E-consumer's behavior model under the cyber ‘lemon’ problem in e-commerce

Abstract

The ‘lemon’ problem means the informational asymmetries resulted from the products quality uncertainty. It was suggested by the American economist George Akerlof (1970), who is one of Nobel Economics Prize laureates in 2001. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Internet consumer's behaviors under the cyber ‘lemon’. This paper builds up e-consumer's behavior model that based on Akerlof's ‘lemon’ theory and puts forward the ideas eliminating the cyber ‘lemon’ problem in e-commerce. Finally, for providing empirical evidence, the paper discusses the case from China e-commerce market.