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As Information and Communication Technology (ICT) advances, many retailers venture into selling their goods online (Catedrilla, 2017). The potential for expanding production and markets for small and medium businesses has attracted interest (Donner, 2007). With online shopping platforms, a consumer can quickly find and purchase the products or services from everywhere, without caring in terms of location, shopping times, and traffic interference (Beauchamp & Bednarz, 2010). As reported in (Driediger & Bhatiasevi, 2019), businesses are gradually adopting e-commerce models to attract new consumers. Retailers also believe that engaging in online selling has a minimal cost but still uncertain if it could help increase sales (Anoos & Ferrater-gimena, 2020).
Social media has grown in popularity as a marketing tool, with Facebook is now becoming the largest social media network globally (Hansson et al., 2013; Kodali et al., 2011; Lua, 2017). With the large population of online social media platforms within the Philippines, it has become very convenient for businesses to reach their consumers through these sites. These provide a developing opportunity for selling agriculture and fisheries products online (Singh & Singh, 2018). Furthermore, e-Kadiwa and Driver-E, a web marketing application which directly connects agriculture and fisheries producers and retailers to their customer, was launched in the Philippines in 2020 by the Department of Agriculture (DA) and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) (DA, 2020; Serafica et al., 2020). Retailers are aware of these platforms but still not quick to adapt to sell their products (Barkley et al., 2007; J. B. Matias & Hernandez, 2019; Norberto M. Secretaria, 2019). To use these platforms, retailers must understand the influencers of online purchase behavior and intentions to have effective strategies to attract new customers (Delafrooz et al., 2009).
In the Philippines, despite the development in ICTs and e-commerce ecosystems and the willingness of the consumers to order products online (Driediger & Bhatiasevi, 2019), small and medium-sized enterprises still faces difficulties in selling or promoting products or services that are not yet well-known on the market (Anoos & Ferrater-gimena, 2020). Similar scenarios happening in many developing and industrialized countries, many online businesses in the Philippines selling agriculture and fisheries products in remote and rural areas face various challenges, such as in logistics (Wei et al., 2018), slow adoption of e-commerce platforms (Ammirato, 2010), high costs of development (Wheatley et al., 2001), price discovery (Argade & Laha, 2018), risk (Driediger & Bhatiasevi, 2019; HAJI, 2021), and trust (Han & Li, 2020).