Factors Affecting Consumer Attitudes Towards Online Shopping – A Study

11172 Business Research Methods

The Growing Popularity of Online Shopping

Online shopping is the way of purchasing merchandise and enterprises from shippers who sell on the online platform. Customers can visit the web stores from any place of their homes and shop as they sit before the electronic applications like mobiles, pc, tab, etc. Internet shopping has become one of the mainstream routes for different buyers. This new creative way not just brings an extraordinary number and wide scope of product to customers but also this it offers a tremendous market and various business openings.

It is important to find the best factors that influences the web buy or online shopping.

India is becoming a booming platform for e-commerce business models; the country already reported 65% growth in retail e-commerce business in 2015-2016 (Kumar, 2019). There is an increasing demand for online purchases compared to traditional purchases in today’s world. Thus, the research aims how the mindset of consumers changes from traditional to online marketing.

The rapid developments in the changing technologies directly affect the consumer’s buying behavior. With the advancement of technology, online shopping has become popular among people, and they prefer online purchasing of a product rather going for traditional purchasing (Jillian, 2020). The consumer can choose the products and shopping style in a 24-hour e-trade environment. Thus, the significance of the study is that to understand the changes in the mindset of the individual from traditional to online marketing. The objective of the research paper is to explore customers’ attitude towards online shopping.

As availability of internet is the most important factor of using online shopping as there cannot be any purchases and use online platforms without internet, so it is important to understand the internet facilities in both developed countries and throughout the world. Around 4.66 billion people were internet users who were active as of October 2020, comprising of 59 percent of the global population.

Due to mobile it has become very easy to get internet access in entire world as mobile internet is consisted of around 91 percent of the total users of internet.

Percentage of global population accessing the internet from 2016 to 2019 taken from Statista.

Fig.1.1 Global population accessing the internet from 2016 to 2019

Having more than 560 million internet users in India, India has become second- largest online market all over the world, ranked behind China. It has been calculated that by 2023, there will be more than 650 million internet users in the country. With so large base of users of internet users, the penetration rate of internet stood in the country to be 50 percent in 2020. This will make sense that half of the 1.37 billion Indians will have the access of the internet. As seen in the above chart there has been steady and constant increase in internet users over the years from 2016 to 2020 for both world internet rate and for the developed countries.

There are certain benefits and advantages of online shopping from the viewpoint of buyers and in correlation with conventional shopping. The foremost thing is convenience which means that the buyers can make purchases staying at any places and location according to their conveniences having internet available at that location. The usage on online shopping is time saving which means that they do not have to go to any shops or outlets, or wait for the time when the outlet is open, or outlets do not open for whole 24 hrs. while online shopping can be made at any moment of time throughout 24*7 if the server is not down. The website design plays a big role in affecting the decision making of the buyers as it is the interface of what the buyers are looking for. If it is much more attractive and easier for buyers to follow the entire process there is more chances of making the buy. The foremost thing of online buyers is looking into the rating scale and comments made by the previous buyers, which mostly affects the buying rate of the customer. If the consumer rating is more and there are more buyers there is always higher chances of making the buy. Also, brand loyalty and application platform loyalty play a key role in buying the product. There is more chances of customers coming into the website which they are much more aware. For example, here in India is Flipkart, Amazon which are the two giants for online platforms to make a buy and they makes a tough competition through prices, promotions, branding, different other strategies and their customer bases is increasing day by day. The way these online giants provides different offers and cut in the prices makes a huge customer attraction to go for online purchases as offline outlets find it difficult to provide this much offers as they have to take the operation cost and online platforms completely cuts off the extra costs which reduces the price. Security is the key factor that decides the buying behavior of the online shopping.

The Impact of Technology on Consumer Behavior

There is huge exploration which is accessible on web-based shopping on the world. But there is yet a requirement for closer loo for online shopping as there might be still changes in consumer’s perception to online shopping as there is increasing rate of internet users all over the world and changes in the mindset of customers as an impact of covid 19 pandemic.

The reason behind making this is to having a closer look at the factors behind making a purchase of online shopping rather than going from traditional based shopping by breaking down the factors into smaller parts. The main question to be asked” What factors impact the buyers to make purchase for online shopping?”.

Problem Statement – It’s important to know the factors which mostly affects consumer’s attitude to go for online shopping such that companies can highlight of those factors and try to work on those factors which are least ranked with the feedback from the people taken into consideration through questionnaire.

