research papers on online buying

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Changing trends of consumers' online buying behavior during covid-19 pandemic with moderating role of payment mode and gender.

• 1 Management Studies Department, Bahria University, Karachi, Pakistan
• 2 Faculty of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Hamdard University, Karachi, Pakistan

It was not long ago when technological emergence fundamentally changed the landscape of global businesses. Following that, business operations started shifting away from traditional to advance digitalized processes. These digitalized processes gave a further boost to the e-commerce industry, making the online environment more competitive. Despite the growing trend, there has always been a consumer market that is not involved in online shopping, and this gap is huge when it comes to consumers from developing countries, specifically Pakistan. On contrary, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has brought drastic changes to the way consumers used to form their intention and behave toward digitalized solutions in pre COVID-19 times. Evidence shows that the global e-commerce industry has touched phenomenal growth during COVID-19, whereas Pakistan's e-commerce industry still holds a huge potential and has not fully boomed yet. These facts pave new avenues for marketers to cater to this consumer market for long-term growth. Hence, the study provides insights into how consumers' online buying behavior has transformed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of Pakistan. The study presents a framework based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Furthermore, the moderating role of gender and payment mode has also been examined. For the analysis of variables, the partial least squares (PLS) method was used to conduct structural equation modeling (SEM) by collecting data from 266 respondents. The results show a significant and positive impact of perceived benefits, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, and social influence on consumers' intention, but they also show an insignificant impact of gender and payment mode as a moderating variable on PEOU-BI and BI-AB, respectively. The results are of utmost significance for Pakistani businesses, marketers, and e-traders to streamline their business practices accordingly. Lastly, the proposed framework demonstrates new directions for future research to work upon.

Introduction

In developing countries like Pakistan, the Internet brought much convenience to businesses, specifically in the twenty-first century. Due to the current COVID 19 pandemic, there has been a drastic change in the way consumers have shifted toward online buying. It is evident that post-COVID circumstances have left a significant impact on the e-commerce industry ( Rashid et al., 2022 ). This has caused global e-commerce sales projection to reach $7.4 trillion by 2025 ( Statista, 2022 ). On the contrary, South Asian countries show a low share of just 1.4% in global e-commerce business compared to their population share in the world.

Pakistan's e-business has shown drastic improvements ever since the pandemic struck. As per SBP (FY20), registered e-commerce merchants have increased, and markets have expanded to Rs. 234.6 billion with 55.5% yearly. These situations have raised doubts about Pakistan's digital connectivity, which shows a huge potential for growth and untapped areas for e-traders in Pakistan. Despite these statistics, the e-commerce market in Pakistan is still in its infancy stage. It has been evident that there are a whole lot of consumer bases that are not involved in online shopping ( Ahmed et al., 2017 ). The reason for this lack of involvement in online shopping is unknown. Domestically, there is a research and development gap that causes inconsistency in theoretical and empirical evidence on factors that may shape an individual's online buying behavior in the Pakistani market. Therefore, it is pertinent to fill this gap by examining Pakistani consumers' psychological and behavioral beliefs. Globally, there has been plenty of research studies conducted proposing valuable conceptually, theoretically, and empirically tested frameworks that intend to explain antecedents of consumers' intentions toward online buying behavior.

These studies examined the online behavior of consumers in numerous dimensions and postulated perceptions behind online shopping behavior and attributes ( Jarvenpaa and Todd, 1996 ; Chang and Kannan, 2006 ), consumer information process styles, online store layouts, ( Park and Kim, 2003 ), behavioral and normative beliefs about technology adoption ( Karahanna et al., 1999 ; Limayem et al., 2001 ; Foucault and Scheufele, 2002 ) risks related to online shopping ( Jarvenpaa et al., 1999 ; Akhlaq and Ahmed, 2015 ; Haider and Nasir, 2016 ; Pappas, 2016 ), and technology-oriented factors affecting online purchase intention ( van der Heijden et al., 2003 ; Prashar et al., 2015 ).

Overall, the connotations of previous studies tended toward two dimensions: (a) “product and shopping attributes” that are customer-specific and (b) “technological attributes” that are website-/technology-specific. None of the available studies has covered integrated attributes of both dimensions “customer-specific” and “technology-specific” in a single framework to study insights of consumers' behaviors for online buying. Hence, there is a need to address underlying factors that may shape consumers' intention and actual behavior to opt for online purchases. Based on these arguments, the present study proposes a comprehensive framework comprised of factors impacting consumers' online buying behavior during the pandemic.

In this regard, the theoretical foundation of this study is built upon the Technology Acceptance Model ( Davis, 1989 ) (TAM), which is an extension of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) ( Ajzen, 1985 ). TAM is a widely used and highly influential model of user's acceptance of “technology.” As the present study examines the buying behavior of an online consumer, it tends to predict how consumers' perceived benefits, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, and social influence have an impact to form consumers' intention and behavior to purchase online.

The results of this study would be of interest to a diverse research audience, including the academia, marketers, advertisers, policymakers, governments, and businesses. For the academia, new theoretical literature has been presented with the inclusion of potent constructs obtained from the technological model (TAM), psychological, and behavioral model (TPB) along with the normative notion of social influence on consumers' behavioral intention and behavior. Marketers may devise strategies to encourage their consumers to opt for online purchases, whereas advertisers may use appealing and creative content to promote them. In addition, policymakers may enact laws to encourage e-trading, and the government may facilitate Pakistani e-traders by releasing funds to build and maintain an advanced IT infrastructure. Lastly, the study would be of optimum significance for businesses that may work on their website designs and processes and maintain a website infrastructure to aid consumers according to their changing shopping preferences.

Literature Review

Perceived benefits and behavioral intentions.

Previous studies have provided many findings and devoted considerably to delivering benefits to consumers to stimulate their shopping intentions. Research has clearly defined the concept of consumer benefits and the significance of hedonic and utilitarian benefits for them ( Babin et al., 1994 ; Holbrook, 1994 ; Jones et al., 2006 ; Wang et al., 2013 ). Consumers derive practical benefits from the performance of a product or a service after achieving a task ( Kim, 2002 ). Furthermore, recent studies conducted by Widyastuti et al. (2020) stated the perception of perceived benefits, whereas Yew and Kamarulzaman (2020) and Bangkit et al. (2022) found a significant positive impact of perceived benefits on online consumer behavior. In the same line, a study conducted by Jeong et al. (2003) on “online shoppers of the hotel industry” found that for customers, the most critical factor that influences their “behavior intention” is the satisfaction level of available information, dimensions, and attributes provided by a website. Chang and Kannan (2006) stated in their study that website quality has positively influenced consumers' purchase intention. Bai et al. (2008) found significantly positive empirical results in online usability, functionality, customer satisfaction, and behavior intentions. The study further stated that consumers perceive all these dimensions as valued, increasing their purchase intentions. As Babin and Babin (2001) stated that consumers who efficiently complete shopping tasks would show stronger repeated purchase intentions.

In addition, Teo (2002) , Xia et al. (2008) , Nazir et al. (2012) , and Manu and Fuad (2022) shared similar findings where consumers derive attributes of perceived benefits through online shopping; it provides the required information on a product or a service, saves time, low prices, and convenience in the availability of products that are not locally available. Online shopping is getting popular in Pakistan because of its ease of use and the comfort it brings to consumers without much effort ( Iqbal and Hunjra, 2012 ). Furthermore, research highlights that consumers seek internet shopping valuable for price reviews and comparisons, search and deal evaluation convenience, low prices, selection variety, information on product features, latest awareness of brands and fashion trends ( Sorce et al., 2005 ; Zhou and Zhang, 2007 ; Jiang et al., 2013 ; Jhamb and Gupta, 2016 ). Teo (2006) indicates that consumers expect benefits like sufficient product information, convenience, online security, and easy contact with vendors. Moreover, while shopping online, consumers also expect prompt delivery of a product, a reliable supply chain, and return transaction policies ( Dawn and Kar, 2011 ).

H1: Perceived benefits significantly impact the behavioral intention for online purchases.

Moderating Role of Gender

In various marketing and consumer behaviors, demographic variables, specifically the impact of gender, have been taken into different contexts. In some studies, overall demographics are used as antecedents of TAM variables ( Porter and Donthu, 2006 ). Others have used them to moderate the effect of the predictor and criterion relationship in technological acceptance ( Chang and Kannan, 2006 ). Previously, research studies have accepted that there is a significant role of gender in technology acceptance ( Yousafzai and Yani-de-Soriano, 2012 ); a study further shows that men have a more strong and significant impact on perceived usefulness and behavioral intention in relation to technology acceptance and women have more impact on perceived ease of use and behavioral intention. This study is in line with Davis (1989) , Clegg and Trayhurn (2000) , and Venkatesh et al. (2003) . In conclusion, it has been argued that men are more tech-savvy, task-oriented and adopt technology to avail themselves benefits of online shopping. However, for acceptance of technology, women tend to show more computer anxiety than men ( Venkatesh and Morris, 2000 ; Karavidas et al., 2005 ; Zhang, 2005 ).

H2: Gender moderates the effect of perceived benefits on the behavioral intention for online purchase.

H3: Gender moderates the effect of perceived ease of use on the behavioral intention for online purchase.

Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and Behavioral Intention (BI)

Perceived ease of use is best defined by Davis (1989 , 1993) as one of TAM's basic constructs. PEOU is defined as a degree to which a person believes using a particular system is effortless ( Davis, 1989 ). Al-Azzam and Fattah (2014) postulated that perceived ease of use refers to a consumer who believes that using the Internet for shopping is free of effort and involves minimal friction in using and handling websites. Apart from the vital role of “ease of use” in technology acceptance, it has also been proposed for website usability and efficiency while shopping online ( Monsuwe et al., 2004 ). Considering these findings, it can be claimed that if there is an ease in usage and effortlessness in handling technology, consumers are more likely to adopt a system while purchasing online. Hence, one's intention to purchase online increases ( Venkatesh, 2000 ; Xia et al., 2008 ). Many other researchers have confirmed a strong sign and a direct relationship between perceived ease of use and the behavioral intention of a person ( Teo et al., 1999 ; Venkatesh and Bala, 2008 ; Ingham et al., 2015 ).

The study further implies that if a consumer has an increased experience, they adjust themselves to system-specific ease of use and reflect on their interaction with repeated usage of the system, which influences the behavioral intention to shop online. Few latent dimensions merely shape “ease of use” including site characteristics, navigation, and download speed ( Zeithmal et al., 2002 ). However, the most significant role in shaping “ease of use” is played by two dimensions elaborated by Venkatesh (2000) ; these include computer self-efficacy, computer anxiety, and computer playfulness; “computer self-efficacy” relates to the general use of computer or skills needed to operate a system; “computer anxiety” refers to a person's fear of using a computer when required, whereas “computer playfulness” is a degree to which a consumer's cognitive ability makes them feel less effortful and underestimates the complexity of system usage for online interaction. Increased usage experience contributes to unique attributes of perceived enjoyment concerning user system specification; it makes a more enjoyable experience for users. ( Venkatesh, 2000 ; Monsuwe et al., 2004 ).

H4: PEOU significantly impacts behavioral intention for online purchase.

Perceived Enjoyment (PE) and Behavioral Intention (BI)

Researchers have explained enjoyment as how online shopping is perceived to be enjoyable or fun for a consumer. Various researchers have theoretically and empirically proved the role of intrinsic motivation in online shopping ( Davis et al., 1992 ; Venkatesh and Speier, 1999 ; Venkatesh, xbib2000 ). Intrinsic motivation has been taken as a construct of perceived enjoyment in many studies ( Monsuwe et al., 2004 ). Davis et al. (1992) introduced the third belief in TAM, perceived enjoyment. He proposed that perceived enjoyment directly impacts the behavioral intention of an online consumer. In addition, studies conducted in the past two decades have shed some light to state the role of perceived enjoyment in the behavioral intention of a consumer ( Koufaris, 2002 ; Cyr et al., 2006 ; Chang and Chen, 2008 ; Marza et al., 2019 ; Bangkit et al., 2022 ). Triandis (1980) reports that emotions like fun, joy, and pleasure influences human behavior. According to self-determination theory ( Deci, 1975 ), if a person is intrinsically involved in online shopping and personally determined, they enjoy doing it. Kuswanto et al. (2019) investigated variables impacting the online behavior of university students in Indonesia and highlighted that the online shopping behavior of consumers significantly gets influenced by enjoyment, social influence, and perceived risk.

