Keywords: e-commerce; Consumer psychology; Modern enterprise
Source: Business Research 2004/ 1 1
Author: Li Zhongyan
E-commerce has the characteristics of openness, globality, low cost and high efficiency of the Internet, and has been widely used in various industries. According to the report of the World Trade Organization, Internet-based trade will double every year, and it is predicted that by 2003, it will reach 2% of the total trade of industrialized countries. Due to the unlimited scenes of online "money", many modern enterprises regard the development of e-commerce model between enterprises and consumers as a new business model with great potential. Consumer psychology and consumer behavior are the starting point and basis for enterprises to formulate business strategies, especially marketing strategies. Facing the special consumption form of e-commerce, consumers' consumption psychology and behavior are more complex and subtle, which directly affects the operation effect and development space of e-commerce. In-depth study of consumer psychology and consumer behavior is of great significance to further expand e-commerce.
First, the changing trend and characteristics of consumer psychology in e-commerce
The fundamental reason of marketing reform lies in consumers. With the transformation of the market from seller monopoly to buyer monopoly, the era of consumer-led has arrived. Faced with more abundant commodity choices, consumer psychology presents new characteristics and development trends compared with the past, which is more prominent in e-commerce.
(A) the pursuit of cultural taste of consumer psychology
The formation of consumption motivation is subject to certain cultural and social traditions, and people with different cultural backgrounds choose different lifestyles and products. In the book Megatrends in 2000, John Nasbit, a famous American futurist, and his wife believed that people would use IKEA furniture in Sweden, eat McDonald's, hamburgers and sushi in Japan, drink Italian cappuccino in the United States, wear Benetton, listen to rock music in Britain and America, and drive modern cars in South Korea. Although these descriptions may not be understood and accepted by everyone for a while, there is no doubt that in the Internet age, cultural globalization and locality coexist, cultural diversity brings a strong fusion of consumer tastes, and people's consumption concepts are strongly impacted, especially young people's motivation to buy cultural-oriented products is very strong, and e-commerce can just meet this demand.
(B) the pursuit of personalized consumer psychology
With the development of consumer goods market today, most products are extremely rich in quantity and quality, and consumers can choose and buy goods or services according to their own psychological wishes. Modern consumers are often imaginative, eager for change, fond of innovation and curious, and put forward higher requirements for personalized consumption. What they choose is not only the practical value of the goods, but also the distinctive value that fully reflects their own value, which has become the primary standard of their consumption. It can be seen that personalized consumption has become the mainstream of modern consumption.
(C) the pursuit of autonomy, independent consumer psychology
Under the trend of increasingly subdivision and specialization of social division of labor, consumers' risk awareness increases with the increase of choices, and they are tired and distrustful of traditional single "cramming" and "viral" marketing. Especially in the purchase of large durable consumer goods, consumers often take the initiative to obtain information related to commodities through various possible channels and analyze and compare them. They can gain psychological balance, reduce their sense of risk, and enhance their trust and psychological satisfaction with products.
(D) the pursuit of self-expression of consumer psychology
Online shopping is a positive action based on personal consumption intention, which generally means spending more time browsing, comparing and choosing in online virtual stores. The unique shopping environment and the purchase method completely different from the traditional transaction process will cause consumers' curiosity, detachment and personal emotional changes. In this way, consumers can completely challenge the merchants according to their own wishes, take themselves as the center, act according to their own ideas, and fully express themselves in consumption.
(E) the pursuit of convenient and fast consumer psychology.
For modern people who cherish time as gold, shopping is more important to be instant, convenient and handy. The traditional commodity selection process is as short as a few minutes and as long as several hours. Coupled with the round-trip time, it consumes a lot of time and energy of consumers, and online shopping makes up for this defect. According to the survey data of Statistical Report on the Development of Internet in China released by China Internet Network Information Center in 20001year, the number of online shoppers based on saving time accounts for 49.29% of the total number of online consumers.
(6) Pursuing consumer psychology and avoiding interference.
Modern consumers pay more attention to the satisfaction of high-level needs such as spiritual pleasure, personality realization and emotional satisfaction. They hope to watch and choose at will in shopping, keep their mental state relaxed and free, and get the satisfaction of self-esteem to the greatest extent. However, in store-style shopping, the sales services provided by merchants often interfere with and hinder consumers, and sometimes over-enthusiastic services even scare away consumers.
(seven) the pursuit of cheap consumer psychology.
Even if marketers tend to use other marketing differences to reduce consumers' sensitivity to price, price is always the most sensitive factor for consumers. Compared with traditional stores, online stores can make consumers understand goods more directly and intuitively, and they can choose carefully and shop around. In view of this kind of psychology of consumers, e-commerce network (www. Toecom。 Com) took the lead in opening a "special sale and hot sale" column in China, summarizing more than 30 hot sale information of well-known websites such as Sina, 8848, online hunting, Owning and Cool Bide. As long as consumers enter the "special sale" column of e-commerce network, they can easily obtain the information and prices of various hot-selling products, and then quickly enter the websites that consumers think are suitable through links to complete shopping activities. This kind of online shopping satisfies consumers' psychology of pursuing high quality and low price.
(eight) the pursuit of fashion consumption psychology
New things are constantly emerging in modern society. Driven by this trend, consumer psychology is not stable and keeps pace with society in the speed of psychological change. In terms of consumption behavior, it is manifested in the need to know and buy the latest goods in time, and the product life cycle is constantly shortened. The continuous shortening of product life cycle will in turn accelerate the psychological change of consumers. Traditional shopping methods can no longer meet this psychological demand.
