Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica

2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 737-742 737

DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.304

ONLINE MARKETING INNOVATION OF E-COMMERCE ENTERPRISES

BASED ON CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY
Weiguo Sun

Abstract
With the proliferation Internet technology, online marketing has become increasingly popular among
consumers. The e-commerce enterprises need to continuously improve their online marketing strategies based
on consumer psychology. This paper firstly sums up the relevant theories on consumer psychology, and then
carries out a questionnaire survey on online consumers in China. The survey data were analyzed to innovate
the online marketing strategies of e-commerce enterprises. The results show that the revenue of e-commerce
enterprises and online retail market in China are both expanding on a yearly basis; online consumers are
mostly well-educated, aged between 21 and 50, and engaged in online shopping for over 3 years; the most
significant influencing factors of online shopping behavior include the trust in consumer psychology and online
marketing. The research results provide a guide for the development of e-commerce enterprises in China.
Key words: Consumer Psychology, E-Commerce Enterprise, Online Marketing, Innovation.
Received: 12-02-19 | Accepted: 25-07-19

INTRODUCTION of consumers will have a direct impact on the

With the continuous development of shopping behavior of consumers. Therefore, it is
of great significance for the growth and
information technology and electronics
development of e-commerce enterprises to
technology, e-commerce enterprises have
understand and grasp the psychology and
developed rapidly and online marketing has
become the main method and important symbol behavioral law of consumers, introduce
consumer psychology into the online marketing
of e-commerce enterprises (Woodside, 2010).
innovation process and formulating more
Compared with the traditional marketing model,
online marketing has many advantages such as effective and distinctive marketing models
(Hogarth & Karelaia, 2006).
quickness and convenience. Under this
At present, many scholars and experts at
development trend, the online marketing of e-
home and abroad have conducted in-depth
commerce enterprises has firmly grasped the
consumer psychology of consumers. The rapid studies on the online marketing of e-commerce
enterprises and have achieved numerous
development of online marketing has greatly
research results. Some scholars have studied the
changed the shopping mode of the public so that
online shopping has gradually become a popular online marketing model and strategy of e-
method for consumers (Lin, 2007). Consumers commerce enterprises (Poiesz, 1989) some
scholars have compared the network impact of
will be affected by many factors in the online
e-commence enterprises with traditional
shopping process and the psychological change
marketing and analyzed the advantage and
disadvantage and development prospect of
School of Economics and management of Changshu Institute
of Technology, Changshu 215501, China.
network impact (Rosenstein, 1997); and scholars
E-Mail: sunwguo@cslg.edu.cn have analyzed the influencing factors of the
online marketing of e-commerce enterprises
(Liu, Friedman, Barry et al., 2012). However, in

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 738 WEIGUO SUN

the current research, few studies have focused of strong guiding and reference significance for
on the analysis from the perspective of the development of e-commerce enterprises.
consumers, especially from psychological
theory. The marketing target of enterprises will OVERVIEW OF RELEVANT THEORIES
inevitably be the vast consumer group.
Consumer Psychology
Therefore, it is necessary to study e-commerce
Consumer psychology is an important part of
enterprises based on the consumer psychology, consumer economics and psychology, which is to
which is of strong theoretical and practical
study a series of psychological activities and
significance.
behavioral rules of ordinary consumers in the
Based on relevant theories of consumer consumption process. The research content of
psychology, this paper studies the online includes not only all the psychological processes
marketing innovation of e-commerce
of consumers in the consumption process, but
enterprises from the perspective of consumer
personality psychological factors as well
psychology, analyzes the current situation of the (Guixeres, Bigné, Ausín Azofra et al. 2017), as
online marketing of e-commerce enterprises and
shown in Figure 1.
proposes the innovative strategy for the online
marketing of e-commerce enterprises, which is

Figure 1. Consumer psychological phenomenon

Cognition process

Psychological
process Emotional process

Psychological Volitive process

phenomenon

Personality psychology
Personality
psychology
Tendency of individual
consciousness

Figure 2. The psychological process of consumer consumption

External influence
Experience and product
Population satisfaction desire
environment, social External influence
class, family and
marketing Situation problem
activities, etc identification

Self concept and Information

life style gathering

Evaluation and
Internal influence selection
Perception,
learning, Experience and product Dealer selection
motivation, satisfaction desire and purchase
emotion,
personality, Post purchase
attitude, etc evaluation

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 ONLINE MARKETING INNOVATION OF E-COMMERCE ENTERPRISES BASED ON CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY 739