Furthermore, a study conducted by Akhlaq and Ahmed (2015) has also proposed perceived enjoyment as a significant construct backed by an intrinsic motivation that positively impacts consumers' intention to shop online. Findings on Pakistani consumers reported by Cheema et al. (2013) show that perceived enjoyment has a significant and positive impact on online shopping intention and holds a 42% contribution to the model. Apart from intrinsic motivations, another latent dimension, exploration and curiosity to use a system, is also prominent in investigating the online shopping context. The empirical evidence reported by Teo (2002) shows that interest in online browsing is related to curiosity about knowing various products and brands available to purchase online. According to Teo's study, around 50% of the respondents browsed even if they did not intend to purchase.

H5: Perceived enjoyment mediates the relationship between perceived ease of use and behavioral intention for online purchase.

Causal Nature of Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and Perceived Enjoyment (PE)

There are differences in research findings that confirm the causal relationship between perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment ( Sun and Zhang, 2006a , b ). In some studies, perceived enjoyment has been considered as an antecedent of perceived ease of use ( Venkatesh, 1999 , 2000 ; Agarwal and Karahanna, 2000 ; Venkatesh et al., 2002 ). In other studies, it has been confirmed as a consequence of perceived ease of use ( Deci, 1975 ; Davis et al., 1992 ; Teo et al., 1999 ; van der Heijden et al., 2003 ). It has been claimed that an easier-to-use system is more enjoyable ( Igbaria et al., 1995 ). For an empirical discussion of this inconsistent argument regarding the causal relationship between perceived ease of use and enjoyment, Sun and Zhang (2006a , b) conducted information system-based research in a utilitarian context using a covariance-based statistical method to find a causal relationship. They concluded that perceived enjoyment and perceived ease of use have overall dominance in the model in a utilitarian system environment. The present study aims to confirm this causal relationship by considering perceived enjoyment due to perceived ease of use. The study tends to measure a consumer's buying behavior via technology ( Davis et al., 1992 ; van der Heijden et al., 2003 ).

H6: Perceived ease of use significantly impacts perceived enjoyment for online purchase.

Social Influence (SI) and Behavioral Intention (BI)

“Social influence” (SI), an antecedent of the subjective norm (SN), is a crucial construct of TPB and TAM ( Davis, 1989 ) that has originated from the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) ( Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975 ). TRA states that a person's behavioral intention (BI) has a significant and positive relationship with subjective norms ( Karahanna et al., 1999 ). One's social circle may influence a person to behave in a particular manner ( Ajzen, 1985 ). According to classic internalization studies, when someone incorporates the referent's influence in adopting a system, the person perceives the referent's belief as their own belief ( Kelman, 1958 ; Warshaw, 1980 ). Wei et al. (2009) mentioned in their study Rogers (1995) ' proposition of social influence; he stated that social influence can be defined as two forms: mass media and interpersonal influence. Mass media or external influence includes newspapers, reports, academic journals, published articles, magazines, television, radio, and other applicable mediums, whereas interpersonal influence comes from family, peers, friends, social networks, and electronic word of mouth (EWOM) ( Bhattacherjee, 2000 ; LaRose and Eastin, 2002 ; Rao and Troshani, 2007 ; Pietro et al., 2012 ).

Venkatesh and Davis (2000) stated that people incorporate social influence to gain status and acceptance in their social setting. Studies by Ketabi et al. (2014) and Kuswanto et al. (2019) further highlighted the role of social norms and social influence on consumers, respectively; it has been stated that in certain situations the reference group of a person, specifically “friends,” strongly influences the behavior of an individual. In their qualitative study, Wani et al. (2016) also identified “social influence” and “e-word of mouth” as critical factors. Their study further elaborates that the opinions of consumers, peers, friends, and colleagues matter a lot while purchasing online. Even in the last shopping stage, just before check-out, if a consumer reads any comment about a product or a service, it undoubtedly impacts one's decision ( Park et al., 2011 ).

H7: Social influence significantly impacts behavioral intention for online purchase.

Behavioral Intention (BI) and Actual Behavior (AB)

Plenty of studies have used TPB and TAM to determine an individual's intention to engage in a particular behavior ( Ajzen, 1985 ; Pavlou and Marshall, 2002 ; Delafrooz et al., 2010 ; Tsai et al., 2011 ; Zaidi et al., 2014 ; Bauerová and Klepek, 2018 ). Behavioral intention is the focal point of TRA, TPB, and TAM. According to the extended TAM model postulated by Venkatesh and Davis (2000) , the relationship between intention to use and actual usage was significant and strongly mediated the effect of perceived benefits, perceived ease of use, and subjective norms on actual usage of an online consumer. Limayem and Hirt (2003) elaborated in their study that there are some “facilitating conditions” ( Triandis, 1979 ) that moderate the relationship between behavioral intention and actual behavior. Even if a person intends to act in a certain way, one cannot without those facilitating conditions. These conditions align with Ajzen's “perceived behavioral conditions,” but the point of difference is that Ajzen's perceived behavioral control is subjective, whereas Triandis' facilitating conditions are objective. In the present study, the behavioral intention was considered to examine the significance of perceived intentions of a person on actual buying behavior while purchasing online.

Payment Mode

According to a report by Yousuf (2018) [Asian Development Bank (ADB)], 95% of Pakistan's e-commerce transactions come from cash on delivery (COD), and the remaining 5% comes from electronic payment with debit/credit cards. Another study states that only 31% of Pakistani tend to pay online for shopping and that cybercrimes and lack of trust in payment systems are the main reasons for their choice. ( CIGI, 2017 ). An increase in the online payment rate includes uncertain security and privacy issues that may influence consumers' buying behavior in e-markets ( Pang et al., 2016 ). As Valois et al. (1988) stated, some factors may affect the strength of the relationship between intention and actual behavior. However, in the current perspective of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been stated by Pollak et al. (2022) that the market has become adaptable to non-standard situations within a short period. This implies that there have been specific changes observed in consumers' behaviors and preferences during crisis times. Considering the facts and figures on the “payment mode” of Pakistan's e-commerce and the overall concept of “facilitating conditions” from Triandis' theory, the study tends to imply that the “online payment method” (OPM) is a moderator to determine the impact of payment method on the relationship between intentions and actual behavior.

H8: Payment mode moderates the effect of behavioral intention on actual behavior for online purchase.

H9: Behavioral intention mediates the impact of perceived benefits, perceived ease of use, social influence, and perceived enjoyment on actual behavior for online purchase.

Based on hypotheses this study builds the framework to study four variables namely, perceived benefits, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, and social influence along with mediating role of behavioral intention, whereas moderating role of Gender and payment mode is also under examination for the study ( Figure 1 ).

Figure 1 . Theoretical framework.

Methodology

Instrument development.

This study conducted an online survey for data collection. In this regard, an adapted instrument from previous studies was used and tested for reliability and validation. Questionnaires were sent to respondents for collection of their responses on a five-point Likert scale, which ranged from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree). It is in line with previous studies conducted in the context of online consumer buying behavior ( Davis et al., 1992 ; van der Heijden et al., 2003 ; Sorce et al., 2005 ; Yang et al., 2015 ).

Furthermore, for unit analysis, eight items of perceived benefits were adapted from Teo (2002) , Swinyard and Smith (2003) , Sorce et al. (2005) , and Forsythe et al. (2006) . Five items of perceived ease of use were adapted from Gefen et al. (2003) and Cheema et al. (2013) . Four items of perceived enjoyment were adapted from Teo (2002) and Cheema et al. (2013) . Five items of social influence were adapted from Davis (1985) and Karaiskos et al. (2012) . Three items of behavior intention were adapted from Limayem and Hirt (2003) ) and Karaiskos et al. (2012) . In addition, three items of actual behavior were adapted from Karaiskos et al. (2012) . Lastly, the items of payment mode were adapted from Hasan and Gupta (2020) .

Furthermore, the questionnaires contain two sections; the first section contains demographic variables of an individual including age, gender, and education level, whereas the second section contains the independent, moderating, and mediating variables of the study.

Sample and Procedures

For data collection of the present study, 350 questionnaires were sent out to respondents who were online buyers. The questionnaires were developed with questions regarding whether respondents are online buyers, how long they have been into online buying, and what is the occurrence of their buying patterns. In addition, the questionnaire link shared with the respondents included a note stating that this study seeks responses from online buyers only and that respondents who were not online buyers were not required to record responses.

A self-administered questionnaire was sent out using “an online survey”. A questionnaire link was sent out to the respondents via social media platforms and email. Out of 350, a total of 266 responses were received, and no data were missing from the 266 responses as the questionnaires were designed by utilizing close-ended questions to choose from the list, and fields were marked required. According to the gender category, of those who participated in the research, 51.5% were men and 48.5% were women. The remaining demographic details are shown in Table 1 .

Table 1 . Respondents' profile.

Evaluation Method

The partial least squares (PLS) method was used to conduct the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to evaluate the present study. Hair et al. (2012) stated that PLS is a second-generation evaluation technique that measures and tests structural modeling, component factor analysis (CFA), and regression. Thus, extensive pre-analysis and data validation were conducted using Smart-PLS for the present study.

Result Analysis

Common method bias.

Kock (2015) stated that the occurrence of variance inflator factor (VIF) should be less than or equal to 3.3. For this study, all VIF values were in the range of 1.67- 2.6, showing that the model was considered free of common method bias because no such thing was observed. To further testify the model, Harman's single-factor test ( Podsakoff and Lee, 2003 ) was conducted to examine if the model was free from common method biases. According to the requirement, if the total variance extracted by one factor exceeds 50%, this shows the presence of common method biases in the study. However, the present study shows that the total variance extracted by one aspect is 27.288, less than 50%. Also, the inter-correlation of all the constructs of this study is less than 0.9 ( Pavlou and El Sawy, 2006 ). Hence, the outcomes indicate that common method bias is not an issue in this study.

Measurement Model

An assessment of reliability and validity was conducted to evaluate and reduce measurement errors. It has been stated as a required test to reduce measurement errors while assessing for internal consistency, discriminant, and convergent validities ( Hair et al., 2012 ). Furthermore, these tests have been evaluated by assessing the values of Cronbach's alpha (α), factor loadings, average variance extracted (AVE), and composite reliability (CR). The acceptable value of CFA should be 0.7 at minimum ( Hair et al., 2012 ). Along similar lines, the present study shows that the CFA values are above 0.7 and are acceptable to show the internal consistency of the data ( Table 2 ). Furthermore, for all the constructs, the values of AVE and CR are above 0.5 and 0.8, respectively ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ); these values show acceptable convergent validity. Table 2 shows that Cronbach's alpha, CR, and AVE of actual behavior are 0.789, 0.875, and 0.701, respectively. The alpha (α), CR, and AVE values of behavioral intentions are reported as 0.752, 0.858, and 0.668. Perceived benefits are 0.809, 0.867 and 0.568. In addition perceived ease of use-values are 0.838, 0.885, and 0.606.; perceived enjoyment values are 0.756, 0.845, and 0.577. Lastly, the three items of social influence show Cronbach α, CR, and AVE values of 0.757, 0.861, and 0.673, respectively. Furthermore, all the hypotheses (except for the moderator payment mode) show that their discriminant validity ( Table 3 ) meets the requirement suggested by Fornell and Larcker (1981) ; that is, the square root of each construct's AVE should be higher than its correlation with the remaining constructs.

Table 2 . Convergent validity of measurement model.

Table 3 . Measurement model and discriminant validity.

Structural Model

To assess the results, the estimated path coefficient of the structural model is analyzed. The results of variables and constructs are shown in Figure 2 . The analysis shows that there is a positive and significant impact of perceived behavior, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, and social influence on behavioral intention for online shopping, as their values are H 1 : β = 0.32, p < 0; H 4 : β = 0.156, p < 0.001; H 5 : β = 0.217, p < 0.001; H 7 : β = 0.217, p < 0.001, respectively. However, perceived ease of use also shows a significant and positive impact on perceived enjoyment given that H 6 : β = 0.595, p < 0.001.

