Comprehensive Evaluation on the Influence of Retailer’s Characteristics on Online Purchasing Intention – a Thematic Review

The way of transact between buyer and seller has been changed due to the development of Internet and socio economic activities. The interest of touring a bodily shop has been changed with the aid of on line purchasing and outlets can now effortlessly reach international markets from their local base, without the want for outlet space and warehousing. This makes market price penetrated. The vendor performs an essential role in online purchasing. This evaluation focuses on retailer’s characteristics, which influence online purchasing. The assessment will lay the foundation to perceive the gap, as well as its scope for further research. Thematic analytical approach was conducted to evaluate this study. The evaluation employs forty-three (n=43) leading and peer-reviewed conferences and indexed journals between year 2010 and 2015. Ten (n=10) sub themes were identified from the investigated variables based on their working definitions. Moderating abilities of the product and price need to be explored, though they are critical factors of online purchasing. In the context of online shopping need to explore different product category separately, since virtual products and real product doesn’t work together. Further studies need to focus more on retailer’ characteristics and their antecedents, which are not clear. Future research should explore a wider range of variables with a comprehensive integrated model.


Introduction
With the high growth rate of internet services, online socio-economic activities have changed the way people transact. As a result, the act of visiting a physical store has been replaced by online shopping, especially in developed countries (Abiodun 2013). According to Rainer and Turban (2002) cited in Alfina et al. (2014), Ecommerce is defined as a transaction between two parties, the exchange of goods, services, or information, using the web service. Online shopping is popular in society because it has several advantages over traditional shopping (Alam & Yasin 2010). Accordingly, the benefit of buyer, seller and society can be identified. The buyer can enjoy the global reach of the transactions, an extensive product and service selection, the flexibility of shopping anywhere at any time ( Because of numerous issues of uncertainty, (Zhang et al. 2010), many online shoppers use the Internet only to search for product information, but do not make the purchase online (Kim & Forsythe 2010). According to Chen et al. (2015), though online shopping is convenient and flexible, consumers often feel doubtful about the possible risks and benefits.
That is happening due to difficulty in recognizing the other party engages with online in client server architecture (Alfina et al. 2014) In essence, the consumers' behavior in online purchasing is very complex and personal (Chen et al. 2015). Further, factors causes to online shopping intention is still a matter, even the results from researches are loose, fragmented and disintegrated (Sahney et al. 2013). Hence the introduction of a comprehensive integrated model is a major requirement. Abu-shamaa & Abu-Shanab (2015) argue that the online purchasing intention is affected by both technology and sociocultural factors, according to previous studies.
Accordingly, the attitudes and behaviors of consumers need to be examined and reexamined in the future (Cho & Sagynov 2015). Though E-commerce has many opportunities, it also has various challenges ( Consumer, retailer, website and macro environmental factors are the major components that impact the consumer's online purchase intention (Cheung et al., 2003). Of these, the retailer characteristics have an important role. According to Nazir et al. (2012), Chen & Chen (2011), the retailer should offer a superior consumer service to attract the online consumer.

Research Problem
But, what factors lead a consumer to shop online is a matter that has suggested a lot of interest, although the results from research are loose, fragmented and disintegrated (Sahney et al., 2013) since consumer decisions are personal, and often very complex behaviors (Chen et al., 2015). Further comprehensive literature review cannot be found in the context of ecommerce with regard to retailer characteristics that influence online purchase intention. Hence, the question of which retailer characteristics influence the

Aims
This study aims to identify the research gaps and all variables in the context of retailer characteristics which influence peoples' online purchasing intentions, through a thematic literature review. It also attempts to start work towards developing a comprehensive model to address the gaps identified by the evaluation, for future research.

Design
This paper employed a thematic analysis approach to identify, analyze and report data in articles collected. According to the process of thematic analysis, specified themes or areas were identified. Thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analyzing and reporting patterns (themes) within data (Braun & Clarke, 2014). The researcher has his own right to customize a six step process aligned to the current research review (Braun & Clarke, 2014).

Sample
Research articles were collected from the ACM Digital Library (ACM), Emerald Journals (Emerald), and Google Scholar, Elsevier, Science Direct, IEEE, Tailors, SEGE, and EBSCO data bases using key words: Factor influence to purchase online, online purchasing intention and Ecommerce.
Indexed journals and conference proceedings articles were reviewed from the last five years (between 2010 and 2015).

Inclusion/ Exclusion criteria
Research papers, primary research studies from Sri Lanka and from major regions in the world on the factors effecting online purchasing, published in English and between year 2010 -2015, were the main inclusion criteria evaluated. And other than above were excluded from the result.

Search outcome
Three hundred and twenty eight (n=328) articles have been identified in the evaluation, including indexed journals and conference proceedings. They were filtered for each condition (as shown in Figure 1). To determine the relevance of the articles, the principal author read each article. Hence one hundred and forty nine (n=149) were rejected as not being directly relevant to the study while the balance one hundred and seventy nine (n=179) were examined for more details. These were examined against the inclusion and exclusion criteria and one hundred and twenty two (n=122) were identified for the quality appraisal. From the quality appraisal one hundred and twelve (n=112) were selected for the thematic review.

