Internet Consumer’s Behavior under the cyber ‘lemon’:The Case from the Internet Markets in China

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 behaviour under the cyber ‘lemon’. With the view from CAS (complex adaptive system) theory, the paper builds up e-consumer’s behaviors model that based on Akerlof’s ‘lemon’ model and analyzes the issue stemming from the Internet markets in China. The thesis considers that the cyber ‘lemons’ in China is more serious than other developed countries, because there are many special influencing factors. This paper put forward the ideas eliminating or avoid the cyber market. Compared to the physical market, we need some particular approaches to eliminate the cyber ‘lemons’ such as renting reputation, uniting brand and quality-intermediates. Some non-economic approaches such as law, ethics and trust in Internet market are need also.