Figure 2 . Structural model.

PLS has been used to test moderating and mediating impacts, and special consideration has been given to assess relevant effects in a single model; PLS made it more sophisticated and allowed not to follow a causal step approach to evaluate mediating and moderating effects, whereas considering mediating and moderating effects with PLS is straightforward, and the outcomes give deep insights into advanced mediation and moderation analyses more accurately ( Chin, 2010 ; Streukens et al., 2010 ; Nitzl et al., 2016 ). Hence, relevant effects have been assessed overall in a single model. To discuss the moderating roles of the model, it is evident from the results that gender shows significant moderation in perceived behavior and behavioral intention relationship: H 2 : β = −0.164, p = 0.006. In contrast, there is an insignificant moderation impact of gender on perceived ease of use and behavioral intention relationship: H 3 : β = 0.036, p = 0.501.

In addition, the moderation impact of payment mode also shows insignificance on behavioral intention and actual behavior relationship: H 8 : β = 0.033, p = 0.247). Lastly, the model has demonstrated a significant and positive impact of behavioral intention on the actual buying behavior of online consumers: H 9 : β = 0.604, p < 0.001). Therefore, H 1 , H 2 , H 4 , H 5 , H 6 , H 7 , and H 9 are supported, whereas H 3 and H 8 are rejected based on the results. Detailed findings are shown in Table 4 .

Table 4 . Structural model results (hypothesis testing).

According to the criteria, the value of R 2 must be greater than 0.2, as proposed by Hair et al. (2016) . The present study shows an acceptable value of R 2 , which is 0.554. Furthermore, the value of Q 2 has also been examined using Stone-Geisser's blindfold technique; this technique can be used to examine function fitting and cross-validation. However, this procedure is stated as a sample reuse procedure by Mikalef et al. (2017) . If the value of Q 2> 0, it implies that the model has a predictive relevance ( Hair et al., 2012 ). The Analysis shows that the behavioral intention (Q 2 =0.371), perceived enjoyment (Q 2 = 0.2), and actual behavior (Q 2 = 0.376) variables show reasonable predictive relevance, demonstrating that their values are above 0.

Discussions and Implications

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has changed the landscape of business processes and how they used to function. Prolonged lockdowns resulted in responses to the pandemic causing closures of several companies. However, it brought a new wave of online shopping all over the global market. Interestingly, when businesses went bankrupt and started the closure of their processes, the online market thrived and expanded by over 30–50% ( Financial Times, 2021 ). This shifted the relevance and significance of the research domain once more toward examining key components shaping one's intentions and behavior in a certain way. Thus, the present study seeks to investigate determinants impacting, moderating, and mediating consumers' online buying behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings suggest several contributions in consumer behavior, advertising, social media, digitalized marketing, academia, and practical aspects of consumers' intention and behavior.

Theoretical Implications

The present study has examined and concluded the determinants impacting the way consumers' online behavior has changed during COVID-19 in the context of Pakistan. For this purpose, the study has developed an integrated model based on the foundation of the well-established Technology Acceptance Model and Theory of planned behavior. First, the results of this research have validated the established scales of measuring consumers' online behavior in South Asian countries, specifically Pakistan. Second, the significant impact of perceived benefits, perceived enjoyment, ease of use, and social influence shows the generalizability and predictive power of TAM and TPB to measure consumers' behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. This contributes to the academia and research and development in the stated domain so that further research could be carried out with the inclusion of constructs obtained from the technological model (TAM), psychological, and behavioral model (TPB) along with the other notion of social influence on consumers' behavioral intention leading to shaping ones' actual technology usage behavior. The study holds novelty as the context is different from that of routine consumers' online behavior; this implies insights into how consumers' intentions have changed drastically to opt for online buying. Interestingly, according to pre-COVID times, some consumers showed reluctance to go for online buying considering facilitating conditions, i.e., payment mode ( Triandis, 1977 , 1980 ; Pang et al., 2016 ). However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the same broader consumer base shifted drastically to opt for online buying. The study reveals a new research realm to extend relevant theoretical paradigms to examine the impact of the external environment on consumers' buying intention and behavior.

Second, the integrated model with the role of mediation and moderation implies that theory predicts consumers' intention across situations; the present study has shown its generalizability during the time of a pandemic. This paves the way for further theoretical contribution in “crisis times” by introducing key determinants in cross-cultural and longitudinal analyses.

Practical Implications

Based on the results of this study, the following practical implications have been proposed:

First, the study provides supporting evidence of perceived benefits sought by consumers when buying online. It implies that when a consumer enjoys buying online, it influences their intention to choose purchase behavior in the long run. As consumers find it convenient, businesses need to work on enhancing website design and logistics systems to make shopping more user-friendly and prompt. Interactive and appealing website designs will make one's online experience enjoyable by providing superior images and photos of products/services, proper availability of product/service descriptions, and previous reviews on the same or related products. On the contrary, a complicated website and delays in distribution and logistics will obliterate the purpose of the “convenience” sought by consumers.

Second, perceived ease of use has shown a significant positive impact on perceived enjoyment and intention, indicating that perceived enjoyment mediates the effect of perceived ease of use on behavioral intention. It reveals that a consumer enjoys more when there is more ease for them to use technology. Hence, it stimulates one's intention toward online buying. Therefore, businesses need to work on their online service portals, availability of mobile phone website options, online check-out counters, guest check-out counter chatbots, and advanced navigation options from one product to another to make it effortless and user-friendly to enhance consumers' shopping experience.

Third, the role of gender has been studied widely to understand how gender as a moderator plays its role specifically while managing or using tech-oriented systems ( Venkatesh et al., 2003 ; Yousafzai and Yani-de-Soriano, 2012 ). In the present study, in Pakistan, it is evident from the results that gender plays a significant role in the relationship between perceived benefits and behavioral intention, whereas it has an insignificant role in the relationship between perceived ease of use and behavioral intention. For the moderating role of gender in the relationship between perceived benefits and behavioral intention relationship, the coefficient is negatively significant, which means that although the relationship shows significance, it is weaker in nature.

The insignificant and weak moderating role of gender in the relationship between perceived ease of use and behavioral intention, and in that between perceived benefits and behavioral intention, reveals that the studied relationships are not affected by the gender of a consumer. One's perceived ease of use and perceived benefits may tend toward forming online intention regardless of what gender the person belongs to. Businesses must employ strategies considering gender-neutral online portals, website designs, and online shopping services regarding technology's ease of use and perceived benefits.

In addition, findings of payment mode have shown an interesting insight that payment mode has no impact on consumers' online buying. According to previous studies, the trust factor related to online privacy had been a vital issue, and consumers did not want to shop online because of fraudulent cases, specifically in developing countries. However, the present study reveals that COVID-19 circumstances left consumers with no choice but to adhere. This shift brought a considerable consumer market to the e-commerce sector, which was first-time online buyers ( Statista, 2022 ). When consumers start trusting online payment structures in Pakistan, businesses need to make sure they take payment security as a priority, develop transaction systems, and secure their electronic payments via enhanced “secure electronic transaction” (SET) protocol. Lastly, social influence has also shown a key finding to positively impact buying intention. Businesses and marketers need to utilize such behaviors by involving more powerful bloggers/influencers who are famous among the public. These influencers may use social-friendly content in effortless ways to buy online. In this way, businesses may move from a more traditional way to a more personal level with their consumers. This may also include the creation of personal blogs, putting up fewer formal posts on social media handles, and decreasing the gap between brands and consumers by going through the personalization process.

Limitations and Future Study

There is a significant scope to examine and investigate the external factors that impact consumers' shift toward online buying, specifically during crises like pandemics. Data have been collected from educated online users who are tech-savvy. However, education level and how users are learning technologies are constantly changing. Future research in this domain may be conducted with larger populations regardless of their educational status. Additionally, payment mode was one of the external factors used as a moderator to investigate its impact on online buying behavior; future research may include longitudinal studies to see if consumers' behavior persists across situations for payment mode or changes with difficult times like the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be significant to investigate diverse external factors that moderate one's intention-behavior relationship in particular times and changes over the period.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics Statement

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent from the participants was not required to participate in this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords: perceived benefits, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, social influence, behavioral intention, actual behavior, gender, payment mode

Citation: Sajid S, Rashid RM and Haider W (2022) Changing Trends of Consumers' Online Buying Behavior During COVID-19 Pandemic With Moderating Role of Payment Mode and Gender. Front. Psychol. 13:919334. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.919334

Received: 13 April 2022; Accepted: 24 June 2022; Published: 10 August 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Sajid, Rashid and Haider. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Sana Sajid, sanasajid2010@yahoo.com

† These authors have contributed equally to this work

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

A study on factors limiting online shopping behaviour of consumers

Rajagiri Management Journal

ISSN : 0972-9968

Article publication date: 4 March 2021

Issue publication date: 12 April 2021

This study aims to investigate consumer behaviour towards online shopping, which further examines various factors limiting consumers for online shopping behaviour. The purpose of the research was to find out the problems that consumers face during their shopping through online stores.

Design/methodology/approach

A quantitative research method was adopted for this research in which a survey was conducted among the users of online shopping sites.

As per the results total six factors came out from the study that restrains consumers to buy from online sites – fear of bank transaction and faith, traditional shopping more convenient than online shopping, reputation and services provided, experience, insecurity and insufficient product information and lack of trust.

Research limitations/implications

This study is beneficial for e-tailers involved in e-commerce activities that may be customer-to-customer or customer-to-the business. Managerial implications are suggested for improving marketing strategies for generating consumer trust in online shopping.

Originality/value

In contrast to previous research, this study aims to focus on identifying those factors that restrict consumers from online shopping.

• Online shopping

Daroch, B. , Nagrath, G. and Gupta, A. (2021), "A study on factors limiting online shopping behaviour of consumers", Rajagiri Management Journal , Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 39-52. https://doi.org/10.1108/RAMJ-07-2020-0038

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Bindia Daroch, Gitika Nagrath and Ashutosh Gupta.

Published in Rajagiri Management Journal . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

Today, people are living in the digital environment. Earlier, internet was used as the source for information sharing, but now life is somewhat impossible without it. Everything is linked with the World Wide Web, whether it is business, social interaction or shopping. Moreover, the changed lifestyle of individuals has changed their way of doing things from traditional to the digital way in which shopping is also being shifted to online shopping.

Online shopping is the process of purchasing goods directly from a seller without any intermediary, or it can be referred to as the activity of buying and selling goods over the internet. Online shopping deals provide the customer with a variety of products and services, wherein customers can compare them with deals of other intermediaries also and choose one of the best deals for them ( Sivanesan, 2017 ).

As per Statista-The Statistics Portal, the digital population worldwide as of April 2020 is almost 4.57 billion people who are active internet users, and 3.81 billion are social media users. In terms of internet usage, China, India and the USA are ahead of all other countries ( Clement, 2020 ).

The number of consumers buying online and the amount of time people spend online has risen ( Monsuwe et al. , 2004 ). It has become more popular among customers to buy online, as it is handier and time-saving ( Huseynov and Yildirim, 2016 ; Mittal, 2013 ). Convenience, fun and quickness are the prominent factors that have increased the consumer’s interest in online shopping ( Lennon et al. , 2008 ). Moreover, busy lifestyles and long working hours also make online shopping a convenient and time-saving solution over traditional shopping. Consumers have the comfort of shopping from home, reduced traveling time and cost and easy payment ( Akroush and Al-Debei, 2015 ). Furthermore, price comparisons can be easily done while shopping through online mode ( Aziz and Wahid, 2018 ; Martin et al. , 2015 ). According to another study, the main influencing factors for online shopping are availability, low prices, promotions, comparisons, customer service, user friendly, time and variety to choose from ( Jadhav and Khanna, 2016 ). Moreover, website design and features also encourage shoppers to shop on a particular website that excite them to make the purchase.

Online retailers have started giving plenty of offers that have increased the online traffic to much extent. Regularly online giants like Amazon, Flipkart, AliExpress, etc. are advertising huge discounts and offers that are luring a large number of customers to shop from their websites. Companies like Nykaa, MakeMyTrip, Snapdeal, Jabong, etc. are offering attractive promotional deals that are enticing the customers.

