Research on the Influencing Factors of Consumer Online Purchasing Behavior in B2C

: E-commerce has rapidly and vigorously developed to meet the various needs of modern consumers and retailers. However, there are significant differences between the e-commerce market and traditional physical markets, such as cultural and environmental differences, which result in significant differences in the purchasing behavior of online consumers compared to traditional consumers. Starting from the current research status in China, this article analyzes the behavior of consumers in the online retail industry, including their purchasing motivation and influencing factors, and proposes development strategies for the online retail industry.


Introduction
Consumers are the end users who obtain value from the process of possessing and using goods. With the improvement of living standards and the acceleration of life rhythm, consumers' shopping behavior has undergone significant changes, and time factor has become the most concerned issue for modern consumers. Therefore, saving consumers' time and energy is the best weapon for modern retail stores to attract consumers and create wealth. Improving shopping efficiency and convenience has also become one of the competitive strategies of modern retail industry.
E-commerce has catered to the demands of modern consumers and retailers, resulting in rapid and vigorous development. However, there are significant differences between the e-commerce market and traditional physical markets, such as cultural and environmental differences, which result in significant differences in the purchasing behavior of online consumers compared to traditional consumers. Online consumers refer to the group of consumers who engage in consumption and shopping activities in the ecommerce market through the internet. The significant changes in the purchasing behavior of online consumers in the e-commerce environment have forced online retailers to search for marketing strategies and tools suitable for online sales. The formulation of different online marketing strategies and the decision-making of online marketing tools should be based on the understanding and analysis of online consumer purchasing behavior, Otherwise, if traditional marketing strategies or tools are simply applied to online marketing, there may be significant deviations or mistakes in the decisions of online retailers The arrival of the era of network economy has led to rapid development of e-commerce. Among all consumers who shop online, more than half of them consume in online stores. As a new shopping model, online shopping has attracted the attention of online retailers and consumers. For the online retail industry, in order to profit from online sales, it is particularly important to grasp consumers' online shopping motivation and its influencing factors.

Types of Online Consumer Behavior
Online consumers can be divided into two categories: individual consumers and institutional buyers. This article focuses on individual consumers, who can be classified into the following types: Price oriented. This type of online consumer often considers products from an economic perspective and is very sensitive to the price of the product. With the emergence of online discount store and auction shops, similar goods on the Internet are relatively cheaper than those in traditional stores. This low price strategy has attracted many people who like to buy cheap goods to search for the goods they want online. At the same time, this characteristic of online consumption caters to the consumption psychology of many cautious shoppers who are accustomed to "shopping around".
Impulsive. This type of online consumer has a quick psychological response and is easily influenced by external product quality and advertising promotion. Nowadays, most internet users have a strong sense of time. Faced with too much information, consumers do not have the time and energy to choose the information they need rationally, leading to emotional behavior and strong impulsiveness in their purchasing behavior. If a consumer discovers a good game software online, they are likely to immediately generate purchasing motivation and make purchasing decisions due to impulse.
Be cautious and heavy. This type of online consumer has a higher proportion of rational motives in their purchasing behavior, with relatively fewer emotional factors. This is because the process of consumers searching for products online is itself a process of thinking, and they have enough time and great convenience to analyze the performance, quality, price, and appearance of the products, and then calmly make their own choices.
Habitual. This type of online consumer is often a loyal viewer of a certain site, who develop special trust and preferences for the store's website, icon advertising, products, etc., and habitually visit and generate buying motivation during the process of visiting.