Subject Area of the studies
Of these studies, ninety four (n=94) articles are from sixty four (n=64) reputed journals and seventeen (n=17) articles are from fifteen (n=15) conference proceedings.

Data Abstraction and Synthesis
The selected papers were read several time and words were highlighted while reading was done to extract major themes and sub themes, by the principle author. These were then grouped as far as possible.

Analysis
This evaluation consists of two main categories, including the independent variable and dependent variable. Retailer characteristics and their impact on the intention of the online purchaser were evaluated. The type of relationship and the impact effects of moderating variable and mediating effect on the relationship have been considered in this analysis.
Of the one hundred and twelve (n=112) articles, forty three (n=43) (38.39%) articles were contributed to address retailer characteristics.
Fifty (n=50) retailer related variables in different names were identified from those articles (As shown in Table 1.1). These variables were then categorized into ten (n=10) sub themes based on their working definitions since identical variables existed. After sales service (subtheme 1.1), Price (subtheme

Independent variable investigation (Theme 1)
Ten (n=10) retailer characteristics were found which influence online purchasing intention from forty three articles (n=43). Further, the number of variables per each article and the total number of articles for particular variables were calculated to identify the impotency of the variables. Variable Reputation (n=17 p=38.6%) is the most frequently used variable among the studies and customer service (n=16 p=36.4%), product (n=11 p=25%), promotion (n=5 p=11.4%) took the above level of 10% frequency. Other variables have below 10% frequency. (As shown in Table 1.3.) However, maximum number of retailer characteristics use as independent variable at a study is five (n=5) by study of Bauman 2015 and Aghdaie et al. 2011. Another one (n=1) study used four (n=4) retailer characteristics as independent variables. Accordingly two (n=2) studies used three (n=3) variables, nine (n=9) studies used two (n=2) variables and twenty nine (n=29) studies used only one (n=1) retailer characteristic as an independent variable.  Kim & Lennon (2013) propose to incorporate extended and enriched consumer services to reduce consumer risk while building the reputation and reliability of the company. Consumer service can be divided into two: before sale and after sale.
Service quality is one of the antecedents in customer service, which has strong associations with behavioral intention (He & Bai 2011). The effective way to a high quality relationship with the online consumer is a high quality service (Sharma & Lijuan 2015). According to Sobihah et al. (2015), perceived user interface quality, perceived product or service information quality, the notion of security risk and the notion of privacy are the factors influencing E-commerce service quality. But according to He & Bai (2011), reliability and assurance were the most important antecedents among the service quality factors.

Reputation
Reputation and trust are not two words; reputation is a significant element in trust the credibility of the brand became one of the main factors that build reputation as well (Sahney et al. 2013). Good credibility will reduce the impact of perceived privacy risk and/or reduce its impact on user intentions (Featherman et al. 2010).
"Firm reputation has been deemed important since it cannot be easily created or traded within a short time; however, its importance is even more critical in the online retailing context since consumers have fewer signals than they have from physical stores".

Online purchasing intention
The consumer's intention to buy online, is defined as the likelihood that a consumer plans to buy online in the near future (Chen 2012;Shadkam et al. 2014). In general, purchase intention can be measured as the extent to which a consumer is likely to make purchases at present and in the future (Hong 2015). Other researchers have measured purchase intention as the preference for an online merchant on a continuum between a digital storefront and an e-market place (Hong 2015). However, it can be defined as a future plan to purchase online. Online purchasing behavior is manipulated by different factors, which influence the intention to purchase online (Mohmed et al. 2013).
The retailer plays a critical role in this context. Accordingly, guaranteed return policies, and the perceived image of the web site can be identified as some areas to build an assurance and trustful mindset in the consumer (Sahney et al. 2013). In addition, vendor reputation and vendor system assurance make an assured and trustful customer for online the context (Shadkam et al. 2014). Further, the method of payment by using credit card and debit card information makes a strong impact on the online purchasing intention ( Product type is one of the main characteristics in the retailer, which has a great influence in the context of online purchasing. Hence it is required to confirm these findings for different product types in future research (Eun Lee & Stoel 2014). The consumer's level of trust varies according to the product type (Chen & Chou 2012). Further, the product type influences several relationships as a moderator (Chen & Chou 2012 (Chen & Chou 2012). Price also has a moderating effect on all other relationships (Chen & Chou 2012).
According to the argument made by He & Bai (2011), there are several other factors which need to be investigated which affect customer service quality. Further, Sharma & Lijuan (2015) propose to investigate the relationship between perceived online service quality and user satisfaction toward purchasing behaviors. Mohmed et al. (2013) suggested evaluating the impact from usability of e-commerce, information quality, and payment security towards intention to purchase. Hence, He & Bai (2011) show the necessity of empirical research with enlarged coverage and add some variables, which focus on online industry.

Conclusion
Product type and the price of product play a critical role in the context of the retailer's characteristics towards online purchasing. Hence, it is required to investigate the impact from product type and price to other factors and its moderating capability. When exploring the factors affecting online purchase intention, we must focus on each product category separately (virtual item/ real item) and these do not work together. More retailer's characteristics need to be included to enlarge and complete the research model. It is a major requirement of future research to explore a wider range of variables with a comprehensive integrated model. Further studies need to focus more on retailer's characteristics and antecedents, which are not clear.