Despite so many advantages, some customers may feel online shopping risky and not trustworthy. The research proposed that there is a strong relationship between trust and loyalty, and most often, customers trust brands far more than a retailer selling that brand ( Bilgihan, 2016 ; Chaturvedi et al. , 2016 ). In the case of online shopping, there is no face-to-face interaction between seller and buyer, which makes it non-socialize, and the buyer is sometimes unable to develop the trust ( George et al. , 2015 ). Trust in the e-commerce retailer is crucial to convert potential customer to actual customer. However, the internet provides unlimited products and services, but along with those unlimited services, there is perceived risk in digital shopping such as mobile application shopping, catalogue or mail order ( Tsiakis, 2012 ; Forsythe et al. , 2006 ; Aziz and Wahid, 2018 ).

Literature review

A marketer has to look for different approaches to sell their products and in the current scenario, e-commerce has become the popular way of selling the goods. Whether it is durable or non-durable, everything is available from A to Z on websites. Some websites are specifically designed for specific product categories only, and some are selling everything.

The prominent factors like detailed information, comfort and relaxed shopping, less time consumption and easy price comparison influence consumers towards online shopping ( Agift et al. , 2014 ). Furthermore, factors like variety, quick service and discounted prices, feedback from previous customers make customers prefer online shopping over traditional shopping ( Jayasubramanian et al. , 2015 ). It is more preferred by youth, as during festival and holiday season online retailers give ample offers and discounts, which increases the online traffic to a great extent ( Karthikeyan, 2016 ). Moreover, services like free shipping, cash on delivery, exchange and returns are also luring customers towards online purchases.

More and more people are preferring online shopping over traditional shopping because of their ease and comfort. A customer may have both positive and negative experiences while using an online medium for their purchase. Some of the past studies have shown that although there are so many benefits still some customers do not prefer online as their basic medium of shopping.

While making online purchase, customers cannot see, touch, feel, smell or try the products that they want to purchase ( Katawetawaraks and Wang, 2011 ; Al-Debei et al. , 2015 ), due to which product is difficult to examine, and it becomes hard for customers to make purchase decision. In addition, some products are required to be tried like apparels and shoes, but in case of online shopping, it is not possible to examine and feel the goods and assess its quality before making a purchase due to which customers are hesitant to buy ( Katawetawaraks and Wang, 2011 ; Comegys et al. , 2009 ). Alam and Elaasi (2016) in their study found product quality is the main factor, which worries consumer to make online purchase. Moreover, some customers have reported fake products and imitated items in their delivered orders ( Jun and Jaafar, 2011 ). A low quality of merchandise never generates consumer trust on online vendor. A consumer’s lack of trust on the online vendor is the most common reason to avoid e-commerce transactions ( Lee and Turban, 2001 ). Fear of online theft and non-reliability is another reason to escape from online shopping ( Karthikeyan, 2016 ). Likewise, there is a risk of incorrect information on the website, which may lead to a wrong purchase, or in some cases, the information is incomplete for the customer to make a purchase decision ( Liu and Guo, 2008 ). Moreover, in some cases, the return and exchange policies are also not clear on the website. According to Wei et al. (2010) , the reliability and credibility of e-retailer have direct impact on consumer decision with regards to online shopping.

Limbu et al. (2011) revealed that when it comes to online retailers, some websites provide very little information about their companies and sellers, due to which consumers feel insecure to purchase from these sites. According to other research, consumers are hesitant, due to scams and feel anxious to share their personal information with online vendors ( Miyazaki and Fernandez, 2001 ; Limbu et al. , 2011 ). Online buyers expect websites to provide secure payment and maintain privacy. Consumers avoid online purchases because of the various risks involved with it and do not find internet shopping secured ( Cheung and Lee, 2003 ; George et al. , 2015 ; Banerjee et al. , 2010 ). Consumers perceive the internet as an unsecured channel to share their personal information like emails, phone and mailing address, debit card or credit card numbers, etc. because of the possibility of misuse of that information by other vendors or any other person ( Lim and Yazdanifard, 2014 ; Kumar, 2016 ; Alam and Yasin, 2010 ; Nazir et al. , 2012 ). Some sites make it vital and important to share personal details of shoppers before shopping, due to which people abandon their shopping carts (Yazdanifard and Godwin, 2011). About 75% of online shoppers leave their shopping carts before they make their final decision to purchase or sometimes just before making the payments ( Cho et al. , 2006 ; Gong et al. , 2013 ).

Moreover, some of the customers who have used online shopping confronted with issues like damaged products and fake deliveries, delivery problems or products not received ( Karthikeyan, 2016 ; Kuriachan, 2014 ). Sometimes consumers face problems while making the return or exchange the product that they have purchased from online vendors ( Liang and Lai, 2002 ), as some sites gave an option of picking from where it was delivered, but some online retailers do not give such services to consumer and consumer him/herself has to courier the product for return or exchange, which becomes inopportune. Furthermore, shoppers had also faced issues with unnecessary delays ( Muthumani et al. , 2017 ). Sometimes, slow websites, improper navigations or fear of viruses may drop the customer’s willingness to purchase from online stores ( Katawetawaraks and Wang, 2011 ). As per an empirical study done by Liang and Lai (2002) , design of the e-store or website navigation has an impact on the purchase decision of the consumer. An online shopping experience that a consumer may have and consumer skills that consumers may use while purchasing such as website knowledge, product knowledge or functioning of online shopping influences consumer behaviour ( Laudon and Traver, 2009 ).

From the various findings and viewpoints of the previous researchers, the present study identifies the complications online shoppers face during online transactions, as shown in Figure 1 . Consumers do not have faith, and there is lack of confidence on online retailers due to incomplete information on website related to product and service, which they wish to purchase. Buyers are hesitant due to fear of online theft of their personal and financial information, which makes them feel there will be insecure transaction and uncertain errors may occur while making online payment. Some shoppers are reluctant due to the little internet knowledge. Furthermore, as per the study done by Nikhashem et al. (2011), consumers unwilling to use internet for their shopping prefer traditional mode of shopping, as it gives roaming experience and involves outgoing activity.

Several studies have been conducted earlier that identify the factors influencing consumer towards online shopping but few have concluded the factors that restricts the consumers from online shopping. The current study is concerned with the factors that may lead to hesitation by the customer to purchase from e-retailers. This knowledge will be useful for online retailers to develop customer driven strategies and to add more value product and services and further will change their ways of promoting and advertising the goods and enhance services for customers.

Research methodology

This study aimed to find out the problems that are generally faced by a customer during online purchase and the relevant factors due to which customers do not prefer online shopping. Descriptive research design has been used for the study. Descriptive research studies are those that are concerned with describing the characteristics of a particular individual or group. This study targets the population drawn from customers who have purchased from online stores. Most of the respondents participated were post graduate students and and educators. The total population size was indefinite and the sample size used for the study was 158. A total of 170 questionnaires were distributed among various online users, out of which 12 questionnaires were received with incomplete responses and were excluded from the analysis. The respondents were selected based on the convenient sampling technique. The primary data were collected from Surveys with the help of self-administered questionnaires. The close-ended questionnaire was used for data collection so as to reduce the non-response rate and errors. The questionnaire consists of two different sections, in which the first section consists of the introductory questions that gives the details of socio-economic profile of the consumers as well as their behaviour towards usage of internet, time spent on the Web, shopping sites preferred while making the purchase, and the second section consist of the questions related to the research question. To investigate the factors restraining consumer purchase, five-point Likert scale with response ranges from “Strongly agree” to “Strongly disagree”, with following equivalencies, “strongly disagree” = 1, “disagree” = 2, “neutral” = 3, “agree” = 4 and “strongly agree” = 5 was used in the questionnaire with total of 28 items. After collecting the data, it was manually recorded on the Excel sheet. For analysis socio-economic profile descriptive statistics was used and factors analysis was performed on SPSS for factor reduction.

Data analysis and interpretation

The primary data collected from the questionnaires was completely quantified and analysed by using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20. This statistical program enables accuracy and makes it relatively easy to interpret data. A descriptive and inferential analysis was performed. Table 1 represents the results of socio-economic status of the respondents along with some introductory questions related to usage of internet, shopping sites used by the respondents, amount of money spent by the respondents and products mostly purchased through online shopping sites.

According to the results, most (68.4%) of the respondents were belonging to the age between 21 and 30 years followed by respondents who were below the age of 20 years (16.4%) and the elderly people above 50 were very few (2.6%) only. Most of the respondents who participated in the study were females (65.8)% who shop online as compared to males (34.2%). The respondents who participated in the study were students (71.5%), and some of them were private as well as government employees. As per the results, most (50.5%) of the people having income below INR15,000 per month who spend on e-commerce websites. The results also showed that most of the respondents (30.9%) spent less than 5 h per week on internet, but up to (30.3%) spend 6–10 h per week on internet either on online shopping or social media. Majority (97.5%) of them have shopped through online websites and had both positive and negative experiences, whereas 38% of the people shopped 2–5 times and 36.7% shopped more than ten times. Very few people (12%), shopped only once. Most of the respondents spent between INR1,000–INR5,000 for online shopping, and few have spent more than INR5,000 also.

As per the results, the most visited online shopping sites was amazon.com (71.5%), followed by flipkart.com (53.2%). Few respondents have also visited other e-commerce sites like eBay, makemytrip.com and myntra.com. Most (46.2%) of the time people purchase apparels followed by electronics and daily need items from the ecommerce platform. Some of the respondents have purchased books as well as cosmetics, and some were preferring online sites for travel tickets, movie tickets, hotel bookings and payments also.

Factor analysis

To explore the factors that restrict consumers from using e-commerce websites factor analysis was done, as shown in Table 3 . A total of 28 items were used to find out the factors that may restrain consumers to buy from online shopping sites, and the results were six factors. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) measure, as shown in Table 2 , in this study was 0.862 (>0.60), which states that values are adequate, and factor analysis can be proceeded. The Bartlett’s test of sphericity is related to the significance of the study and the significant value is 0.000 (<0.05) as shown in Table 2 .

The analysis produced six factors with eigenvalue more than 1, and factor loadings that exceeded 0.30. Moreover, reliability test of the scale was performed through Cronbach’s α test. The range of Cronbach’s α test came out to be between 0.747 and 0.825, as shown in Table 3 , which means ( α > 0.7) the high level of internal consistency of the items used in survey ( Table 4 ).

Factor 1 – The results revealed that the “fear of bank transaction and faith” was the most significant factor, with 29.431% of the total variance and higher eigenvalue, i.e. 8.241. The six statements loaded on Factor 1 highly correlate with each other. The analysis shows that some people do not prefer online shopping because they are scared to pay online through credit or debit cards, and they do not have faith over online vendors.

Factor 2 – “Traditional shopping is convenient than online shopping” has emerged as a second factor which explicates 9.958% of total variance. It has five statements and clearly specifies that most of the people prefer traditional shopping than online shopping because online shopping is complex and time-consuming.

Factor 3 – Third crucial factor emerged in the factor analysis was “reputation and service provided”. It was found that 7.013% of variations described for the factor. Five statements have been found on this factor, all of which were interlinked. It clearly depicts that people only buy from reputed online stores after comparing prices and who provide guarantee or warrantee on goods.

Factor 4 – “Experience” was another vital factor, with 4.640% of the total variance. It has three statements that clearly specifies that people do not go for online shopping due to lack of knowledge and their past experience was not good and some online stores do not provide EMI facilities.

Factor 5 – Fifth important factor arisen in the factor analysis was “Insecurity and Insufficient Product Information” with 4.251% of the total variance, and it has laden five statements, which were closely intertwined. This factor explored that online shopping is not secure as traditional shopping. The information of products provided on online stores is not sufficient to make the buying decision.

Factor 6 – “Lack of trust” occurred as the last factor of the study, which clarifies 3.920% of the total variance. It has four statements that clearly state that some people hesitate to give their personal information, as they believe online shopping is risky than traditional shopping. Without touching the product, people hesitate to shop from online stores.

The study aimed to determine the problems faced by consumers during online purchase. The result showed that most of the respondents have both positive and negative experience while shopping online. There were many problems or issues that consumer’s face while using e-commerce platform. Total six factors came out from the study that limits consumers to buy from online sites like fear of bank transaction and no faith, traditional shopping more convenient than online shopping, reputation and services provided, experience, insecurity and insufficient product information and lack of trust.

