Research on assistant decision-makings of E-commerce platform with refinement tools

ABSTRACT

Most existing studies of consumer search behaviour focus on page-level analysis, and some scholars start to examine the effect of refinement tools and characteristics in terms of products. However, it still remains undeveloped on the product-level. To fill this gap, we reproduced the consumer shopping process in accordance with the topology of the Taobao platform from where we collected the clickstream data. We modelled consumers’ sequential decision-making behaviour based on the taxonomy with Bayesian approach and found that not all the refinement tools are utilised for optimising decisions by users and it’s surprising that there exists no significant impact of all sorting tools. Besides, consumers are highly concerned with the characteristics of products. On the basis of the findings, platform function announcement and platform design suggestions were provided for improving platform functionality and optimising consumer decision-making, which also points out the direction of future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Decision making
• optimisation
• refinement tools
• product characteristics
• clickstream
• Bayesian approach

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 71671048, 71901075], the MOE Layout Foundation of Humanities and Social Sciences the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province [grant number 2020A151501507] and Co-Construction Project of Philosophy and Social Science Planning Discipline in Guangdong Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science [grant number GD18XGL37].

Notes on contributors

Hongwei Liu

Hongwei Liu received the BSc degree in Mathematics from Sun Yat-sen University in 1983, the BEng degree (1993) and the PhD degree (1999) in Automatic Control Engineering from South China University of Technology. He is currently a professor in School of Management, Guangdong University of Technology, China. His research interests include business intelligence, and privacy concern. His publications have appeared in such journals as Information & Management, Information systems, Advances in Modeling & Analysis, Impulsive Dynamical Systems and Applications among others.

Mingjun Zhan

Mingjun Zhan received the MSc degree in Management from Guangdong University of Technology in 2017. He is currently a PhD candidate at School of Management, Guangdong University of Technology, China, majored in Management Science and Engineering. His research interests include consumer behaviour, data mining and business intelligence.

Hongming Gao

Hongming Gao received the BSc degree in Mathematics from Guangdong University of Technology in 2016. He is currently a PhD student at School of Management, Guangdong University of Technology, China, majored in Management Science and Engineering. His research interests include consumer behaviour, data mining and intelligent commerce. His works have been published by journals and conference like Chinese Journal of Management Science, Americas Conference on Information systems(AMCIS), Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS), and International Conference on Electronic Commerce (ICEC).

Hui Zhu

Hui Zhu received her PhD degree in School of Management from Guangdong University of Technology, China. She is now a lecturer in School of Management of Guangzhou University, China. Her research interests include customer behaviour analysis, electronic commerce, social commerce, and privacy issues of data mining. Her works have been published by journals like Information & Management, Information Systems, International Journal of Information Processing and Management and Journal of Network & Information Security. As well as, by conferences like Europe Conference on Information Systems(ECIS), Australian Conference on Information Systems(ACIS), WHICEB Conference on Information System and Conference on New Trends in Information Science, Service Science and Data Mining. She also holds several projects of Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

Ruichao He

Ruichao He received the BSc degree in Mathematics from Guangdong University of Technology, Guangdong, China, in 2017. He is currently a master student at School of Management, Guangdong University of Technology, China, majored in Business Administration. Her research interests include consumer behaviour and electronic commerce.