ریسک های ادراک شده و نیازهای مشتری از نظر قابلیت دسترسی جغرافیایی در تجارت الکترونیک

Customer needs of geographical accessibility still plays an important role in electronic commerce, though the extent to which it does so varies according to the characteristics of products, services and the market strategies of firms. In this study, factors affecting customer needs of geographical accessibility and their structural relationships were investigated through a customer survey and statistical analysis using the methods of confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The result shows that the three independent factors, unease of delivery, complexity of services, and trust and reliability affect significantly customer needs of geographical accessibility, with perceived risks of distant orders being a mediating factor in the relationship.

Recently, electronic commerce and new technologies have changed customer perceptions concerning geographical accessibility to service providers, thereby expanding the reach of market areas. With many intangible products such as online games, software, education, music, and videos, geographical distance no longer works as a barrier to making transactions. Moreover, successful transactions are even being made for some tangible products in markets that have a broad geographical scope. The reason for this is the fact that many service processes for intangible products can be substituted efficiently by digital technology applications, and sometimes, electronic commerce can provide greater convenience even in transactions involving tangible products. However, in many other cases, overcoming the barriers of distance and expanding the geographical market scope in electronic commerce, largely depends on the characteristics of products/services and the market strategies of individual firms. Some customers may prefer to have face-to-face interaction with accessible physical location when conducting transactions, thereby retaining service quality and diminishing the perceived risks of long-distance orders. This requirement is more apparent in markets populated by small and medium sized electronic commerce companies and in the case of new start-up companies in the process of launching new businesses in electronic commerce. This study does not attempt to deny the contribution made by electronic commerce to overcoming the barriers formed by distance in relation to several successful products or industries. It does however propose the adoption of a new framework to analyze the influence of geographical accessibility in electronic commerce, in order to provide strategic insights into the geographical scope of markets and operational issues for firms that are planning to launch new businesses. The concept of geographical accessibility is a critical factor in operational strategies and distribution network design (Mols 1999), and is related to the determination of how geographical market scope affects diverse marketing strategies in electronic commerce. On these grounds, the concept and its influences merit serious study. In this research, several factors are identified and their relationships with customer needs of geographical accessibility are investigated. Three independent factors such as unease of delivery, complexity of services, and trust and reliability, and an additional mediating factor of perceived risks of distant orders have been adopted following a review of previous studies, and their relationships with customer needs of geographical accessibility were tested. The methodology used for this study involved conducting a questionnaire survey to collect data, which was then analyzed using two statistical methods, ‘confirmatory factor analysis’ and ‘structural equation modeling’. The paper is organized into five sections. The first section is the introduction. The second section explains selected factors critical to our understanding of customer needs of geographical accessibility based on a review of existing literature and current case studies, and the process of developing the hypotheses is addressed. The third section describes the data and methods used in the analysis. The fourth section reports the results of tests of the research model and relationships between constructs adopted by a review of previous studies. In fifth section, the overall results are summarized and implications for the management of electronic commerce are discussed. Concluding remarks and future research subjects are provided in the sixth section.

The concept of customer needs of geographical accessibility are directly related to operations and marketing strategies in electronic commerce. Its application could be able to not only assist in resolving management issues, but also increase our understanding of the use of economic space. Therefore, the results of this study can contribute to expanding relevant knowledge for academics in the areas of electronic commerce, operations management and economic geography as well as practitioners in industry. However, there are also some limitations and future challenges associated with this study. First, it was conducted through a horizontal approach bounded by the period of survey. Therefore, changes and improvements in customer needs of geographical accessibility brought about by the application of new technology were not traced. In many service industries, the characteristics of intangibility can cause new technologies to bring about rapid changes in electronic commerce environment. This suggests the need for further longitudinal research investigating the influence of technology and change in the business environment. Second, diverse market strategies including among others advertising, guarantee of services, and reputation building by firms can improve customer needs of geographical accessibility even in identical market environment. Therefore, studies of the relationship between detailed market strategies and their impacts on customer needs of geographical accessibility could contribute to expanding knowledge for practitioners concerning the selection of an effective strategy. Third, this study is not entirely free of common methodological biases which inflate the strengths of the relationships among constructs due to the facts that a single questionnaire was used to measure all constructs. Evaluating objectivity through a cross-survey design that measures multiple constructs from different respondents would contribute to improving the problem of such biases in future research. Forth, the analysis in this study also included respondents’ repeated answers on different items to investigate subtle differences in the effects of the characteristics of different products or services. The survey methodology was designed to collect respondents’ answers on a diverse range of products or services in a current stage where many customers’ purchasing experiences are limited to several popular items such as books, computers, or clothes. However, it could partially cause a methodological bias too, although the researcher’s intentions were completely concealed from respondents and explanations on the characteristics of items were thoroughly avoided so as to reduce the risk of methodological biases inherent in this approach. Therefore, a survey design to collect answers from different respondents for different product or service items could improve the problem of methodological biases in future research, if customers who experienced purchasing diverse products or services exist. Fifth, the result of this study is based on an analysis of a limited number of samples from three strategically selected customer groups in provincial regions in South Korea. The number of samples was decided on consideration of the application of maximum likelihood estimation in structural equation modeling, and the sampling strategy was adopted to reflect the unique characteristics of the research subject. However, larger samples from diverse regions and countries generally can produce more stable results and conclusions that are more likely to be replicable and in turn contribute to building a more robust theory. Therefore, future studies on related subjects for different customers, countries, and environments are encouraged to strengthen the model of this study.