The research might be useful for the e-tailers to plan out future strategies so as to serve customer as per their needs and generate customer loyalty. As per the investigation done by Casalo et al. (2008) , there is strong relationship between reputation and satisfaction, which further is linked to customer loyalty. If the online retailer has built his brand name, or image of the company, the customer is more likely to prefer that retailer as compared to new entrant. The online retailer that seeks less information from customers are more preferred as compared to those require complete personal information ( Lawler, 2003 ).

Online retailers can adopt various strategies to persuade those who hesitate to shop online such that retailer need to find those negative aspects to solve the problems of customers so that non-online shopper or irregular online consumer may become regular customer. An online vendor has to pay attention to product quality, variety, design and brands they are offering. Firstly, the retailer must enhance product quality so as to generate consumer trust. For this, they can provide complete seller information and history of the seller, which will preferably enhance consumer trust towards that seller.

Furthermore, they can adopt marketing strategies such as user-friendly and secure website, which can enhance customers’ shopping experience and easy product search and proper navigation system on website. Moreover, complete product and service information such as feature and usage information, description and dimensions of items can help consumer decide which product to purchase. The experience can be enhanced by adding more pictures, product videos and three-dimensional (3D), images which will further help consumer in the decision-making process. Moreover, user-friendly payment systems like cash on deliveries, return and exchange facilities as per customer needs, fast and speedy deliveries, etc. ( Chaturvedi et al. , 2016 ; Muthumani et al. , 2017 ) will also enhance the probability of purchase from e-commerce platform. Customers are concerned about not sharing their financial details on any website ( Roman, 2007 ; Limbu et al. , 2011 ). Online retailers can ensure payment security by offering numerous payment options such as cash on delivery, delivery after inspection, Google Pay or Paytm or other payment gateways, etc. so as to increase consumer trust towards website, and customer will not hesitate for financial transaction during shopping. Customers can trust any website depending upon its privacy policy, so retailers can provide customers with transparent security policy, privacy policy and secure transaction server so that customers will not feel anxious while making online payments ( Pan and Zinkhan, 2006 ). Moreover, customers not only purchase basic goods from the online stores but also heed augmented level of goods. Therefore, if vendors can provide quick and necessary support, answer all their queries within 24-hour service availability, customers may find it convenient to buy from those websites ( Martin et al. , 2015 ). Sellers must ensure to provide products and services that are suitable for internet. Retailers can consider risk lessening strategies such as easy return and exchange policies to influence consumers ( Bianchi and Andrews, 2012 ). Furthermore, sellers can offer after-sales services as given by traditional shoppers to attract more customers and generate unique shopping experience.

Although nowadays, most of the vendors do give plenty of offers in form of discounts, gifts and cashbacks, but most of them are as per the needs of e-retailers and not customers. Beside this, trust needs to be generated in the customer’s mind, which can be done by modifying privacy and security policies. By adopting such practices, the marketer can generate customers’ interest towards online shopping.

Conceptual framework of the study

Socioeconomic status of respondents

KMO and Bartlett’s test

Cronbach’s α

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Further reading

Grabner-Kräuter , S. and Kaluscha , E.A. ( 2003 ), “ Empirical research in on-line trust: a review and critical assessment ”, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies , Vol. 58 No. 6 , pp. 783 - 812 .

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The Impact of Online Reviews on Consumers’ Purchasing Decisions: Evidence From an Eye-Tracking Study

1 School of Business, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China

Premaratne Samaranayake

2 School of Business, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia

XiongYing Cen

Yi-chen lan, associated data.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

This study investigated the impact of online product reviews on consumers purchasing decisions by using eye-tracking. The research methodology involved (i) development of a conceptual framework of online product review and purchasing intention through the moderation role of gender and visual attention in comments, and (ii) empirical investigation into the region of interest (ROI) analysis of consumers fixation during the purchase decision process and behavioral analysis. The results showed that consumers’ attention to negative comments was significantly greater than that to positive comments, especially for female consumers. Furthermore, the study identified a significant correlation between the visual browsing behavior of consumers and their purchase intention. It also found that consumers were not able to identify false comments. The current study provides a deep understanding of the underlying mechanism of how online reviews influence shopping behavior, reveals the effect of gender on this effect for the first time and explains it from the perspective of attentional bias, which is essential for the theory of online consumer behavior. Specifically, the different effects of consumers’ attention to negative comments seem to be moderated through gender with female consumers’ attention to negative comments being significantly greater than to positive ones. These findings suggest that practitioners need to pay particular attention to negative comments and resolve them promptly through the customization of product/service information, taking into consideration consumer characteristics, including gender.

Introduction

E-commerce has grown substantially over the past years and has become increasingly important in our daily life, especially under the influence of COVID-19 recently ( Hasanat et al., 2020 ). In terms of online shopping, consumers are increasingly inclined to obtain product information from reviews. Compared with the official product information provided by the sellers, reviews are provided by other consumers who have already purchased the product via online shopping websites ( Baek et al., 2012 ). Meanwhile, there is also an increasing trend for consumers to share their shopping experiences on the network platform ( Floh et al., 2013 ). In response to these trends, a large number of studies ( Floh et al., 2013 ; Lackermair et al., 2013 ; Kang et al., 2020 ; Chen and Ku, 2021 ) have investigated the effects of online reviews on purchasing intention. These studies have yielded strong evidence of the valence intensity of online reviews on purchasing intention. Lackermair et al. (2013) , for example, showed that reviews and ratings are an important source of information for consumers. Similarly, through investigating the effects of review source and product type, Bae and Lee (2011) concluded that a review from an online community is the most credible for consumers seeking information about an established product. Since reviews are comments from consumers’ perspectives and often describe their experience using the product, it is easier for other consumers to accept them, thus assisting their decision-making process ( Mudambi and Schuff, 2010 ).

A survey conducted by Zhong-Gang et al. (2015) reveals that nearly 60% of consumers browse online product reviews at least once a week and 93% of whom believe that these online reviews help them to improve the accuracy of purchase decisions, reduce the risk of loss and affect their shopping options. When it comes to e-consumers in commercial activities on B2B and B2C platforms, 82% of the consumers read product reviews before making shopping choices, and 60% of them refer to comments every week. Research shows that 93% of consumers say online reviews will affect shopping choices, indicating that most consumers have the habit of reading online reviews regularly and rely on the comments for their purchasing decisions ( Vimaladevi and Dhanabhakaym, 2012 ).

Consumer purchasing decision after reading online comments is a psychological process combining vision and information processing. As evident from the literature, much of the research has focused on the outcome and impact of online reviews affecting purchasing decisions but has shed less light on the underlying processes that influence customer perception ( Sen and Lerman, 2007 ; Zhang et al., 2010 ; Racherla and Friske, 2013 ). While some studies have attempted to investigate the underlying processes, including how people are influenced by information around the product/service using online reviews, there is limited research on the psychological process and information processing involved in purchasing decisions. The eye-tracking method has become popular in exploring and interpreting consumer decisions making behavior and cognitive processing ( Wang and Minor, 2008 ). However, there is very limited attention to how the emotional valence and the content of comments, especially those negative comments, influence consumers’ final decisions by adopting the eye-tracking method, including a gender comparison in consumption, and to whether consumers are suspicious of false comments.

Thus, the main purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of online reviews on consumers’ purchasing decisions, from the perspective of information processing by employing the eye-tracking method. A comprehensive literature review on key themes including online reviews, the impact of online reviews on purchasing decisions, and underlying processes including the level and credibility of product review information, and processing speed/effectiveness to drive customer perceptions on online reviews, was used to identify current research gaps and establish the rationale for this research. This study simulated a network shopping scenario and conducted an eye movement experiment to capture how product reviews affect consumers purchasing behavior by collecting eye movement indicators and their behavioral datum, in order to determine whether the value of the fixation dwell time and fixation count for negative comment areas is greater than that for positive comment area and to what extent the consumers are suspicious about false comments. Visual attention by both fixation dwell time and count is considered as part of moderating effect on the relationship between the valence of comment and purchase intention, and as the basis for accommodating underlying processes.

The paper is organized as follows. The next section presents literature reviews of relevant themes, including the role of online reviews and the application of eye movement experiments in online consumer decision research. Then, the hypotheses based on the relevant theories are presented. The research methodology including data collection methods is presented subsequently. This is followed by the presentation of data analysis, results, and discussion of key findings. Finally, the impact of academic practical research and the direction of future research are discussed, respectively.

Literature Review

Online product review.

Several studies have reported on the influence of online reviews, in particular on purchasing decisions in recent times ( Zhang et al., 2014 ; Zhong-Gang et al., 2015 ; Ruiz-Mafe et al., 2018 ; Von Helversen et al., 2018 ; Guo et al., 2020 ; Kang et al., 2020 ; Wu et al., 2021 ). These studies have reported on various aspects of online reviews on consumers’ behavior, including consideration of textual factors ( Ghose and Ipeirotiss, 2010 ), the effect of the level of detail in a product review, and the level of reviewer agreement with it on the credibility of a review, and consumers’ purchase intentions for search and experience products ( Jiménez and Mendoza, 2013 ). For example, by means of text mining, Ghose and Ipeirotiss (2010) concluded that the use of product reviews is influenced by textual features, such as subjectivity, informality, readability, and linguistic accuracy. Likewise, Boardman and Mccormick (2021) found that consumer attention and behavior differ across web pages throughout the shopping journey depending on its content, function, and consumer’s goal. Furthermore, Guo et al. (2020) showed that pleasant online customer reviews lead to a higher purchase likelihood compared to unpleasant ones. They also found that perceived credibility and perceived diagnosticity have a significant influence on purchase decisions, but only in the context of unpleasant online customer reviews. These studies suggest that online product reviews will influence consumer behavior but the overall effect will be influenced by many factors.

In addition, studies have considered broader online product information (OPI), comprising both online reviews and vendor-supplied product information (VSPI), and have reported on different attempts to understand the various ways in which OPI influences consumers. For example, Kang et al. (2020) showed that VSPI adoption affected online review adoption. Lately, Chen and Ku (2021) found a positive relationship between diversified online review websites as accelerators for online impulsive buying. Furthermore, some studies have reported on other aspects of online product reviews, including the impact of online reviews on product satisfaction ( Changchit and Klaus, 2020 ), relative effects of review credibility, and review relevance on overall online product review impact ( Mumuni et al., 2020 ), functions of reviewer’s gender, reputation and emotion on the credibility of negative online product reviews ( Craciun and Moore, 2019 ) and influence of vendor cues like the brand reputation on purchasing intention ( Kaur et al., 2017 ). Recently, an investigation into the impact of online review variance of new products on consumer adoption intentions showed that product newness and review variance interact to impinge on consumers’ adoption intentions ( Wu et al., 2021 ). In particular, indulgent consumers tend to prefer incrementally new products (INPs) with high variance reviews while restrained consumers are more likely to adopt new products (RNPs) with low variance.

Emotion Valence of Online Product Review and Purchase Intention

Although numerous studies have investigated factors that may influence the effects of online review on consumer behavior, few studies have focused on consumers’ perceptions, emotions, and cognition, such as perceived review helpfulness, ease of understanding, and perceived cognitive effort. This is because these studies are mainly based on traditional self-report-based methods, such as questionnaires, interviews, and so on, which are not well equipped to measure implicit emotion and cognitive factors objectively and accurately ( Plassmann et al., 2015 ). However, emotional factors are also recognized as important in purchase intention. For example, a study on the usefulness of online film reviews showed that positive emotional tendencies, longer sentences, the degree of a mix of the greater different emotional tendencies, and distinct expressions in critics had a significant positive effect on online comments ( Yuanyuan et al., 2009 ).

Yu et al. (2010) also demonstrated that the different emotional tendencies expressed in film reviews have a significant impact on the actual box office. This means that consumer reviews contain both positive and negative emotions. Generally, positive comments tend to prompt consumers to generate emotional trust, increase confidence and trust in the product and have a strong persuasive effect. On the contrary, negative comments can reduce the generation of emotional trust and hinder consumers’ buying intentions ( Archak et al., 2010 ). This can be explained by the rational behavior hypothesis, which holds that consumers will avoid risk in shopping as much as possible. Hence, when there is poor comment information presented, consumers tend to choose not to buy the product ( Mayzlin and Chevalier, 2003 ). Furthermore, consumers generally believe that negative information is more valuable than positive information when making a judgment ( Ahluwalia et al., 2000 ). For example, a single-star rating (criticism) tends to have a greater influence on consumers’ buying tendencies than that of a five-star rating (compliment), a phenomenon known as the negative deviation.

