Online Shopping Affects Consumers’ Behavior

This research explores the impact of online shopping on consumer behavior and purchasing decisions. It examines the role of user-generated content, perceived usefulness, and credibility in influencing consumer behavior. The study aims to evaluate online shopping behavior, understand the impact of new technology on consumer behavior, and explore how firms can utilize technology to influence consumer purchasing decisions.

It can be said that online shopping majorly affects the purchase intentions
of the consumers. The online shopping portals facilitates consumer with
various feedback and need analysis that helps consumer to analyze the
product thoroughly (Pantano & Pietro, 2012). Moreover, it caters to the
new opportunities and new technological perspective towards to the
purchased products. In the competitive world, competition is the only
thing which makes every single firm innovative and creative in a way it
works. Innovation not only fulfils the need of the people but also helps in
shaping a new consumer demand with enhancing the life style (Awan &
Zuriat-ul-Zahra, 2014, p. 93).
The research findings will help the company owners to evaluate the
impact of social media in influencing consumer behavioral changes in
terms of their purchasing decisions. It is being most important source in
today’s technological world where everybody will go and check the
reviews of a product before purchasing the same.
And more important to this is that consumers even believe that whatever
information is given online is more or less accurate and it guides in right
direction. Perceived credibility is a combination of perceived
trustworthiness and expertise. Perceived usefulness is belief on an
individual decides that the product or a review is useful for me. perceived
risk is when an individual finds it risky. All three factors are affecting the
behaviour and purchase intention of anindividual.
There is one book that has been written on showing the process of decision making of an individual in relation to
culture, diversity, social class influences, psychographic factors and social influences (Katawetawaraks and Wang,
2011). Moreover, the authors found out that the consumers are engaged in their goal-relevant behaviour when they
are motivated by certain aspects such as technology, cost and quality among others (Hoyer & MacInnis, 2008).
It has even being discussed that how globalization has been affecting the way things are being purchased and sold
(De Mooji, 2011). As per Dr Nar wal, digitization has introduced the concept of internet marketing and e-
consumer behavior which has become a developmental milestone in the contemporary global market. The article
details the role of smart phones and the internet in shaping and influencing consumer behaviour particularly in
terms of making purchasing decisions (Uppal, 2015).
There are several factors such as ease of order, home delivery, cost effectiveness, and time saving which makes
the consumer to shop online. Each and every brand will be available at one stop rather than visiting different
stores. It is considered as the one stop solution for people ordering from home. Moreover, the feedback reviews
will even satisfy an individual that whatever he or she is going to buy is of good quality and quantity. The social
proof and product details/ actual photos will give more confidence to the consumer for purchasing particular
product online (Ioanas & Stoica (2014).
Based on the several studies, it has been observed that the importance of ecommerce is increasing continuously; as
a result there are chances that number of e-commerce stores will raise, too. such as Amazon has come up with its
store where products are kept for selling and automatic billing has kept just as other retail outlet. This intends to
satisfy few orthodox customers who is skeptical towards purchasing things online. They feel like buying things
only when they take product in their hand. the sector is going to be much competitive with offline and online
market. Moreover, comparison of product range on websites permit user to analyze the most competitive and
favorable product in the market. Hence, it is getting difficult for a ecommerce business to retain customers
(Buchko, 2018).
Despite having attractive sales growth rates, facts depicts that almost 70% individuals of the population tend to
search products online. They show positive intention to buy the product but somehow they could not convert in to
productive customers of the company. The conversion ratio from initiating to search till attempting to buy the
product actually is approx. 3% according to Bosten group. Few of the author even argue that even though having
such high traffic on website, the revenue of the site is not substantially increasing. However, it was estimated that
business worldwide lost approximately $6.1 billion in 2000 due to failed purchase attempts (Chiang, Dholakia, &
Westin, Conceptual Framework of Online Consumer Behavio).
Online purchase intention defined as a purpose to buy the product. There are several factors which affect the
behaviour of an individual. Purchase intention describes as a readiness to stick with the product. Perceived
usefulness and credibility convinces person to opt for that particular product.. Hence all 3 are related. Moreover
its has been observed that the entire hypothesis related to the perceived quality and perceived credibility and its
influence to purchase intention are positive. Where each hypothesis shows that all three variables are elated with
each other.
Research design
To understand consumer’s attitude toward using online shopping portals as a shopping tool, an explanatory
approach will be used in this study. A survey research will be conducted to collect required information to
answer the questions and objectives of the research. This questionnaire will help us to gather significant
amount of information from the population during a specific period of time (Saunders et al, 2007).
Therefore, this study will follow a quantitative approach to statistically analyze the collected data in order
to reach the purpose of the study
Primary data collection:
The primary data will be collected offline or online with the help of questionnaire. The questionnaire will
have few sentences to rate which enables us to evaluate the correlation amongst the variables. The sample
will be a combination of male and female in order to expand perspectives on the impact of online shopping
on consumer behaviour based on gender. Consumers will be surveyed who are currently shopping from
online and planning to buy produ cts onine.
Secondary data collection
For the secondary data, the information is collected from the review of related literature from different
sources such as academic journals, books and related websites. Moreover, personal experience and
judgments can also be included in the research as a part of secondary data collection.
Data Analysis
The data will be analyzed and calculated on the basis of survey. Graphs and tables will be prepared to
correlate the variables with each other. Overall few of the descriptive tools will be used to summarize the
data. The research will consider the sample size of 30 respondents using the non-probability technique of
purposive sampling. It is believed that Purposive sampling is better than random sampling in practical field
circumstances (Tongco, 2007).
Resources
As the questionnaire will be sent online, there will not be any cost involved with the same. However, in
future we may have to go to customer to ask about their preferences and requirement for online shopping as
part of primary research.
The research will be based on the information from 30 samples which may not represent the entire
population. Moreover, the questionnaires are being filled by taking consent of the participants and
keeping in mind that information must be confidential and will be used in the purpose of this research
only.
Online Shopping Affects Consumers’ Behavior
(Towards purchase intention and decision making process)
Background to theresearch
Rationale of theResearch
As a result of technological revolution, consumer preferences are
constantly changing and hence it is substantially affecting the way how
firms are being managed and operated. There are several factors affecting
the purchasing intentions of a consumer such as pricing, functioning,
feedback, online discounts etc. Here, we would majorly focus on online
shopping portals and social media websites (Mittal, 2013).
Research Question
What is the impact of user generated contents on online purchase
intention? How perceived usefulness or credibility the affects the
consumer behaviour while purchasing online?
Research Objectives
As such, the study aims to address the following specific objectives:
To evaluate the online shopping behaviour of an individual
To discover the function of new technology that impacts the consumer
behavior.
To comprehend how new technology can be utilized by the firms in order
to influence the consumer purchasing decisions.
Hypothesis Testing
H0: online shopping affects the consumer behavior and purchasing
intention of an individual
H1: online shopping does not affect the consumer behavior and
purchasing intention of an individual
Literature Review
This article features the effect of internet shopping in alignment with the client buying conduct. The research
makes more emphasis on the role of online media in the purchasing processes. It is important to evaluate the web
based shopping in today's world in order to assess the aspects of promoting the products (Narwal and
Sachdeva,2013). There are distinctive studies which assess the impacts of online shopping on an individual with
respect to its productivity, risk, devotion and trust (Mittal, 2013).
ConceptualFramework
The conceptual framework assesses the factors involved in the consumer product purchasing processes and
research. Moreover it asses the decision making process that consumer tend to follow while shopping online.
Research Methodology
Conceptual framework
Limitation and ethical consideration in theresearch
Figure1
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