Consumer's Initial Acceptance of E-Commerce Website: A Contingency Approach

As the consumer e-commerce market grows intensively competitive, the strategy in retaining new customers at their first visits to a website has been recognized as a critical research issue. Not only does the customer’s initial acceptance of a website capture business opportunities, it also casts great impact on customers’ return purchases in the future and their loyalty buildup. From a contingency approach, this paper attempts to explore the theoretical explanations for consumer’s initial acceptance of e-commerce website. By synthesizing previous research into a coherent body of knowledge and by recognizing the roles of contingency factors, we develop a new e-commerce website acceptance model that examines user’s initial acceptance of a website. We expect the research to shed light on e-commerce business model and website design practice as to successfully retain new customers.