Factors Influencing Online Shopping Behaviour: A Study of Visakhapatnam Virtual Market

What is it about?

The aim of the study is to identify the factors influencing online consumer behavior while shopping in a virtual market. The study attempts to identify the factors with respect to the buying process of online consumers. The various factors influencing the online shopping in three stages i.e. pre-shopping, during-shopping and post-shopping are identified from the review of existing literature. The online consumer expectations towards all these factors are recorded on a five-point scale with a structured questionnaire from a sample of 600 online shoppers in the city of Visakhapatnam who performs online shopping. These factors are analyzed by applying the statistical tool factor analysis in order to determine most influencing online shopping factors so that the online retailers can design appropriate marketing mix and retail mix strategies to attract and retain the online shoppers.

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Why is it important?

Plenty of research studies are available in retail consumer behaviour but there are few studies available in online consumer behaviour. A good number of studies are available in e-commerce and electronic retailing domain but those studies are only concentrated either on customer expectations or satisfactions/perceptions of Indian customers. But the studies that discuss the factors affecting online consumer bahaviour are missing. During the online consumer decision making process, a customer considers a number of online outlets to shop. But after evaluating them basing on certain decision attributes, the customer selects only one website to do shopping. This study concentrates on those decision factors that make consumer to choose the retail website.

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