DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2016.455
title: The study of barriers and trigger motivations toward online used car marketplace

description: Due to insufficient public transportation in Thailand, a car is considered the fifth necessity for living. A used car has become an alternative for lower to middle income citizens because of the high cost of living. However, customers perceive that purchasing a used car is full of risk, fear, and uncertainty. In the digital era, most consumers nowadays adopt the Internet to search the information and to purchase goods or services online. Although plenty of peer-to-peer classified online marketplaces have been launched to serve customer needs either buying or selling used car, none has been able to provide a trustworthy eco-system solution for used car consumers to mitigate their concern before purchasing a used car.This study focuses on four main research objectives including 1) to generate customer profiles for those who visit online used car marketplaces, 2) to explore barriers obstructing customer purchase of used cars from online used car marketplaces, 3) to identify trigger motivations for converting website visitors into prospective used car customers and 4) to provide recommendations for online used car marketplaces to improve the key critical attributes aimed at customer expectations and perceptions. The findings from this research helps to respond the following questions including how many meaningful clusters of visitors on used car marketplace website? What their profile looks like? and how to redesign online used car marketplaces to enhance user experience, to overcome obstacles and to motivate them to purchase used car from online marketplaces? Additionally, this work will try to prioritize which key attributes in the website should be improved to increase customer perception?This research employed exploratory, qualitative and quantitative research to obtain both primary and secondary data. The respondents in this research were those who are experienced with used car purchases within the last five years and who are capable of using the Internet to access online used car marketplaces. The study divided the qualified respondents into two groups of customer segments: purchasers, the persons who afforded purchasing used cars by themselves, and used car users, the persons who owned but did not buy used car by themselves. The results conclude that there are significant differences between experienced used car purchasers and users with respect to their demographic profiles, the behavior and attitude they exhibit throughout the online purchase funnel, and the customer expectations and perceptions they have toward online used car marketplaces.The most prevalent customer segment of used car purchaser is married men aged 30-39. Alternatively, the user group is young single men or women aged 20-29. Three important attributes bring customers to visit online used car marketplaces more regularly, they are car variety, ease of sight navigation and completeness of car information. Moreover, the top three barriers that obstruct their purchase of used cars from online websites are the potential for fraud and cheating by sellers, no inspection service, and no post purchase service. On the other hand, time constraint to visit dealership, trust of seller, and lower price are the top three reasons that helped trigger visitors to purchase used cars from online website. Moreover, there are numerous gaps between customer expectation and perception for online marketplace providing a great opportunity to improve on multiple key critical attributes.