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Workshop on E-Business

WEB 2016: Internetworked World pp 125–138Cite as

Effect of Instant Messenger Use on Purchase Decision of Consumers: The Role of Communication Quality and Content

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 296))

Abstract

The uncertainty brought by the separation of information flow and product flow has become an important obstacle to the development of e-commerce. An increasing number of e-commerce websites have chosen to adopt an instant messenger (e.g., Wangwang) in the website as a communication tool between buyers and sellers to reduce this uncertainty. Based on uncertainty reduction theory, the relationship between the use of an instant messenger and the purchase decision of consumers is explored. Logit regression models were used to analyze the secondary data collected from a seller on Taobao.com, and the following findings are determined: (1) Customers who use Wangwang tend to purchase, and the effect of Wangwang use on purchase decisions is stronger for consumers who are indirect visitors. (2) The more quickly and more frequently sellers reply to questions, the more likely customers are to make purchase decisions. (3) Communicating about contents related to product quality in the conversation is positively associated with the consumer’s purchase decision. (4) The negative effect of product fit-related contents to purchase decision will be mitigated if it is not the first conversation between consumers and sellers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Zhepeng Lu, Xiaoshan Wang & Jinghua Huang

Authors
  1. Zhepeng Lu
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  2. Xiaoshan Wang
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  3. Jinghua Huang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jinghua Huang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Ming Fan

  2. University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Jukka Heikkilä

  3. University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Hongxiu Li

  4. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA

    Michael J. Shaw

  5. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Han Zhang

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Lu, Z., Wang, X., Huang, J. (2017). Effect of Instant Messenger Use on Purchase Decision of Consumers: The Role of Communication Quality and Content. In: Fan, M., Heikkilä, J., Li, H., Shaw, M., Zhang, H. (eds) Internetworked World. WEB 2016. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 296. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69644-7_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69644-7_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69643-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69644-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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