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Chen, L., Gillenson, M.L., and Sherrell, D.L., 2004. “Consumer Acceptance of Virtual
Stores: A Theoretical Model and Critical Success Factors for Virtual Stores,” DATA BASE (35:2), pp. 8-31.
Virtual stores provide great efficiency in the retail value chain, and their existence
has tremendously paved the way for the diffusion of electronic commerce. Understanding
the determinants of consumer acceptance of virtual stores will provide important theoretical
contributions to the area of business-to-consumer (B-to-C) electronic commerce and
lead to the development of more effective and meaningful strategies for virtual stores.
By expanding the Technology Acceptance Model and the Innovation Diffusion Theory,
this study aims to provide an integral theoretical paradigm that can successfully
support a wide array of technical, business, and consumer issues involved in online
retailing. The results from a Web-based survey of 253 online consumers indicate that
the proposed theoretical model is able to explain and predict consumer acceptance
of virtual stores substantially well. The resulting theoretical model explains a large
portion of the factors that lead to a user's behavioral intention to use and actual
use of a virtual store. In addition to providing new theoretical grounds for studying
the virtual store phenomenon, this article also supplies virtual stores with a number
of operative critical success factors to remain competitive in the volatile electronic
marketplace.
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