse transactions, which reflect the characteristics of customer needs of geographical accessibility in EC, will be required in the future. Third, this study focused on customer perceptions based on the survey on customer groups. However, although we tried to measure a customer’s real purchasing behavior in the survey, by instructing respondents to answer based on real purchasing experiences to a specific product or service, the customer needs of geographical accessibility investigated in this study need to be confirmed with the relationship with customer purchasing behaviors or with the geographical distribution of customers in a specific EC firm. Fourth, customer needs of geographical accessibility are related to EC operations strategies such as facility location, distribution network design, and scope of target market. Therefore, the effect on EC operations needs to be investigated through an empirical study. Fifth, as mentioned above, EC environment changes with the improvements of infrastructure, technologies, and customer adoption, and customer perception to geographical accessibility vary with the changes of the EC environment. Therefore, longitudinal studies will be required for greater understanding of the overall impact of EC on the service industry. Sixth, additional critical factors frequently adopted in previous studies on EC were the dimensions of firm market strategies and customer adoption. These factors may still be critical in assessing customer needs of geographical accessibility. However, this study excluded these factors to exclusively focus on the targeting dimensions. Therefore, further research on the development of survey equipment for these additional factors and their impact on customer needs of geographical accessibility will also be required.