Analysis of Consumers' Motivation to Purchase Online
Motivation refers to the internal role that triggers and maintains individual activities, and drives them towards a certain goal. The purchasing motivation of online consumers refers to certain internal driving forces that can generate purchasing behavior in online purchasing activities.
Motivation for Convenience.Traditional shopping involves a journey from home to the store, as well as a series of processes such as product selection, payment settlement, packaging, pick-up and delivery. Consumers must invest time and effort in purchasing goods, and at the same time, congested traffic and expanding storefronts have extended the time consumers spend shopping. Online stores are open 365 days and 24 hours a day, and the unique features of online payment or cash on delivery, door-to-door delivery, and other services bring consumers a lot of convenience. For consumers who pursue convenience and shopping time, online shopping is a great choice.
Realistic motivation.This is a purchasing motivation primarily aimed at emphasizing the actual use value of goods or services. When consumers purchase goods or services, they attach great importance to the actual utility, functional quality, and economy of the goods, while paying little attention to the appearance, color, trademark, packaging and decoration of the goods. When making a purchase, most people choose carefully and are not too influenced by advertising. Generally speaking, when consumers purchase basic necessities and daily necessities, their realistic motivation is more prominent, while when purchasing enjoyment materials, higher-level, and high-value consumer goods, their realistic motivation is not very prominent. In addition, it also depends on consumers' ability to spend and their values of consumption.
Motivation for seeking cheap .Due to the free feature of the Internet, the reduction of the circulation of goods sold online, and the emergence of online discount store and auction shops, similar goods on the Internet are relatively cheaper than those in traditional stores. This low price strategy has attracted many people who like to buy cheap goods to search for the goods they want online. At the same time, this characteristic of online consumption caters to the consumption psychology of many cautious shoppers who are accustomed to "shopping around".
Motivation for new.Currently, the majority of online consumers are young people, and 86% of them have received higher education above college level. They generally have strong analytical and judgment abilities, and can compare and select the most suitable and cost-effective product among numerous product information. Especially with the powerful information search function of the Internet, users can quickly obtain rich product information, expand their range of choices, and promote online shopping as a new shopping method. Consumers who pursue fashionable and novel lifestyles will be interested in trying this new shopping method, experiencing the freshness and excitement brought by the new shopping method during the shopping process, and thus showing off their behavior.
Motivation for reputation.This is a purchasing motivation characterized primarily by pursuing branded goods or admiring a traditional reputation. Consumers attach great importance to the trademark of their products and the brand name of their store, and like to purchase branded products. When purchasing, it is greatly influenced by the popularity and advertising of the product. Generally speaking, young people and people with higher income levels often have this purchasing motivation.
Motivation for seeking common ground.This is a purchasing motivation that seeks public recognition. Consumers mainly focus on popularization when purchasing goods, just keep up with the trend, have what they have, do not seek innovation, and do not fall behind, sometimes also known as herd motivation. When making a purchase, it is greatly influenced by the purchasing environment, others' experiences, and recommendations.

Factors Influencing Consumer Purchasing Behavior
Consumer behavior depends on their needs and desires, and people's needs and desires, as well as consumption habits and behaviors, are formed under the influence of many factors. According to the above e-commerce consumer behavior model, the factors that affect consumer behavior can be analyzed from environmental factors, personal factors, corporate factors, and stimulating factors. For consumers, when choosing e-commerce websites for shopping, the main factors that affect their behavior include the following:

Consumer personality traits
The behavior or purchasing decisions of online consumers are not only influenced by online culture, but also influenced by their personal characteristics factors such as gender, age stage, education level, economic income, personality, and proficiency in using the internet can all have a certain impact on this.

Gender
In traditional physical markets, there are significant differences in shopping behavior between men and women, which also occur in the e-commerce market. For example, male online consumers tend to have more rational elements when shopping, often making purchase decisions after careful consideration, while female online consumers have more emotional elements when shopping, often unconsciously placing them in shopping carts when browsing their favorite products. In addition, male online consumers have strong autonomy, and they often search for information about product prices, quality, performance, and other aspects on their own, and then make their own judgments; Female online consumers, on the other hand, are more dependent and tend to pay more attention to the opinions or evaluations of others when making shopping decisions.

Age stage
The main body of internet users is young people. Consumers in this age group are mentally active, curious, impulsive, and willing to express themselves. They not only like to pursue popular fashion, but also like to display unique personalities. These characteristics are manifested in the trend of polarization between fashionable and personalized consumption in consumer behavior. Therefore, some fashionable or personalized products in the e-commerce market are more popular among consumers.

Impact of education level and economic income
Because there is a positive correlation between education level and economic income level, the impact of these two factors on online consumer behavior is discussed together. Statistical data shows that the majority of internet users have received higher education, with an average income level slightly higher than the total population. So how does the education level and income level of online consumers affect their consumption behavior? Because the higher the education level of online consumers, the lower the difficulty in understanding and mastering internet knowledge, and the easier they are to accept the concepts and methods of online shopping. The more educated they are, the higher the frequency of online shopping.

