On April 22, 2022, Professor Ziqiong Zhang, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor of the School of Economics and Management of Harbin Institute of Technology, was invited to participate in the fifth frontier forum for Digital Technology and Finance. She conducted an online lecture on the theme of "Empirical Research on Customers' Online Shopping Habits and Their Impact: Early Bird and Late Owl". The forum was presided over by Professor Dawei Jin, Dean of the School of Information and Safety Engineering, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law and Co-Director of the Innovation and Talent Base for Digital Technology and Finance. The researchers of the Base attended the lecture.

At the beginning of the lecture, Professor Dawei Jin introduced Professor Zhang to the participants and expressed his sincere gratitude to Professor Zhang for giving the lecture during her busy schedule.

First of all, Professor Zhang introduced the concept of habits through some examples in daily life, proposing that time is one of the most important environmental factors that trigger the formation of behavioral habits, and defining shopping habits as shopping habits that consumers exhibit at specific times of the day (STH). Second, three hypotheses are proposed: (1) Consumers tend to shop in a specific time period and make recurring online purchases in the same time period. (2) Consumers who shop within the customary time will increase shopping satisfaction. (3) After STH, there is a negative correlation with the time interval from this purchase to the next purchase. Finally, models and hypotheses are validated through brilliant arguments and research designs.

After Professor Zhang's wonderful report, the participants and Professor Zhang carried out active academic exchanges. In response to the question of how to set out a topic as time habit of online shopping, Professor Zhang pointed out that on the one hand, more data can be obtained through the internet for big data analysis; on the other hand, the unique time data is not available on other websites, which can increase the novelty of research. Therefore, Professor Zhang concluded that in scientific research, it is not only necessary to pay attention to the frontier knowledge related to the field in existing literature, but also to absorb news reports and information outside the literature to excavate research questions. In this way, we can seize the opportunity after the generation of an idea, capture, and feedback in time, and then carry out in-depth research in the follow-up. Professor Zhang also gave detailed answers to questions such as "whether the timeline can be introduced into the online advertisement since the effect of recommendation in the morning and the evening might be different", and "what are the indicators that measure the variable of consumer satisfaction".

At the end of the meeting, Professor Dawei Jin once again thanked Professor Zhang for her wonderful sharing, and sincerely invited her to carry out offline lectures after the pandemic!

Speaker Introduction

Zhaohua Wang, Ph.D. in Management, Professor, Doctoral Supervisor, Distinguished Professor of the “Changjiang Scholars Award Program” of the Ministry of Education, winner of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, winner of the “China Youth Science and Technology Award”, and a national candidate for the “Hundred Thousand Talents Project”, enjoys the special government allowance of the State Council, and is currently the Dean of the School of Management and Economics of Beijing Institute of Technology. He has been engaged in research in the fields of resource and environmental management, intelligent decision-making and sustainable development policy modeling for a long time. 

Frontier Forum for Digital Technology and Finance

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic acceleration in a digital revolution in economic sectors and a rapid adoption of the new generation of information technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, big data, etc. These technologies effectively set off the digital economy. It has become a key driving force in creating global economic growth, improving the modernization level of governance capabilities, and promoting high-quality economic development in China. In particular, digital finance is the most important part of the digital economy. To explore the development direction of the cross-integration of digital technology and finance, the Innovation and Talent Base for Digital Technology and Finance is hosting the “Frontier Forum for Digital Technology and Finance”, in collaboration with the School of Finance, Wenlan School of Business, Economics School, School of Information and Safety Engineering, School of Statistics and Mathematics, School of Public Finance and Taxation of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL). This lecture series will invite the well-known scholars at home and abroad in digital technology, digital economy, digital finance, and other related fields as guest speakers, providing an open and cutting-edge academic exchange platform for interdisciplinary research on digital technology and finance.