Bulacan State University

College of Education
City of Malolos, Bulacan

The Impact of Electronic Commerce on the Consumer’s Satisfaction

of the College of Education Students of
Bulacan State University

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements in

the subject Microeconomics

Submitted to Dr. Dolorita Del Rosario

By

Cruz Jr., Ericson, Y.

Joven, Louie Renz, M.

October 08, 2019

1 INTRODUCTION

The research topic investigates about the effect or impact of electronic commerce on the

consumer’s satisfaction level of the College of Education students of Bulacan State University.

According to the Pew Internet Project survey, it finds that 87% of all youth between the age of 12

and 17 uses the internet. (Raine, 2005) Duly, students particularly those in the tertiary level, spend

45 hours a week in their academics – which is equivalent to a full-time job (Nelson, n.d.); one of

the reasons why a student does not have any allocated time in going to a physical market in order

to choose what to buy, in accordance to his or her consumer’s taste. In consonance with all of the

information being stated, the Philippines has a digital population of 67 million people, which

makes the country a susceptible country for the development and growth of the electronic

commerce in the world, exposing the buyers to the experience of utilizing the internet in consuming

innumerous products. (“Insights and trends of e-commerce in the Philippines [market analysis],”

2018)

Due to the emergence of information and data, the researchers have come to think of an

objective of garnering ideas which are in relevance to the impact of electronic commerce or e-

commerce on the consumer’s satisfaction of the College of Education students of Bulacan State

University. The researchers are aiming to target the students particularly the college students

because they are considered to be one of the most vulnerable and susceptible to accessing the

electronic commerce platforms, for they do not have adequate time to buy on actual markets that

are present in their location due to their academic loads.

1.1 Review of Related Literature

E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the buying and selling of goods and services, or the

transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the internet. (Rouse, n.d.) In

addition, according to Mitchell (2009) electronic commerce, or e-commerce, has no settled

definition. At its broadest, electronic commerce involves conducting business using most modern

communication instruments: telephone, fax, television, electronic payment, and money transfer

systems, electronic data interchange, and the internet.

In a statement by Hajli (2014), as cited in the research “Investigating an impact of the e-

commerce on consumer’s shopping experience/consumer behaviour: A case analysis of Amazon,”

he said that “E-commerce is providing the various benefits to the consumers, as they can get the

products and services of their own choices through the social interaction on the internet. The

companies are focused on to increase the satisfaction, in order to provide them with the increased

level of satisfactions, thus, technology acceptance model by the companies are impacting in the

mind of the consumer.”—in line with this, the researchers can epitomize that e-commerce

augments consumers’ level of satisfaction. In agreement with the latter, according to The Princeton

Encyclopedia of the World Economy by Mitchell (2009), e-commerce can be advantageous to

consumers in relation to increased market transparency and reduced search costs but can also be

disadvantageous in terms of information privacy and fraud, which is still one of the microeconomic

problem of the society; therefore, there are still conspicuous benefits of e-commerce, but there are

also ineluctable detriments of engaging in the electronic market.

According to a study done in University of Bamberg in Germany by Friedrich, Schlauderer,

and Overhage (2019), that e-commerce websites increase consumers’ perception of cognitive and

affective factors when using functionally diverse social commerce features in combination, in the
researchers’ assimilation they can recapitulate that online selling with the use of social networking

sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other sites elevates consumers’ satisfaction

cognitively and affectively. Also, in the findings of Nisar and Prabhakar (2017), the relationship

between consumer satisfaction and consumer spending is positive, where higher e-satisfaction

results in more spending in e-commerce; therefore, the satisfaction gained from buying in e-

commerce triggers consumers’ satisfaction and vice-versa.

In a study done by Ong (2013), the disadvantages of e-commerce in the top 100 companies

in Manila are the following: dependence on system performance and customization may take time,

system congestion which can be bothersome, not sufficient compared to verbal communication

and network congestion which delays work, no hard documents, replacement of some employees

due to redundancy, expansions may be necessary or costly, and susceptibility to network

congestion – these are the disadvantage to the vantage point of the corporations or the suppliers

which gives an idea to the researchers that e-commerce is more of consumer-friendly than a

producer-friendly economic platform.

In contrast with the preceding studies which implies the positive impact of e-commerce on

consumers’ satisfaction, a study done by Ankhule, Gayatri, and Joshy (2015), states that user

resistance or the act of not trusting a particular site because of an unknown faceless seller, which

proliferate mistrust, makes it difficult to make user switch from physical stores to online or virtual

stores and the lack of touch or feel of products during online shopping; proving the possibility of

e-commerce being a platform that is not conducive to the elevation of a consumer’s satisfaction;

in congruence to this study, according to the “25 Advantages And Disadvantages Of Ecommerce

For Businesses In 2018” (2018), the number one disadvantage of e-commerce is the lack of

personal touch, due to this no matter how good a product is explained and expressed, a consumer
will not be able to sense the touch, smell, taste, and sound through the dimensionality of a screen,

this is one of the disadvantageous aspects of the e-commerce which gives a sense of mistrust to its

consumers, therefore, eluding consumers’ satisfaction.