Proficiency in using the Internet
The familiarity or proficiency of online consumers with the internet can also affect their behavior. For the sake of convenience, this analysis will only be conducted from the perspective of the weekly online time of online consumers. When consumers first come into contact with the internet, their understanding of the internet is still at a relatively low level and they are not very proficient in operating applications. At this time, consumers are full of interest and curiosity about the internet, and their behavior is mainly through experiments and learning to strive to understand and master more internet knowledge. However, due to the high level of fear towards the internet, the rate of online shopping behavior is relatively low. As consumers spend more time online every week, they become more familiar with the internet and proficient in operating applications. Their fear of the internet has gradually been offset, and at this time, consumers see the internet as a daily thing and begin to engage in various online shopping activities. Subsequently, the behavior of online consumers began to diverge: some consumers gradually reduced their weekly online time to a fixed level due to the fading novelty and mystery at the beginning, and only went online when necessary, forming fixed browsing websites and consumption habits. Another group of consumers still spend a lot of time on the internet. They view cyberspace as a substitute for the real world, learning, communicating, shopping, entertainment on the internet because they believe that they can find more fun and convenience online.

Design of store interface
Traditional physical stores can showcase their unique image through facade decoration, thereby attracting consumers' patronage. For online retail stores, due to the lack of physical buildings, their existence, like cyberspace, is actually just a virtual and imagined concept. Its manifestation in reality is the World Wide Web page displayed on the computer terminal of online consumers. Web pages are the medium through which online retail stores exchange information and perform various interactive activities with online consumers, Therefore, it is called the interface of online retail stores. From this, it can be seen that the quality of the interface design of online retail stores will have a significant impact on the first impression of online consumers. It is difficult to imagine that an e-commerce website with chaotic and uncoordinated interface design will attract the attention of online consumers and enter browsing and shopping. Web design should not only reflect corporate culture and business philosophy, but also meet the needs of visitors, designing a reasonable, effective, and good web interface.

Corporate image and services
Corporate image is the overall image of a company that is recognized by consumers and the public through external characteristics and operational strength. The visibility, reputation, and credibility of a company are the assets of a traditional marketing model. In the e-commerce model, corporate image also has a significant impact on consumer behavior. Due to the inability of consumers to judge the quality of products and services through perception, they tend to purchase branded products from traditional enterprises. In the eyes of consumers, enterprises with a good corporate image will inevitably have more guarantees for product quality, credit system, distribution system, and after-sales service. In addition, the service awareness and service methods of enterprises will also affect consumer purchasing behavior.

The impact of product display
Traditional stores can achieve the goal of displaying products and attracting consumers to purchase through different ways of product display, but in the virtual online space, there is no concept of store shelves. Instead, they are replaced by web pages, product classification catalogs, and in store product search engines. The listed items are no longer physical entities of the products, but descriptions, images, and more about the products, This will inevitably also affect the behavior of online consumers.

Safety and reliability
The main obstacles currently affecting online shopping are security and reliability. For current online marketing, the most important issue ultimately lies in security. The security and reliability of the network refer to the security of data access, communication, personal privacy, operational permissions, and the ability to work normally in unexpected situations. At present, the security of most websites is poor, and users are afraid to use credit cards for payment, fearing that their accounts and passwords will be stolen. In addition, unlike traditional marketing shopping, online shopping generally requires payment before delivery, which determines the importance of online shopping security and reliability.

Convenience of shopping
Convenient shopping methods are one of the important factors that consumers consider when shopping. The convenience of consumers choosing online shopping is mainly reflected in the following two aspects: first, the convenience of time. Online virtual markets can provide 24hour sales services without any restrictions, and consumers can choose to shop online at any time. The second is the convenience of product selection range. Consumers can choose products from the widest range through the internet without leaving their homes.

Enlightenment of Research on Online Consumer Behavior for Online Retailers
Studying consumer needs and grasping the characteristics of consumer behavior are fundamental to the survival and development of enterprises. By studying the behavioral characteristics of online consumers, we can provide some methods and ideas for improving online sales in the online retail industry, especially paying attention to the following aspects:

Establishing a consumer database
Online retailers establish their own information feedback system to collect consumers' registered names, occupations, preferences, emails, and other information, forming a consumer database. Through the understanding and grasp of these data, marketers can have a clear and comprehensive understanding of each consumer's relevant information, such as purchasing habits, product preferences, etc. On this basis, enterprise marketers can obtain detailed information about individual customers, achieve thorough refinement of the target market, and strengthen marketing activities. Marketing personnel can get the information of a single customer, target the marketing mix more accurately at customers with narrow interests, realize one-on-one marketing and personalized marketing based on the database, meet the personalized needs of customers, improve the customer share of the enterprise, and effectively manage customer relations.

