E-marketplace patronage intention among Southern Thailand consumers: the role of online retail/service brand equity and country of origin

In Thailand, e-marketplaces have been predicted to become the leading online shopping platform in forthcoming years. Nonetheless, the local e-marketplaces suffer from the price war strategy of foreign e-marketplaces. Moreover, Thai online shoppers prefer shopping from the online shopping platforms of other countries. Hence, the current study aimed to examine the e-marketplace patronage intention in southern Thailand by employing the extended theory of reasoned action (TRA). Although brand equity can impact patronage intention, traditional brand equity may
not be appropriate for online businesses, including e-marketplaces. Therefore, the online retail/service (ORS) brand equity was applied in the extended TRA as an independent variable. Moreover, the current study also extended the TRA by integrating the effect of the country of origin (COO) as a moderator variable as there are limited findings regarding the foreignness of online retailers. Based on a
quantitative study, a questionnaire survey was employed to collect data from online shoppers in southern Thailand. A total of 399 questionnaires were analysed using Smart PLS 3. The study results indicate that attitude towards behaviour, subjective norm and ORS brand equity positively influence e-marketplace patronage intention.
However, the effect of COO does not influence e-marketplace patronage intention. Finally, the effect of COO plays a negative moderating role in the relationship between the attitude towards behaviour and e-marketplace patronage intention