The study aims to have a closer look at the factors that are dependent and create interest to make purchases for online shopping in Delhi. The focuses would be how the e- commerce sector can perform better in-depth making data collection at a a particular location and make better analysis with the data such that they can come to a proper conclusion. The covid 19 has completely changed the scenario how online shopping used to be made and lot others factors have come into picture which might impact the way of making shopping online based. Some of which can be increased rated of unemployment, the economic and GDP downfall affecting the entire countries and reducing the consumer consumption rate as average salary has been reduced as many sectors and industries has been severely affected. The positive correlation is that as covid has made restrictions by the government for which people used to prefer not to go outside and making shopping staying inside their home For which there  had been huge increase by persons who would not have make shopping from online platforms but  not they are bound to do so with no other options which has given rise of several others products of online shopping which are daily required like dairy products, vegetables, fish and meat and many other products as people did not prefer to go to market as there are risk involved to spreading coronavirus if they went outside. So lot things has been changed from the traditional way of doing online shopping. There has been also some mergers and acquisition in recent times. Also, it needs to be understood that in spite of heavy losses in different sectors market leaders like Amazon and Walmart acquired Flipkart has been able to make huge incomes and revenues in spite of heavy downfall in most of the markets in India and losses but the e-commerce has made boom in the year 2020. Thus, the e- commerce sectors need to completely look into this taking all the factors into consideration and coming into the complete solution where there is scope to improve and which ultimately increase revenue for the company and create an edge over offline markets and its online competitors.

The Importance of Internet Availability for Online Shopping

The limitations of the study are: –

1. There can be people who have hurried with the google survey without reading the questions properly or entirely.
2. There can be people who might generate different meaning of the questions being provided in questionnaire or ask manually.
3. There can be people who might not find differences between the questions being asked to them and it might look similar because these things happen when some n depth study is being made there are questions which are quite similar with slight change in differences between them.
4. If the respondents are quite less it will be difficult to come to a proper conclusion because that amount of data might not provide a true sense of the interpretations and the sample size should be quite high as expected by the researcher to make some kind of interpretations from the data set. 

Fig. 3.1 Diagram Showing the Independent and dependent Variables of the research

i. A paper by Akroush & Al-Debei, (2015) related to the integrated model of factors affecting consumer attitudes towards online shopping. The purpose of this paper is to understand and examine the model of factors which are integrated that affects the attitudes towards online shopping in the location of Jordan. This research aper also introduces to the model of the roles that are perceived for website reputation, perceived website image, reputation of website and the trust that is being generated for the attitudes towards online shopping. Self-explanatory analysis has been used and confirmatory factor analysis used to make access of the research constructs, validity and making composite reliability also called as CR.  Structura path model has also been used to test the model of research proposed and hypothesis testing being conducted. The findings from this paper is that it indicates the perceived website reputations, perceived website image, relative advantages and truest are te factors which are directly or indirectly involved in affecting the decision making of the consumers to make purchases in online shopping. Perceived website and relative advantage play a key role in the online shopping attitudes that are directly being caused. It is also found by the author that 26 percent of the changes in online shopping attitudes are directly caused by trust, relative advantage and website image perceived.

ii. A paper by Li, Chung, Doreen, & Fiore, (2017) where the title of the study is the factors affecting current users’ attitude for e- auctions in China. The purpose of this study is to understand the factors that impact the attitude for e- auctions for China users. The influential factors identified are connection speed and economic gain which are also identified.

iii. A paper by Makhitha, & Ngobeni, K. (2021) which highlights on the online shopping adoption that has been rising in South Africa (SA). There have been still a lot of customers who are still no looking to buy through online mode by knowing some risks that are associated with it.  Though the internet users have increased a lot and is widely accessible by most of te the South African Consumers. The study is related to the determining the risk factors of consumer ‘s attitude in making online shopping in SA. It also found that there is no effect of gender with the relationship of risks and attitude of online shopping. There has been moderate relationship found for age on security, privacy risks. relationship between products and attitude having towards online shopping. In conclusion it is found that security risk factors and privacy mostly influence the attitude towards online shopping. Thus, the marketers can highlight on these factors to draw more attention towards online shopping.

iv. A research paper by Agag & El-Masry, (2017) makes analysis on model of antecedent shaving consumer experience, reputation, website size perceived, usefulness perceived, ease to use it and quality of website which determines the and prediction made for consumers attitude towards online shopping.

