Article Preview
TopIntroduction
In recent years, global online retail transactions have witnessed a trend of continuous expansion, with a strong growth momentum. The proportion of online retail sales in total global retail sales is projected to increase from 8.6% in 2016 to 17.5% in 2021 at a growth rate far exceeding that of physical retail sales (eMarketer, 2018). In particular, consumer-to-consumer electronic commerce (C2C e-commerce) has become popular and it has experienced rapid development (Jones & Leonard, 2008; Wei, Li, Zha, & Ma, 2019). In this study, C2C e-commerce is defined as consumers selling products to other consumers through an online network. While the current growth rate of C2C e-commerce is not as fast as that of B2B and B2C e-commerce, the impact of the scale of C2C transactions should not be ignored (Leonard & Jones, 2010). A recent survey showed that in 2017, 19% of respondents from Europe had used the Internet at least once to sell goods or services to other consumers (Statista, 2018). According to the same report, 30% of respondents from the US had sold used goods via Facebook pages at least once in 2017. Under fierce competition, the scale of China’s C2C transactions accounted for 41.6% of the country’s online retail market in 2017, with a growth rate of 30.7% (Department of Electronic Commerce and Informatization of China, 2018). The booming C2C e-commerce market will not only attract more investment inflows and create new business models, but also upgrade consumer experience and drive market competition.
Therefore, the C2C model has become a major focus of research, with increasing number of publications by the academia. Researchers have explored the C2C model from multiple perspectives, such as trust (Joo, 2015; Wei et al., 2019; Yoon & Occeña, 2015), reputation (Dai, Viken, Joo, & Bente, 2018; Fan, Ju, & Xiao, 2016; Houser & Wooders, 2006), purchase intention (Jia, Cegielski, & Zhang, 2014), risk (Meents & Verhagen, 2018), interaction (Abdul-Ghani, Hyde, & Marshall, 2011), customer loyalty (Huang, Chen, Ou, Davison, & Hua, 2017), and rewards for providing feedback (Cabral & Li, 2015). The research site has shifted from e-commerce platforms (Cui, Zhang, & Lowry, 2017; Li, Li, & Lin, 2008) to social media (Chen, Su, & Widjaja, 2016; Chong, Lacka, Boying, & Chan, 2018; Li & Wang, 2018). As C2C-related research seems to be of sustainable interest, it is consistent with the purpose and intent of this study.
Previous review studies have focused on articles published in the Information Systems (IS) Journals and explored mainstream areas of research related to C2C (Cui, Lai, & Liu, 2008; Leonard & Jones, 2010). Cui et al. (2008) analyzed the development of consumer behavior using meta-analysis based on 83 articles on online auctions published in the IS journals between 1998 and 2007. Research results show that consumer research on online auctions can be divided into three categories: promotive factors, consumer behavior, and auction output. Similarly, Leonard and Jones (2010) found 2,291 e-commerce articles in the IS discipline during the period 1997–2009, of which research on C2C e-commerce accounted for only 10.86%. They have pointed out that the three main areas of research on C2C e-commerce are C2C, online auctions, and online communities.