Empirical study of consumers' purchase intentions in C2C electronic commerce

Electronic commerce is becoming increasingly important in business, but lack of intention to purchase has become a main barrier in the development of electronic commerce. Thus, effective measures are needed to promote consumers' intentions to purchase in online consumer to consumer (C2C) stores. This paper postulates that five factors, the perceived ease of use of the website, perceived usefulness of the website, vendor competence, introduction and recommendations of third parties, and vendors' attitude toward customers, influence consumers' intentions to purchase in online C2C stores and this intention directly leads to their action to purchase from online C2C stores. The structural equation modeling (SEM) method was used to analyze empirical data, supporting these hypotheses except for the effect of vendor competence.