Second, the psychological factors restricting the development of e-commerce analysis
Although online shopping has many advantages such as convenient form, fast information and time saving, consumers are still worried about online consumption to a certain extent, which makes them stay away from this new shopping method and seriously restricts the development of e-commerce. These psychological factors are mainly manifested in the following aspects.
(A) the shackles of traditional shopping concepts
For a long time, the traditional shopping habit of "seeing, touching and listening" formed by consumers has been bound to the Internet. Online consumption can't satisfy some specific psychology of consumers, and online shopping can't satisfy consumers' personal social motives.
(B) psychological dissatisfaction with price expectations.
According to statistics, consumers expect online goods to be 20%-30% cheaper than shopping malls. At present, online goods are only 4%- 10% cheaper than shopping malls, and consumers enjoy limited price concessions. In addition, due to the long-term monopoly of the telecommunications industry, China's telecommunications fees and network usage fees are relatively high, and high transactions make consumers unable to access online shopping.
Personal privacy is threatened.
With the development of e-commerce, businesses should not only grab existing customers, but also tap potential customers. However, the existing technology cannot guarantee the security and confidentiality of online shopping. Privacy cannot be guaranteed, which makes many consumers reluctant to participate in online shopping.
(d) Lack of trust in online payment mechanisms
At present, e-commerce lacks effective online payment means and credit system. In the process of payment, consumers' personal data and credit card passwords may be stolen, and sometimes they will encounter false orders, but they are asked to pay or refund the payment without placing an order, which makes consumers daunting.
(e) The virtual shopping environment lacks security.
In the environment of e-commerce, all enterprises appear on the Internet in the form of websites and virtual environments, and online stores are easy to establish and cheat, which makes consumers suspicious. Besides, the Internet is an open and free system. At present, it still lacks appropriate laws and other normative means. If there is a network dispute, consumers' rights and interests cannot be fully protected.
(6) Inefficient distribution is not guaranteed.
At present, China still lacks an efficient and mature socialized distribution system, with long commodity distribution cycle, high cost and low accuracy. China's warehouse turnover rate is only 30% of that of developed countries, and the error rate is almost three times that of developed countries. The inefficient logistics distribution system is far from the actual requirements of customers, which affects the development of e-commerce.
Third, modern enterprises in e-commerce coping strategies
The special psychology of consumers in e-commerce has brought new challenges to the business philosophy of enterprises. Merchants must get rid of the limitations of traditional business thinking, make a breakthrough in marketing strategies, methods and means, and establish a set of operating mechanisms suitable for e-commerce.
(A) product customization
Modern consumers generally seek novelty, beauty and novelty for commodities, and are eager for personalized consumption. When modern enterprises carry out online marketing, they should give full play to the advantages of the Internet, divide different target markets according to the different characteristics of consumers, meet the individual needs of consumers, and provide customized services. The B2B2C global customization model initiated by Haier in China can produce personalized products according to the different consumption characteristics of different countries and regions. At present, more than 9000 basic models and more than 20000 functional modules can be provided for consumers to choose from. In the words of Zhang Ruimin, CEO of Haier, "If you want a triangular refrigerator, we can also meet your needs". In just one month, Haier has obtained more than 1 10,000 customized refrigerator orders, which indicates that the era of product customization has arrived.
Price flexibility
Only by realizing price concessions and making prices public can online customers try online shopping and make purchase decisions. With the weakening of market monopoly, the price monopoly has been broken, which requires enterprises to strengthen flexibility and establish a flexible price system when choosing pricing strategies. First, the automatic price adjustment system, that is, flexible price adjustment according to factors such as seasons, changes in market demand, and prices of similar commodities; The second is the intelligent bargaining system, where consumers can negotiate prices directly with merchants online.
(C) Interactive marketing
The most striking feature that distinguishes e-commerce from traditional marketing is the interaction of the network, which satisfies the psychology of consumers' independent shopping. Interactive marketing on the internet should at least do two things: first, feedback consumers' information needs immediately. If you don't get a reply within a few minutes, the merchant may lose this customer. Second, after customers read online information, enterprises must provide feedback information in time in order to establish contact with them. But also allows customers to choose the information they are interested in and modify the content on it.
Socialization of distribution
For enterprises, online marketing must ensure that goods are delivered to consumers from the nearest distribution network in the shortest time, which must be completed by modern logistics distribution system. Haier, for example, has built a modern logistics system with order information flow as the core and global supply chain resource network, global user resource network and computer information network as the support. Haier now only needs 10 days to complete the customized order, while the average enterprise needs at least 36 days. Haier has built 42 distribution centers in China, which can deliver more than 50,000 customized products to 1550 Haier specialty stores and more than 9,000 marketing points every day. It will be delivered in 8 hours in the central city, 24 hours in the radiation area and 4 days in the whole country.
(E) Humanized service
The focus of online mall management is not to attract people, but how to tap people who want to buy online, which requires enterprises to provide humanized services. Such as warmly greeting every online customer; Provide good product suggestions in time; Create a 24 ×7 service model (serving customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week); Pay attention to cultivating customers' sense of security and trust; Establish an online community in a hidden way and establish emotional ties within the community.
(6) Transaction security
It is the common psychology of online consumers to be wary of virtual shopping environment. Most of them have encountered problems such as information, product quality, after-sales service and unreliable manufacturer credit. Establishing a good corporate image and brand image and winning customers' trust through good reputation are the fundamental measures to meet the safety needs of consumers and the premise and foundation for the success of e-commerce; In addition, it is also necessary to establish a sound credit mechanism, provide a fair and standardized legal environment, build a superior technical platform and improve the corresponding network supporting system.
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