Since consumers can access and process information quickly through various means and consumers’ emotions influence product evaluation and purchasing intention, this research set out to investigate to what extent and how the emotional valence of online product review would influence their purchase intention. Therefore, the following hypothesis was proposed:

H1 : For hedonic products, consumer purchase intention after viewing positive emotion reviews is higher than that of negative emotion ones; On the other hand, for utilitarian products, it is believed that negative comments are more useful than positive ones and have a greater impact on consumers purchase intention by and large.

It is important to investigate Hypothesis one (H1) although it seems obvious. Many online merchants pay more attention to products with negative comments and make relevant improvements to them rather than those with positive comments. Goods with positive comments can promote online consumers’ purchase intention more than those with negative comments and will bring more profits to businesses.

Sen and Lerman (2007) found that compared with the utilitarian case, readers of negative hedonic product reviews are more likely to attribute the negative opinions expressed, to the reviewer’s internal (or non-product-related) reasons, and therefore, are less likely to find the negative reviews useful. However, in the utilitarian case, readers are more likely to attribute the reviewer’s negative opinions to external (or product-related) motivations, and therefore, find negative reviews more useful than positive reviews on average. Product type moderates the effect of review valence, Therefore, Hypothesis one is based on hedonic product types, such as fiction books.

Guo et al. (2020) found pleasant online customer reviews to lead to a higher purchase likelihood than unpleasant ones. This confirms hypothesis one from another side. The product selected in our experiment is a mobile phone, which is not only a utilitarian product but also a hedonic one. It can be used to make a phone call or watch videos, depending on the user’s demands.

Eye-Tracking, Online Product Review, and Purchase Intention

The eye-tracking method is commonly used in cognitive psychology research. Many researchers are calling for the use of neurobiological, neurocognitive, and physiological approaches to advance information system research ( Pavlou and Dimoka, 2010 ; Liu et al., 2011 ; Song et al., 2017 ). Several studies have been conducted to explore consumers’ online behavior by using eye-tracking. For example, using the eye-tracking method, Luan et al. (2016) found that when searching for products, customers’ attention to attribute-based evaluation is significantly longer than that of experience-based evaluation, while there is no significant difference for the experiential products. Moreover, their results indicated eye-tracking indexes, for example, fixation dwell time, could intuitively reflect consumers’ search behavior when they attend to the reviews. Also, Hong et al. (2017) confirmed that female consumers pay more attention to picture comments when they buy experience goods; when they buy searched products, they are more focused on the pure text comments. When the price and comment clues are consistent, consumers’ purchase rates significantly improve.

Eye-tracking method to explore and interpret consumers’ decision-making behavior and cognitive processing is primarily based on the eye-mind hypothesis proposed by Just and Carpenter (1992) . Just and Carpenter (1992) stated that when an individual is looking, he or she is currently perceiving, thinking about, or attending to something, and his or her cognitive processing can be identified by tracking eye movement. Several studies on consumers’ decision-making behavior have adopted the eye-tracking approach to quantify consumers’ visual attention, from various perspectives including determining how specific visual features of the shopping website influenced their attitudes and reflected their cognitive processes ( Renshaw et al., 2004 ), exploring gender differences in visual attention and shopping attitudes ( Hwang and Lee, 2018 ), investigating how employing human brands affects consumers decision quality ( Chae and Lee, 2013 ), consumer attention and different behavior depending on website content, functions and consumers goals ( Boardman and McCormick, 2019 ). Measuring the attention to the website and time spent on each purchasing task in different product categories shows that shoppers attend to more areas of the website for purposes of website exploration than for performing purchase tasks. The most complex and time-consuming task for shoppers is the assessment of purchase options ( Cortinas et al., 2019 ). Several studies have investigated fashion retail websites using the eye-tracking method and addressed various research questions, including how consumers interact with product presentation features and how consumers use smartphones for fashion shopping ( Tupikovskaja-Omovie and Tyler, 2021 ). Yet, these studies considered users without consideration of user categories, particularly gender. Since this research is to explore consumers’ decision-making behavior and the effects of gender on visual attention, the eye-tracking approach was employed as part of the overall approach of this research project. Based on existing studies, it could be that consumers may pay more attention to negative evaluations, will experience cognitive conflict when there are contradictory false comments presented, and will be unable to judge good or bad ( Cui et al., 2012 ). Therefore, the following hypothesis was proposed:

H2 : Consumers’ purchasing intention associated with online reviews is moderated/influenced by the level of visual attention.

To test the above hypothesis, the following two hypotheses were derived, taking into consideration positive and negative review comments from H1, and visual attention associated with fixation dwell time and fixation count.

H2a : When consumers intend to purchase a product, fixation dwell time and fixation count for negative comment areas are greater than those for positive comment areas.

Furthermore, when consumers browse fake comments, they are suspicious and actively seek out relevant information to identify the authenticity of the comments, which will result in more visual attention. Therefore, H2b was proposed:

H2b : Fixation dwell time and fixation count for fake comments are greater than those for authentic comments.

When considering the effect of gender on individual information processing, some differences were noted. For example, Meyers-Levy and Sternthal (1993) put forward the selectivity hypothesis, a theory of choice hypothesis, which implies that women gather all information possible, process it in an integrative manner, and make a comprehensive comparison before making a decision, while men tend to select only partial information to process and compare according to their existing knowledge—a heuristic and selective strategy. Furthermore, for an online product review, it was also reported that gender can easily lead consumers to different perceptions of the usefulness of online word-of-mouth. For example, Zhang et al. (2014) confirmed that a mixed comment has a mediating effect on the relationship between effective trust and purchasing decisions, which is stronger in women. This means that men and women may have different ways of processing information in the context of making purchasing decisions using online reviews. To test the above proposition, the following hypothesis was proposed:

H3 : Gender factors have a significant impact on the indicators of fixation dwell time and fixation count on the area of interest (AOI). Male purchasing practices differ from those of female consumers. Male consumers’ attention to positive comments is greater than that of female ones, they are more likely than female consumers to make purchase decisions easily.

Furthermore, according to the eye-mind hypothesis, eye movements can reflect people’s cognitive processes during their decision process ( Just and Carpenter, 1980 ). Moreover, neurocognitive studies have indicated that consumers’ cognitive processing can reflect the strategy of their purchase decision-making ( Rosa, 2015 ; Yang, 2015 ). Hence, the focus on the degree of attention to different polarities and the specific content of comments can lead consumers to make different purchasing decisions. Based on the key aspects outlined and discussed above, the following hypothesis was proposed:

H4 : Attention to consumers’ comments is positively correlated with consumers’ purchasing intentions: Consumers differ in the content of comments to which they gaze according to gender factors.

Thus, the framework of the current study is shown in Figure 1 .

Conceptual framework of the study.

Materials and Methods

The research adopted an experimental approach using simulated lab environmental settings for collecting experimental data from a selected set of participants who have experience with online shopping. The setting of the task was based on guidelines for shopping provided on Taobao.com , which is the most famous and frequently used C2C platform in China. Each experiment was set with the guidelines provided and carried out for a set time. Both behavioral and eye movement data were collected during the experiment.

Participants

A total of 40 healthy participants (20 males and 20 females) with online shopping experiences were selected to participate in the experiment. The participants were screened to ensure normal or correct-to-normal vision, no color blindness or poor color perception, or other eye diseases. All participants provided their written consent before the experiment started. The study was approved by the Internal Review Board of the Academy of Neuroeconomics and Neuromanagement at Ningbo University and by the Declaration of Helsinki ( World Medical Association, 2014 ).

With standardization and small selection differences among individuals, search products can be objectively evaluated and easily compared, to effectively control the influence of individual preferences on the experimental results ( Huang et al., 2009 ). Therefore, this research focused on consumer electronics products, essential products in our life, as the experiment stimulus material. To be specific, as shown in Figure 2 , a simulated shopping scenario was presented to participants, with a product presentation designed in a way that products are shown on Taobao.com . Figure 2 includes two segments: One shows mobile phone information ( Figure 2A ) and the other shows comments ( Figure 2B ). Commodity description information in Figure 2A was collected from product introductions on Taobao.com , mainly presenting some parameter information about the product, such as memory size, pixels, and screen size. There was little difference in these parameters, so quality was basically at the same level across smartphones. Prices and brand information were hidden to ensure that reviews were the sole factor influencing consumer decision-making. Product review areas in Figure 2B are the AOI, presented as a double-column layout. Each panel included 10 (positive or negative) reviews taken from real online shopping evaluations, amounting to a total of 20 reviews for each product. To eliminate the impact of different locations of comments on experimental results, the positions of the positive and negative comment areas were exchanged, namely, 50% of the subjects had positive comments presented on the left and negative comments on the right, with the remaining 50% of the participants receiving the opposite set up.

Commodity information and reviews. (A) Commodity information, (B) Commodity reviews. Screenshots of Alibaba shopfront reproduced with permission of Alibaba and Shenzhen Genuine Mobile Phone Store.

A total of 12,403 product reviews were crawled through and extracted from the two most popular online shopping platforms in China (e.g., Taobao.com and JD.com ) by using GooSeeker (2015) , a web crawler tool. The retrieved reviews were then further processed. At first, brand-related, price-related, transaction-related, and prestige-related contents were removed from comments. Then, the reviews were classified in terms of appearance, memory, running speed, logistics, and so on into two categories: positive reviews and negative reviews. Furthermore, the content of the reviews was refined to retain the original intention but to meet the requirements of the experiment. In short, reviews were modified to ensure brevity, comprehensibility, and equal length, so as to avoid causing cognitive difficulties or ambiguities in semantic understanding. In the end, 80 comments were selected for the experiment: 40 positive and 40 negative reviews (one of the negative comments was a fictitious comment, formulated for the needs of the experiment). To increase the number of experiments and the accuracy of the statistical results, four sets of mobile phone products were set up. There were eight pairs of pictures in total.

Before the experiment started, subjects were asked to read the experimental guide including an overview of the experiment, an introduction of the basic requirements and precautions in the test, and details of two practice trials that were conducted. When participants were cognizant of the experimental scenario, the formal experiment was ready to begin. Participants were required to adjust their bodies to a comfortable sitting position. The 9 points correction program was used for calibration before the experiment. Only those with a deviation angle of less than 1-degree angle could enter the formal eye movement experiment. In our eye-tracking experiment, whether the participant wears glasses or not was identified as a key issue. If the optical power of the participant’s glasses exceeds 200 degrees, due to the reflective effect of the lens, the eye movement instrument will cause great errors in the recording of eye movements. In order to ensure the accuracy of the data recorded by the eye tracker, the experimenter needs to test the power of each participant’s glasses and ensure that the degree of the participant’s glasses does not exceed 200 degrees before the experiment. After drift correction of eye movements, the formal experiment began. The following prompt was presented on the screen: “you will browse four similar mobile phone products; please make your purchase decision for each mobile phone.” Participants then had 8,000 ms to browse the product information. Next, they were allowed to look at the comments image as long as required, after which they were asked to press any key on the keyboard and answer the question “are you willing to buy this cell phone?.”

In this experiment, experimental materials were displayed on a 17-inch monitor with a resolution of 1,024 × 768 pixels. Participants’ eye movements were tracked and recorded by the Eyelink 1,000 desktop eye tracker which is a precise and accurate video-based eye tracker instrument, integrating with SR Research Experiment Builder, Data Viewer, and third-party software tools, with a sampling rate of 1,000 Hz. ( Hwang and Lee, 2018 ). Data processing was conducted by the matching Data Viewer analysis tool.

The experiment flow of each trial is shown in Figure 3 . Every subject was required to complete four trials, with mobile phone style information and comment content different and randomly presented in each trial. After the experiment, a brief interview was conducted to learn about participants’ browsing behavior when they purchased the phone and collected basic information via a matching questionnaire. The whole experiment took about 15 min.