Increase the attractiveness of online shopping
For online retail stores, in addition to considering attracting consumers to shop, we also need to strengthen and highlight our own characteristics, making consumers feel that we are unique. For example, the website design of online stores should highlight their own website characteristics and have a distinct theme; Reflect our unique side in the website structure and background, reflecting the corporate culture and business philosophy of our website; In terms of information, it is necessary to be rich, interesting, and able to update in a timely manner. This can attract customers to browse and stay, making consumers feel the uniqueness of our website.

Improve technology to ensure customer information security
Consumer information security is the most concerning issue for consumers. Online stores should protect customers' privacy from a technical perspective, in order to safeguard their interests and enhance their reputation. At the same time, in the online retail industry, it is also necessary to coordinate with banks to ensure the security and reliability of online payments, so that consumers can confidently use bank cards to make payments online. This can improve consumer shopping efficiency and highlight the advantages of online shopping.

Flexible use of product pricing strategies
The basic basis for online store commodity pricing is commodity cost, and low cost is an important factor for online stores to have Lebensraum, which should be fully considered when pricing. At present, there are four main pricing methods for online store products: buy it all, auction (bidding), bargaining, and collective bargaining. They can adopt combination pricing, phased pricing, small profit and quick sales, and discount pricing, as well as psychological strategies. They use techniques such as equal price sales, split pricing, low price security pricing, and customer choice pricing (DIY), but should adhere to the principles of stability, targeting, and profitability in online pricing, And carefully consider price discounts and the seller's credit.

Choose products and services that are suitable for online sales characteristics
Choosing products and services that meet the characteristics of online sales is the first and most crucial step in achieving success in online sales. The online retail industry should provide consumers with products that are suitable for their needs based on the traditional retail model. When conducting online retail, the first consideration for enterprises is whether the products they sell are suitable for online sales. Some products are unable to conduct online retail due to their low value and distance from the target market; Some products are easily purchased by consumers who are closer to their homes, and these products are difficult to achieve online retail. Currently, online consumers mostly purchase products related to books, magazines, audiovisual products, and computers. Therefore, online retail enterprises should carry out online retail business to meet the needs of consumers. So, the development of online retail industry is to meet the needs of these customers. At the same time, online shopping also presents diversified and personalized characteristics. In terms of product strategy, online retail industry can meet customer needs through product combinations, customized products with customers, and other methods. The online retail industry should not blindly pursue "large and comprehensive", but should try to improve the targeted nature of its products, so that the products it sells can meet customer needs and be sold online.

Improve after-sales service
The after-sales service of online stores is also important, which is also an important means to enhance the reputation of online stores. Online stores should have a sound after-sales service system, such as setting up a free consultation and complaint hotline for consumers to call, designing a consumer forum on the internet, allowing consumers to raise product related questions or questions online, and providing timely responses and handling of consumer issues. Try to make customers feel satisfied, inform them of the latest product information of the company, send blessings during holidays, etc., make them feel respected by the company, and thereby increase consumers' liking for the company and its products. These all help consumers form positive and positive post purchase behavior. On the one hand, they can encourage repeat purchases, and on the other hand, they can expand the influence of online stores through verbal communication among consumers.

Conclusion
Compared with traditional retail, consumers in online retail have unique consumption patterns and characteristics. Whether it is the traditional offline sales model or the online sales model, for distributors in the online retail industry, consumer behavior is both complex and important. Only by mastering the shopping behavior characteristics of consumers at different stages and responding positively and accurately to these characteristics can one find the right direction for their own development and win in fierce competition. In short, there have been significant changes in consumer behavior in the e-commerce market, including cultural changes, personal factors, and the transformation of retail stores. The development of e-commerce is still in its growth stage, and these impacts are not yet very obvious; But as e-commerce continues to deepen and develop, the impact of these factors will become increasingly prominent, and it is believed that more and more e-commerce theory researchers and practical applications will pay attention to this issue.