It is necessary to strengthen the year by year, from 4.6% in 2013 to 13.8% in 2018,
understanding of consumer psychology, which as shown in Figure 4.
on the one hand, can enhance the consumption
experience and improve the benefits of Figure 4. Online shopping accounts for total
consumption for ordinary consumers; on the retail sales of consumer goods in 2013-2018
other hand, can increase the product sales and
improve the revenue of enterprises (Macinnis &
Patrick, 2006). 15% 13.80%
12.10%
10.60%
Consumer Psychology 9.30%

Proportion
10%
Consumer psychology is mainly a series of
5.80%
psychological activities generated by the 4.60%
consumer group in the selection and evaluation 5%
process of consumer products based on their
own preferences and actual needs (Maheswaran 0%
& Oyserman, 2013). In the consumption process, 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
consumers need to have a full understating of Year
the consumer goods firstly, which will then
trigger the motivation of consumption and the
desire of purchase. After being subject to various Figure 5. Analysis on the scale structure of
internal and external factors, they will eventually China's online shopping market in 2013-
do the purchasing behavior.
2018

ANALYSIS OF THE CURRENT SITUATION OF

ONLINE MARKETING OF E-COMMERCE
ENTERPRISES IN CHINA
With the development and popularization of
Internet technology, China's e-commerce
enterprises have developed rapidly and the
transaction volume has increased year by year,
from 12.9 trillion yuan in 2013 to 28 trillion yuan
in 2018, which has doubled over 6 years, as
shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Transaction scale of China's e-

commerce market in 2013-2018
In the scale of the entire online shopping
market in China, the proportion of B2C has
30 28 increased year by year while at the same time,
25.3 the proportion of C2C has declined year by year,
22.1
Volume of trade

25
18.7 as shown in Figure 5. In the future, there is great
20 room for the development of B2C.
12.9 13.4
15
10
5 ONLINE MARKETING INNOVATION OF E-
0 COMMERCE ENTERPRISES BASED ON
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY
Year Consumer Psychology and Behavior under
Online marketing
Analysis of consumer characteristics under
The market size of online retails is also online marketing
gradually expanding and the proportion in total In order to better understand the
retail sales of consumer goods is also increasing psychological characteristics of consumers in the

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network environment, the questionnaire Analysis of the influencing factors of online

method used to investigate the psychological
characteristics of consumers. A total of 800
questionnaires were randomly distributed and
789 valid questionnaires were collected, with an
effective rate of 98.63%. The basic information
of the respondents is shown in Table 1.
It can be seen from the survey data in Table 1
that the consumer age of online shopping in
China is mainly between 21 and 50 years old, and
the highly-educated characteristics of this group
is obvious, mainly bachelor degree or above.
Also, the experience of online shopping is mostly
more than 3 years and the expenditure on online
shopping in each month is mainly concentrated
between 500 and 2000 yuan. This feature of the
online shopping consumer group is that the
popularity of computers and smart phones in
China is increasing year by year. And more and
more young people tend to do online shopping.
Highly-educated people tend to spend more time
on study and work, so they have less and less
time to go shopping in physical stores.
shopping for consumers
This questionnaire also includes the
investigation and analysis of the influencing
factors of online shopping for consumers, mainly
from four dimensions: consumer psychology,
corporate characteristics, commodity
characteristics and online marketing. The
consumer psychology mainly includes two
aspects: trust and perceived risk; the corporate
characteristics mainly include three aspects:
payment method, business evaluation and
logistics evaluation. Several items are given for
every aspect of each dimension and each item is
measured by 5-point Likert scoring method, with
1-point indicating the lowest level of satisfaction
and 5-point indicating the highest level of
satisfaction. Therefore, the higher the score, the
higher the satisfaction of online shopping for
consumers (Bagozzi & Yi, 1991).
It can be seen from the data in Table 2 that in the
online shopping process of consumers, the score
for the confidence of consumers in the
enterprise is the highest, namely 3.988 points.

Table 1. Basic information of the visited

Statistical characteristics Classification Sample size Proportion

Male 437 55.39%
Gender
Female 352 44.61%
Under 20 years old 172 21.79%
21-35 296 37.52%
Age
35-50 289 36.63%
Over 50 years old 32 4.06%
High school and above 167 21.16%
Junior College 231 29.28%
Education level
Undergraduate 209 26.49%
Postgraduate and above 182 23.07%
Within 1 years 12 1.53%
1-3 year 107 13.56%
Experience of online shopping 3-5 year 198 25.09%
5-7 year 297 37.64%
More than 7 years 175 22.18%
Less than 500 yuan. 192 24.33%
Monthly consumption amount 500-1000 yuan 256 32.45%
of online shopping 1000-2000 yuan 247 31.31%
More than 2000 yuan 94 11.91%