Experimental flow diagram. Screenshots of Alibaba shopfront reproduced with permission of Alibaba and Shenzhen Genuine Mobile Phone Store.

Data Analysis

Key measures of data collected from the eye-tracking experiment included fixation dwell time and fixation count. AOI is a focus area constructed according to experimental purposes and needs, where pertinent eye movement indicators are extracted. It can guarantee the precision of eye movement data, and successfully eliminate interference from other visual factors in the image. Product review areas are our AOIs, with positive comments (IA1) and negative comments (IA2) divided into two equal-sized rectangular areas.

Fixation can indicate the information acquisition process. Tracking eye fixation is the most efficient way to capture individual information from the external environment ( Hwang and Lee, 2018 ). In this study, fixation dwell time and fixation count were used to indicate users’ cognitive activity and visual attention ( Jacob and Karn, 2003 ). It can reflect the degree of digging into information and engaging in a specific situation. Generally, a more frequent fixation frequency indicates that the individual is more interested in the target resulting in the distribution of fixation points. Valuable and interesting comments attract users to pay more attention throughout the browsing process and focus on the AOIs for much longer. Since these two dependent variables (fixation dwell time and fixation count) comprised our measurement of the browsing process, comprehensive analysis can effectively measure consumers’ reactions to different review contents.

The findings are presented in each section including descriptive statistical analysis, analysis from the perspective of gender and review type using ANOVA, correlation analysis of purchasing decisions, and qualitative analysis of observations.

Descriptive Statistical Analysis

Fixation dwell time and fixation count were extracted in this study for each record. In this case, 160 valid data records were recorded from 40 participants. Each participant generated four records which corresponded to four combinations of two conditions (positive and negative) and two eye-tracking indices (fixation dwell time and fixation count). Each record represented a review comment. Table 1 shows pertinent means and standard deviations.

Results of mean and standard deviations.

It can be noted from the descriptive statistics for both fixation dwell time and fixation count that the mean of positive reviews was less than that of negative ones, suggesting that subjects spent more time on and had more interest in negative reviews. This tendency was more obvious in female subjects, indicating a role of gender.

Fixation results can be reported using a heat mapping plot to provide a more intuitive understanding. In a heat mapping plot, fixation data are displayed as different colors, which can manifest the degree of user fixation ( Wang et al., 2014 ). Red represents the highest level of fixation, followed by yellow and then green, and areas without color represent no fixation count. Figure 4 implies that participants spent more time and cognitive effort on negative reviews than positive ones, as evidenced by the wider red areas in the negative reviews. However, in order to determine whether this difference is statistically significant or not, further inferential statistical analyses were required.

Heat map of review picture.

Repeated Measures From Gender and Review Type Perspectives—Analysis of Variance

The two independent variables for this experiment were the emotional tendency of the review and gender. A preliminary ANOVA analysis was performed, respectively, on fixation dwell time and fixation count values, with gender (man vs. woman) and review type (positive vs. negative) being the between-subjects independent variables in both cases.

A significant dominant effect of review type was found for both fixation dwell time ( p 1  < 0.001) and fixation count ( p 2  < 0.001; see Table 2 ). However, no significant dominant effect of gender was identified for either fixation dwell time ( p 1  = 0.234) or fixation count ( p 2  = 0.805). These results indicated that there were significant differences in eye movement indicators between positive and negative commentary areas, which confirms Hypothesis 2a. The interaction effect between gender and comment type was significant for both fixation dwell time ( p 1  = 0.002) and fixation count ( p 2  = 0.001). Therefore, a simple-effect analysis was carried out. The effects of different comment types with fixed gender factors and different gender with fixed comment type factors on those two dependent variables (fixation dwell time and fixation count) were investigated and the results are shown in Table 3 .

Results of ANOVA analysis.

Results of simple-effect analysis.

When the subject was female, comment type had a significant dominant effect for both fixation dwell time ( p 1  < 0.001) and fixation count ( p 2  < 0.001). This indicates that female users’ attention time and cognitive level on negative comments were greater than those on positive comments. However, the dominant effect of comment type was not significant ( p 1  = 0.336 > 0.05, p 2  = 0.43 > 0.05) for men, suggesting no difference in concern about the two types of comments for men.

Similarly, when scanning positive reviews, gender had a significant dominant effect ( p 1  = 0.003 < 0.05, p 2  = 0.025 < 0.05) on both fixation dwell time and fixation count, indicating that men exerted longer focus and deeper cognitive efforts to dig out positive reviews than women. In addition, the results for fixation count showed that gender had significant dominant effects ( p 1  = 0.18 > 0.05, p 2  = 0.01 < 0.05) when browsing negative reviews, suggesting that to some extent men pay significantly less cognitive attention to negative reviews than women, which is consistent with the conclusion that men’s attention to positive comments is greater than women’s. Although the dominant effect of gender was not significant ( p 1  = 0.234 > 0.05, p 2  = 0.805 > 0.05) in repeated measures ANOVA, there was an interaction effect with review type. For a specific type of comment, gender had significant influences, because the eye movement index between men and women was different. Thus, gender plays a moderating role in the impact of comments on consumers purchasing behavior.

Correlation Analysis of Purchase Decision

Integrating eye movement and behavioral data, whether participants’ focus on positive or negative reviews is linked to their final purchasing decisions were explored. Combined with the participants’ purchase decision results, the areas with large fixation dwell time and concerns of consumers in the picture were screened out. The frequency statistics are shown in Table 4 .

Frequency statistics of purchasing decisions.

The correlation analysis between the type of comment and the decision data shows that users’ attention level on positive and negative comments was significantly correlated with the purchase decision ( p  = 0.006 < 0.05). Thus, Hypothesis H4 is supported. As shown in Table 4 above, 114 records paid more attention to negative reviews, and 70% of the participants chose not to buy mobile phones. Also, in the 101 records of not buying, 80% of the subjects paid more attention to negative comments and chose not to buy mobile phones, while more than 50% of the subjects who were more interested in positive reviews chose to buy mobile phones. These experimental results are consistent with Hypothesis H1. They suggest that consumers purchasing decisions were based on the preliminary information they gathered and were concerned about, from which we can deduce customers’ final decision results from their visual behavior. Thus, the eye movement experiment analysis in this paper has practical significance.

Furthermore, a significant correlation ( p  = 0.007 < 0.05) was found between the comments area attracting more interest and purchase decisions for women, while no significant correlation was found for men ( p  = 0.195 > 0.05). This finding is consistent with the previous conclusion that men’s attention to positive and negative comments is not significantly different. Similarly, this also explains the moderating effect of gender. This result can be explained further by the subsequent interview of each participant after the experiment was completed. It was noted from the interviews that most of the male subjects claimed that they were more concerned about the hardware parameters of the phone provided in the product information picture. Depending on whether it met expectations, their purchasing decisions were formed, and mobile phone reviews were taken as secondary references that could not completely change their minds.

Figure 5 shows an example of the relationship between visual behavior randomly selected from female participants and the correlative decision-making behavior. The English translation of words that appeared in Figure 5 is shown in Figure 4 .

Fixation count distribution.

The subjects’ fixation dwell time and fixation count for negative reviews were significantly greater than those for positive ones. Focusing on the screen and running smoothly, the female participant decided not to purchase this product. This leads to the conclusion that this subject thought a lot about the phone screen quality and running speed while selecting a mobile phone. When other consumers expressed negative criticism about these features, the female participant tended to give up buying them.

Furthermore, combined with the result of each subject’s gaze distribution map and AOI heat map, it was found that different subjects paid attention to different features of mobile phones. Subjects all had clear concerns about some features of the product. The top five mobile phone features that subjects were concerned about are listed in Table 5 . Contrary to expectations, factors, such as appearance and logistics, were no longer a priority. Consequently, the reasons why participants chose to buy or not to buy mobile phones can be inferred from the gazing distribution map recorded in the product review picture. Therefore we can provide suggestions on how to improve the design of mobile phone products for businesses according to the features that users are more concerned about.

Top 5 features of mobile phones.

Fictitious Comments Recognition Analysis

The authenticity of reviews is an important factor affecting the helpfulness of online reviews. To enhance the reputation and ratings of online stores, in the Chinese e-commerce market, more and more sellers are employing a network “water army”—a group of people who praise the shop and add many fake comments without buying any goods from the store. Combined with online comments, eye movement fixation, and information extraction theory, Song et al. (2017) found that fake praise significantly affects consumers’ judgment of the authenticity of reviews, thereby affecting consumers’ purchase intention. These fictitious comments glutted in the purchasers’ real ones are easy to mislead customers. Hence, this experiment was designed to randomly insert a fictitious comment into the remaining 79 real comments without notifying the participants in advance, to test whether potential buyers could identify the false comments and find out their impact on consumers’ purchase decisions.

The analysis of the eye movement data from 40 product review pictures containing this false commentary found that only several subjects’ visual trajectories were back and forth in this comment, and most participants exhibited no differences relative to other comments, indicating that the vast majority of users did not identify the lack of authenticity of this comment. Moreover, when asked whether they had taken note of this hidden false comment in interviews, almost 96% of the participants answered they had not. Thus, Hypothesis H2b is not supported.

This result explains why network “water armies” are so popular in China, as the consumer cannot distinguish false comments. Thus, it is necessary to standardize the e-commerce market, establish an online comment authenticity automatic identification information system, and crack down on illegal acts of employing network troops to disseminate fraudulent information.

Discussion and Conclusion

In the e-commerce market, online comments facilitate online shopping for consumers; in turn, consumers are increasingly dependent on review information to judge the quality of products and make a buying decision. Consequently, studies on the influence of online reviews on consumers’ behavior have important theoretical significance and practical implications. Using traditional empirical methodologies, such as self-report surveys, it is difficult to elucidate the effects of some variables, such as review choosing preference because they are associated with automatic or subconscious cognitive processing. In this paper, the eye-tracking experiment as a methodology was employed to test congruity hypotheses of product reviews and explore consumers’ online review search behavior by incorporating the moderating effect of gender.

Hypotheses testing results indicate that the emotional valence of online reviews has a significant influence on fixation dwell time and fixation count of AOI, suggesting that consumers exert more cognitive attention and effort on negative reviews than on positive ones. This finding is consistent with Ahluwalia et al.’s (2000) observation that negative information is more valuable than positive information when making a judgment. Specifically, consumers use comments from other users to avoid possible risks from information asymmetry ( Hong et al., 2017 ) due to the untouchability of online shopping. These findings provide the information processing evidence that customers are inclined to acquire more information for deeper thinking and to make a comparison when negative comments appear which could more likely result in choosing not to buy the product to reduce their risk. In addition, in real online shopping, consumers are accustomed to giving positive reviews as long as any dissatisfaction in the shopping process is within their tolerance limits. Furthermore, some e-sellers may be forging fake praise ( Wu et al., 2020 ). The above two phenomena exaggerate the word-of-mouth effect of negative comments, resulting in their greater effect in contrast to positive reviews; hence, consumers pay more attention to negative reviews. Thus, Hypothesis H2a is supported. However, when limited fake criticism was mixed in with a large amount of normal commentary, the subject’s eye movements did not change significantly, indicating that little cognitive conflict was produced. Consumers could not identify fake comments. Therefore, H2b is not supported.

Although the dominant effect of gender was not significant on the indicators of the fixation dwell time and fixation count, a significant interaction effect between user gender and review polarity was observed, suggesting that consumers’ gender can regulate their comment-browsing behavior. Therefore, H3 is partly supported. For female consumers, attention to negative comments was significantly greater than positive ones. Men’s attention was more homogeneous, and men paid more attention to positive comments than women. This is attributed to the fact that men and women have different risk perceptions of online shopping ( Garbarino and Strahilevitz, 2004 ). As reported in previous studies, men tend to focus more on specific, concrete information, such as the technical features of mobile phones, as the basis for their purchase decision. They have a weaker perception of the risks of online shopping than women. Women would be worried more about the various shopping risks and be more easily affected by others’ evaluations. Specifically, women considered all aspects of the available information, including the attributes of the product itself and other post-use evaluations. They tended to believe that the more comprehensive the information they considered, the lower the risk they faced of a failed purchase ( Garbarino and Strahilevitz, 2004 ; Kanungo and Jain, 2012 ). Therefore, women hope to reduce the risk of loss by drawing on as much overall information as possible because they are more likely to focus on negative reviews.

