Key Determinants of Consumer Acceptance of Virtual Stores: Some Empirical Evidence

One of the most significant phenomena of e-commerce is the emergence of a new form of business—the virtual store. Virtual stores provide great efficiency in the retail value chain and their existence has paved the way for the diffusion of electronic commerce. Understanding the determinants of consumer acceptance, virtual stores will provide important theoretical contributions to the area of business-to-consumer (B-to-C) electronic commerce and lead to the development of more effective and meaningful strategies for virtual stores. This chapter presents a study of 253 online consumers. The study resulted in a theoretical model that explains a large portion of the factors that lead to a user’s intention to use and actual use of a virtual store. In addition to providing new theoretical grounds for studying the virtual store phenomena, this chapter also supplies virtual stores with a number of operative critical success factors to remain competitive in the volatile electronic marketplace. These success factors, namely, product offerings, information richness, usability of storefront, perceived trust and perceived service quality, are discussed in detail in the chapter. This chapter appears in the book, Intelligent Enterprises of the 21st Century, edited by Jatinder Gupta and Sushil Sharma. Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Suite 200, Hershey PA 17033-1240, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING