eCommerce Consumer Behaviour in Southeast Asia

This master’s thesis aims to investigate e-commerce consumer behavior in Southeast Asia, with a focus on identifying online purchase behavior, assessing how different factors could influence online consumer’s perception about perceived risk and trust and proposing possible causes and reasons behind it. To fulfill these goals, the research is constituted of data mining, a quantitative survey and content analysis. The dataset contains half a million transaction records from 385 e-merchants in the ASEAN-6. Secondly, perceived risk and trust towards online shopping in Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines were examined by a survey method, with a sample of 124 post-adoption respondents. Lastly, Content analysis on the top 50 online stores in the ASEAN-6 (300 online stores in total) was conducted to study parity and differentiation in terms of service and function offerings. The analysis reveals that conversion rate, average order value, coupon usage and order distribution differs in countries, devices and time. Besides, a positive correlation between purchase intention and attitudes towards online shopping is detected. In contrast, there is a negative correlation between purchase intention and perceived risk. Lastly, recommendations are given to e-commerce companies in the region.