The main finding from the fixation count distribution is that consumers’ visual attention is mainly focused on reviews containing the following five mobile phone characteristics: running smoothly, battery life, fever condition of phones, pixels, and after-sales service. Considering the behavior results, when they pay more attention to negative comments, consumers tend to give up buying mobile phones. When they pay more attention to positive comments, consumers often choose to buy. Consequently, there is a significant correlation between visual attention and behavioral decision results. Thus, H4 is supported. Consumers’ decision-making intention can be reflected in the visual browsing process. In brief, the results of the eye movement experiment can be used as a basis for sellers not only to formulate marketing strategies but also to prove the feasibility and strictness of applying the eye movement tracking method to the study of consumer decision-making behavior.

Theoretical Implications

This study has focused on how online reviews affect consumer purchasing decisions by employing eye-tracking. The results contribute to the literature on consumer behavior and provide practical implications for the development of e-business markets. This study has several theoretical contributions. Firstly, it contributes to the literature related to online review valence in online shopping by tracking the visual information acquisition process underlying consumers’ purchase decisions. Although several studies have been conducted to examine the effect of online review valence, very limited research has been conducted to investigate the underlying mechanisms. Our study advances this research area by proposing visual processing models of reviews information. The findings provide useful information and guidelines on the underlying mechanism of how online reviews influence consumers’ online shopping behavior, which is essential for the theory of online consumer behavior.

Secondly, the current study offers a deeper understanding of the relationships between online review valence and gender difference by uncovering the moderating role of gender. Although previous studies have found the effect of review valence on online consumer behavior, the current study first reveals the effect of gender on this effect and explains it from the perspective of attention bias.

Finally, the current study investigated the effect of online reviews on consumer behavior from both eye-tracking and behavioral self-reports, the results are consistent with each other, which increased the credibility of the current results and also provides strong evidence of whether and how online reviews influence consumer behavior.

Implications for Practice

This study also has implications for practice. According to the analysis of experimental results and findings presented above, it is recommended that online merchants should pay particular attention to negative comments and resolve them promptly through careful analysis of negative comments and customization of product information according to consumer characteristics including gender factors. Based on the findings that consumers cannot identify false comments, it is very important to establish an online review screening system that could automatically screen untrue content in product reviews, and create a safer, reliable, and better online shopping environment for consumers.

Limitations and Future Research

Although the research makes some contributions to both theoretical and empirical literature, it still has some limitations. In the case of experiments, the number of positive and negative reviews of each mobile phone was limited to 10 positive and 10 negative reviews (20 in total) due to the size restrictions on the product review picture. The number of comments could be considered relatively small. Efforts should be made in the future to develop a dynamic experimental design where participants can flip the page automatically to increase the number of comments. Also, the research was conducted to study the impact of reviews on consumers’ purchase decisions by hiding the brand of the products. The results would be different if the brand of the products is exposed since consumers might be moderated through brand preferences and brand loyalty, which could be taken into account in future research projects.

Data Availability Statement

Author contributions.

TC conceived and designed this study. TC, PS, and MQ wrote the first draft of the manuscript. TC, XC, and MQ designed and performed related experiments, material preparation, data collection, and analysis. TC, PS, XC, and Y-CL revised the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor, reviewers and typesetters for their highly constructive comments. The authors would like to thank Jia Jin and Hao Ding for assistance in experimental data collection and Jun Lei for the text-polishing of this paper. The authors thank all the researchers who graciously shared their findings with us which allowed this eye-tracking study to be more comprehensive than it would have been without their help.

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The Factors Affecting Online Buying Behavior of Consumers During Crises: Literature Review

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• First Online: 28 March 2023
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• Maryam Shaaban 13 ,
• Allam Hamdan 14 &
• Ramzia Albakri 15  

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 621))

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• International Conference on Business and Technology

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The aim of this research paper is to understand the consumer buying behavior online during the crises. It is important to distinguish the factors that affect their online buying behavior. Many researchers have identified that consumer buying behavior is impulsive, it evaluates how emotion, thoughts and preference vary from consumer to consumer. Nowadays, purchasing any product and services is clearly different from the past-days and it is extremely influenced by digital marketing as a successful tool for increasing good advantage. The difference is that the consumers in the 21 st century are more sophisticated, and better concerned with innovative technology and internet network. Whereas they search for any product and services detailed information easily and feedback from different consumers/users. In order to achieve in today’s world and the rapidly developing market, marketers need to understand everything about their consumers such as; what they want, what they need, what they work and finally how they want to spend their money and time. Many factors influence consumers in his/her decision-making process, purchasing behavior and the selection of specific brand or merchant. By indicating and understanding the factors the marketers will have good chance to develop their strategy to attract and maintain their recent consumers and potential consumers as a real strength to better meet the need of their consumers.

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Maryam Shaaban

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Allam Hamdan

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Shaaban, M., Hamdan, A., Albakri, R. (2023). The Factors Affecting Online Buying Behavior of Consumers During Crises: Literature Review. In: Alareeni, B., Hamdan, A., Khamis, R., Khoury, R.E. (eds) Digitalisation: Opportunities and Challenges for Business. ICBT 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 621. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26956-1_16

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CONSUMERS' BUYING BEHAVIOR ON ONLINE SHOPPING: AN UTAUT AND LUM MODEL APPROACH

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Dr. Mohammad Naved Khan , MAMTA CHAWLA

Internet has gained status of as a dynamic commercial platform, more than a rich source of communication. It has intensified the complexities of the simple act of buying. “Google” has become the generic term for “searching information”. Traditional buying by individuals has taken the complex mixture of store, mall, television, internet, mobile- based shopping. Not only developed western-countries but even Asian countries, with poor infrastructure and low internet penetration rates, are equally adopting online buying. Indeed, a simple search combining the terms “online” and “buying” or “ shopping” results into more than 15000 results on any academic database source. A review of selected published work in the area of “online buying” reveals that a wide range of topics have been explored and a rich theoretical framework in the form of different models is inexistent. This paper aims to present a comprehensive framework of the relevant literature available in the field of online buying behavior, in the form of different theories, models and constructs; and research results based on them. Tradition 5-staged model of consumer behavior has different stages- need identification, information search, evaluation of alternatives, buying and post purchase evaluation. Additionally, for online buying behavior the stages involved in online buying can be divided into: attitude formation, intention, adoption and continuation with online buying. Most important factors that influence online buying: attitude, motivation, trust, risk, demographics, website etc. are widely researched and reported. “Internet adoption” is widely used as foundation framework to study “adoption of online buying”. Post adoption or continuation with online buying is the area which still needs substantiate research work. Current state of this emerging field offers the potential to identify areas that need attention for future researchers. Through review of online buying literature available, this paper offers theoretical basis to the academicians, practitioners and web-marketers. In addition, the clear understanding of the online buying behavior can provide the opportunities for designing new capabilities and strategies that would quench online buyers’ thrust on value.

James-Ariel Sánchez-Alzate

This study explores the differences between buyers and non-buyers in the adoption of electronic purchase intention in Colombia. Based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), a theoretical model that includes a set of five variables is established: performance expectations, effort expectations, social influence, facilitating conditions, and risk. The empirical results obtained from a final sample of 1,836 surveys emphasize the importance of performance expectations for both groups. Social Influence is another determinant of electronic purchase as well. In addition, an exploratory study of the moderating effect of the educational level and socioeconomic status for each group was performed, finding strong evidence of the influence of these demographic variables, which suggests that, as a conclusion that makes a great contribution to this country, access to electronic shopping is strongly related to educational level and socioeconomic status.

International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications

Dr Omkar Dastane

Abstract: E-Commerce tools have become a human needs everywhere and important not only to customers but to industry players. The intention to use E-Commerce tools among practitioners, especially in the Malaysian retail sector is not comprehensive as there are still many businesses choosing to use expensive traditional marketing. The research applies academic models and frameworks to the real life situation to develop a value proposition in the practical world by considering 11Street as the company under study and comparing it with Lazada as a leading competitor in the market. The objectives include identification of customers’ perception of a value for E-Commerce Businesses, followed by critical evaluation of existing value proposition of 11Street with Lazada to identify gap and finally to propose a new value proposition for 11street. This paper first identifies customer perceived value of E-Commerce followed by critical review of existing value proposition of 11Street and then comparing and contrasting with the leading player Lazada. By the end of this research, a new consumer value proposition proposal for 11Street proposed for consideration in matching with the Malaysian consumers’ value criteria.

Adamkolo M Ibrahim

This paper investigated factors that affect e-shopping acceptance among Nigerian students of tertiary institutions. The extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) model formulated by Venkatesh, Thong and Xu (2012) was adopted with some adjustments. The predictors of the model are performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, price value and habit. Since the researchers wanted to study technology adoption in the context of service delivery quality, a review of relevant literature suggested designing an integrated model that would determine the influence of technology adoption expectancy and service quality variables on e-shopping adoption could yield comprehensive results. To achieve that, three key predictors from the Service Quality (SERVQUAL) model namely, reliability, responsiveness and empathy were integrated into the conceptual framework, which yielded the research model that was employed to determine the factor(s) that significantly affect adoption of e-shopping. The objectives of this study were to identify online shopping strategies of the e-tailers, to determine the students' perception of e-shopping and to determine the relationship between the predictors and e-shopping adoption. The integrated model, from which 10 hypotheses of this study were derived, measured the responses of 380 undergraduate (university) students. A pre-tested and validated 40-item questionnaire was administered to the respondents. The reliability coefficient of the items ranged from .755 to .876, which was high. A conclusion was drawn and some recommendations for future research were outlined.

Yusuf Lamidi

Adoption of Online shopping as being the latest purchasing channel in this decade of 24th century, particularly among the University students compared to the traditional shopping method as means of adoption of Technology Acceptance Method (TAM). Although, it is not clear what drives consumers to shop online and whether these numbers could be even increase if more attractive online stores were developed. This research seeks to critically explore and understand the social factors which influence the consumer intention to shop online, in student’s attitudinal behaviour. There has been an argument from different previous reviews concerning the objective and aim of this research (e.g. Davis, 1989; Monsuwe et al., 2004) but based on framework. So, therefore the study extend such framework which required re-examined and testing of the factors in order to make it more open for application in research context and also include students as consumers satisfaction to the definition of online shopping as recent factor to be consider. Mixed method strategy (quantitative and qualitative method) was adopted to explore and investigate validity and reliability of such social factors that drives consumers’ intention and attitude respectively of their demographic, role of product characteristics, situational factors, impact of previous experience and level of trust and satisfaction with web-stores. Based on the relevant literature review, therefore, the researcher carried out regression analysis test and thematic approach on the relative hypothesis. And the results of the regression analysis, manual statistical calculation and thematic approach (pattern) demonstrate that the social factors influence students’ intention and attitude toward online shopping with; (a) age and gender as basic factors, (b) product types like ticket/holiday booking and fashion, (c) ease of use, navigation and flexibility of web-site (d) usefulness of available information, effective for searching from various site and enjoyment from previous experience and, (d) quick delivery, problem solving with safety and security was found as satisfaction and trust of not just shopping presently but also using internet to shop in future.

suhana mohezar

Charles Dennis is a Senior Lecturer at Brunel University, London, UK. His teaching and research area is (e-)retail and consumer behaviour – the vital final link of the Marketing process – satisfying the end consumer. Charles is a Chartered Marketer and has been elected as a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing for work helping to modernise the teaching of the discipline.

TJPRC Publication

On-line shopping has seen an unprecedented growth globally, which also opens up new business avenues for stakeholders such as online retailers, e-commerce business platforms, banks and internet service operators. As per " India's Digital Leap–The Multi Trillion Dollar Opportunity " a report by Morgan Stanley, India's on-line shopping is expected to grow at an annual rate of 30% to reach about $200 billion for gross merchandise value by year 2026. Online shoppers in India are expected to grow from 14% of total internet base in 2016 to about 50% in 2026. Seeing this significant growth, the objective of the research paper is to identify and assess the factors influencing the adoption of online shopping and behavioral intention of online shoppers in Delhi/NCR, for which Exploratory, Descriptive and Causal research design has been adopted. This study had validated UTAUT model.

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