Benefits and Advantages of Online Shopping

Conclusion

From the above literature reviews it is concluded that from several researches conducted it has found that there are several factors that are associated to the attitude towards online shopping such as consumer experience, reputation, website size perceived, usefulness perceived, ease to use it and quality of website.

The research is conducted to understand Consumer’s attitude towards online shopping is descriptive statistics research because research just wants to draw a picture of our topic on factors there is influence of consumers to shop online mode.

The questionnaire is nicely designed to meet the requirements that are required of the research. The questions are being taken from previous literature review on Consumer’ attitudes towards online shopping to make validation of the research and some of the questions are made self-structured such that it can cover the entire of research problems. The tool that will be used for data analysis is by 5 Point Likert Scale where (1=Strongly Disagree, 2=Disagree, 3=Uncertain / Not applicable, 4=agree, 5=Strongly Agree).

To achieve the above objectives being formed, Random Sampling technique will be used by randomly intercepting and by administering fully structured questionnaires to target respondents by questionnaires. The target participants are from Delhi, India.

Mean And Ranking of Questions Asked

The mean values can be calculated to understand the mean value of the Likert scale provided by the respondents. This will provide the true sense of the data. After calculating the mean value of the questions being asked a ranking can be provided with one being the highest ranking with one having the highest mean values.

Hypothesis 1

Null Hypothesis (H01): There is no significant relationship between Convenience and attitude towards online shopping.

Alt Hypothesis (H11): There is significant relationship between Convenience and attitude towards online shopping.

Hypothesis 2

Null Hypothesis (H02): There is no significant relationship between website design/ features and attitude towards online shopping.

Alt Hypothesis (H12): There is significant relationship between website design/ features and attitude towards online shopping.

Hypothesis 3

Null Hypothesis (H03): There is no significant relationship between time saving and attitude towards online shopping.

Alt Hypothesis (H14): There is significant relationship between time saving and attitude towards online shopping. 

Hypothesis 4

Null Hypothesis (H03): There is no significant relationship between security and attitude towards online shopping.

Alt Hypothesis (H14): There is significant relationship between security and attitude towards online shopping.

To understand the significance of the hypothesis testing   regression analysis can be conducted to find whether the hypothesis have significant relationship or not by looking into the p value and the significance values. Other than this correlation can be performed to understand the relationship between the two variables for example when the security rating is high then whether there is higher chances to go for online shopping or not. Correlation discusses on the relationship of the two variables of dependent and independent variables. Also, regression equation can be made with customer’s attitude towards online shopping being the dependent variable and convenience, time saving, website design/ features and security being the independent variables.

The target audiences have not been decided yet but in Delhi. There are no proper bindings of age group as any age group can go to buy online purchases.          

The timeframe that has been allocated and for appropriate processing will be approx. 2 months. Prior to that one month required for permission for data collection.

Conclusion

Thus, after conducting the regression analysis, correlation, regression equation and mean of the variables it will be able to find which hypothesis have significant relationship of the dependent and independent variables, how much there is relationship is there between the dependent variables and the independent variables and ultimately regression equation can be formed. Thus, all this analysis will help to understand the consumer’s perception online shopping after the covid impact.

References

Agag, & El-Masry, A. A. (2017). Why Do Consumers Trust Online Travel Websites? Drivers and Outcomes of Consumer Trust toward Online Travel Websites. Journal of Travel Research, 56(3), 347–369. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287516643185

Akroush, & Al-Debei, M. M. (2015). An integrated model of factors affecting consumer attitudes towards online shopping. Business Process Management Journal, 21(6), 1353–1376. https://doi.org/10.1108/BPMJ-02-2015-0022

Jalilian, F., Mirzaei-Alavijeh, M., Ahmadpanah, M., Mostafaei, S., Kargar, M., Pirouzeh, R., & Brand, S. (2020). Extension of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) to predict patterns of marijuana use among young Iranian adults. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(6),

Kumar, A. (2019). Exploring young adults e-waste recycling behaviour using an extended theory of planned behaviour model: A cross-cultural study. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 141, 378-389.

Li, Chung, T.-L. (Doreen), & Fiore, A. M. (2017). Factors affecting current users’ attitude towards e-auctions in China: An extended TAM study. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 34, 19–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2016.09.003

Makhitha, & Ngobeni, K. (2021). The influence of demographic factors on perceived risks affecting attitude towards online shopping. South African Journal of Information Management, 23(1), e1–e9. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajim.v23i1.1283

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