Table 2. Descriptive statistics of each variable

Dimension Item Mean Standard deviation
Trust 3.898 0.539
Consumer psychology
Perceived risk 3.274 0.517
Means of payment 3.862 0.602
Enterprise characteristics Shopkeeper evaluation 3.638 0.571
Logistics evaluation 3.714 0.612
Commodity characteristics Commodity evaluation 3.878 0.551
Online marketing Marketing 3.889 0.593

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 ONLINE MARKETING INNOVATION OF E-COMMERCE ENTERPRISES BASED ON CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY 741

The score of the online marketing of the 1985).

enterprise is relatively higher, namely 3.889
points. The score for the perceived risk factor in Enhancing the online marketing level of e-
consumer psychology is the lowest, namely commerce enterprises
3.274. All influencing factors have scored more It is necessary for e-commerce enterprises to
than 3 points. fully understand and grasp the psychological
The significant test of each factor influencing characteristics of consumers in the online
the online shopping of consumers in Table 2 is marketing process. Usually, consumers are more
performed and the correlation analysis is concerned about the price of products, the
conducted mainly through the SPSS18.0 analysis convenience of shopping and the promotion of
software. The specific results of the analysis are products (Campbell & Winterich, 2016). At
shown in Table 3. present, with the accelerating pace of life,
consumers are increasingly demanding in the
Table 3. Correlation analysis convenience of shopping and they are more and
more sensitive to price. Also, they are easily
Item Relevance P affected by the business promotion. Under
Trust 0.72* 0.024 moderate price, if e-commerce enterprises can
Perceived risk -0.51* 0.031 enhance the promotion, provide convenient
Means of payment 0.56* 0.028 payment methods and quick logistics, they will
Shopkeeper 0.62* 0.036
evaluation attract the attention of consumers. Therefore, in
Logistics 0.59* 0.041 the online marketing process, e-commerce
evaluation enterprises can put the advertising of products
Commodity 0.63 0.092 in a more conspicuous position, so that
evaluation
Marketing 0.71* 0.017 consumers can focus on their attention at the
first time. Also, some measures, such as
It can be seen from the data in Table 3 that promotion and free shipping can be taken to
the P value of consumer psychology, corporate attract consumers.
characteristics and online marketing is less than
0.05 and the symbol is positive, indicating that Providing personalized and differentiated
these three factors can significantly affect the services to consumers
online shopping of consumers. Among these At present, the needs of the vast number of
factors, the impact of the trust in consumer consumers in China are becoming gradually
psychology and the online marketing of diversified, and the type of products is also
enterprises is the most significant. The P value of expanding. In the online marketing process, e-
the commodity characteristics is higher than commerce enterprises need to collect the basic
0.05 and the coefficient symbol is positive, but information of consumers in a timely manner
the result is not significant. and establish detailed profile of consumers,
including age, income, shopping preference,
Measures for the Online marketing occupation, etc. Also, enterprises should provide
Innovation of E-Commerce Enterprise personalized services for different consumers
Enhancing the credibility of e-commerce (Malhotra, 2010). In this way, e-commerce
enterprises themselves enterprises can provide differentiated products
It can be discovered in previous analysis that and services facing different consumer groups,
the impact of the trust of consumers in e- which enhances the efficiency of marketing and
commerce enterprises is the most significant on the shopping experience of consumers (Suter &
the online shopping behavior of consumers. Burton, 1996).
Therefore, e-commerce enterprises should
constantly improve their corporate image,
mainly reflected in the improvement of CONCLUSION
credibility and the quality of products and Based on relevant theories of consumer
services so that they can continue to attract psychology, this paper studies the online
consumers, enhance the shopping experience of marketing innovation of e-commerce
consumers and improve consumer satisfaction, enterprises from the perspective of consumer
thus promoting the sales of enterprises (Jones, psychology. The specific conclusions are as

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 742
follows:
China's e-commerce enterprises have
developed rapidly, and the transaction volume
has shown an upward trend year by year. The
market size of online retails is also gradually
expanding and the proportion in total retail sales
of consumer goods is increasing year by year.
The age of online consumers is mainly
concentrated between 21 to 50 years old. The
highly-educated characteristics of this group are
obvious, whose online shopping experience is
mostly more than 3 years.
The age of consumers in online shopping in
China is mainly between 21-50 years old. The
high-education characteristics of the group are
more obvious, and the experience of online
shopping is more than three years.
Consumer psychology, corporate
characteristics and online marketing can
significantly affect the online shopping of
consumers. Among them, the impact of the trust
in consumer psychology and the online
marketing of enterprises is the most significant.
Acknowledgement
Humanities and social science foundation
project fund plan project of the ministry of
education: "based on the platform of consumer
online behavior differentiation and open platform
strategy research" project number: 15 yja630065,
head of the project: Wan Xing.
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