The precedent information stated that are pertinent to the impact of electronic commerce

on consumers’ satisfaction are in dispute with each other. Due to this, the researchers would be

conducting a research to know what is the impact of electronic commerce on consumers’

satisfaction that shall support the studies in relation to what will be the result of this study.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

The objective of this research is to answer the following questions:

1. How does electronic commerce affect one’s consumers’ satisfaction?

1.1. Does it have a positive effect?

1.2 Or does it have a negative effect?

2. Is electronic commerce a well-known economic platform for college students?

3. Is it recommendable to utilize e-commerce for consuming products?

1.3 Research Objective

The main objective of this research is to distinguish and identify what is the impact of

electronic commerce on the consumers’ satisfaction of the College of Education Students of

Bulacan State University. The researchers are aiming to know if electronic commerce is a well-
known or popular economic platform for college students. To make the data and information more

useful for the beneficence of everyone, the researchers are also aiming to know if electronic

commerce is a recommendable platform to consume products for economic and consumers’

advantage.

1.4 Conceptual Framework

Electronic Consumers’
Commerce Satisfaction

Fig 1. Conceptual Framework

In this conceptual framework, the researchers are showing that their independent variable

would be the electronic commerce and the dependent variable is the consumers’ satisfaction of the

students. The researchers are going to discover if there is a strong or weak relationship between

these two variables.

1.5 Scope and Delimitations

The researchers have limited expertise regarding the said topic. The respondents of the

research will only come from the College of Education students of Bulacan State University. Some

of the information utilized in the study are from secondary data sources which means that not all

information is collected by the researchers personally. The research project is conducted in a short

period of time.
 The focus of the research is regarding the impact of electronic commerce on the consumer’s

satisfaction of the College of Education students of Bulacan state university, therefore, other

irrelevant topics are not included in the research paper such as the impact of electronic commerce

to other variables, also other kinds of commerce or economic activities are not included within the

research paper.

1.6 Contributions

The research result shall provide a brief understanding of how electronic commerce affects

consumer’s satisfaction. This research study can be beneficial for the consumers to weigh their

preferences in accordance to their satisfaction level.

2 METHODS

2.1 Research Approach

The research approach being used is a quantitative research approach because the study

will definitely use numerical data to extricate the result.

2.2 Research Design

The research design of this study is a descriptive research design because it aims to describe

what will be the impact or effect of electronic commerce on consumer’s satisfaction, also the

variable that is used in this research are not manipulated and not controlled.

2.3 Research Instrument

The research instrument of this research is survey form. The researchers utilized survey

form in order to collect data with organization and also to completely extract and filter valuable

numerical data that the researchers will use in determining the impact of electronic commerce on

consumer’s satisfaction.

2.4 Research Setting

The setting of this research is in Bulacan State University located in the City of Malolos,

Bulacan. This place is where the data needed for this research is collected.
2.5 Methods and Techniques

First, the researchers gathered information on how many students there are on the College

of Education at Bulacan State University. In order to gather sufficient and reliable information the

researchers used the Slovin’s formula to know the sample size that the researchers would be

utilizing, the formula is n = N/1+N(α)2, wherein α is the margin of error. The researchers used a

95% level of confidence having α = 0.05.

The researchers then used survey questionnaires to collect the data with organization and

extract the numerical data out of it, the survey questionnaires contain questions that are in

relevance to the research topic.

After the data has been collected, the researchers analyzed the data gathered. Then the

researchers tallied the answers of the respective respondents of the research project, after that the

researchers would be finding the mean of the questions to have a better comprehension of the data,

after solving it the researchers would be interpreting the numerical data into words to better

understand the data gathered.

REFERENCES:

25 Advantages And Disadvantages Of Ecommerce For Businesses In 2018. (2018). Retrieved

from https://magnetoitsolutions.com/blog/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-ecommerce
Ankhule, Gayatri, R., & Joshy, M.R. (2015). Overview of E-Commerce. Retrieved from
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1712403472/B371B16F58104F16PQ/15?accountid=17301
5
Friedrich, T., Schaulerer, S., & Overhage, S. (2019). The impact of social commerce feature
richness on website stickiness through cognitive and affective factors: An experimental study.
Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567422319300389
Insights and trends of e-commerce in the Philippines [market analysis]. (2018). Retrieved from
https://aseanup.com/insights-trends-e-commerce-philippines/
Investigating an impact of the e-commerce on consumer’s shopping experience/consumer
behaviour: A case analysis of Amazon. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://bohatala.com/impact-of-the-
e-commerce-on-consumer-behaviour-research-proposal/
Lee, R. (2005). The Internet at School. Retrieved from
https://www.pewinternet.org/2005/08/02/the-internet-at-school/
Mitchell, A. D. (2009). Electronic commerce. Retrieved from
https://search.proquest.com/docview/189251003/34B5AE0D15754EB4PQ/3?accountid=173015
Nelson, V. (n.d.). Is Your College Student Investing Enough Time Studying?. Retrieved from
https://www.collegeparentcentral.com/2010/02/is-your-college-student-investing-enough-time-
studying/
Nisar, T. and Prabhakar, G. (2017). What factors determine e-satisfaction and consumer spending
in e-commerce retailing?. Retrieved from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698917302680
Ong, H. T. (2013). Trends in Electronic Commerce Among Selected Companies in Metro Manila,
Philippines. Retrieved from
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1513315201/fulltext/B371B16F58104F16PQ/10?accountid
=173015
Rouse, M. (n.d.). e-commerce (electronic commerce). Retrieved from
https://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/e-commerce