Factors affecting customer to shop online: A study in Indian context

The purpose of this paper is to measure the developed online shopping construct in the Indian context and to examine the impact of demographics (Age, Gender, Income, Occupation, Education, etc.) of customers to online shopping and their product preference in online shopping. The study also, examines the mediating role of consumer attitude relationship between quality of the product, price, product delivery, website information attribute, online services and consumer buying behavior towards online shopping in the Indian context. An offline survey was conducted by administrating a structured questionnaire to the online shopper in selected metro cities in India. The data was collected through a structured questionnaire by applying a purposive sampling technique. Responses are recorded on a Five-point Likert scale where: one stands for strongly disagree, three stands for neither disagree nor agree, and five stands for strongly agree. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the demographic and Internet uses related to online shopping. Structure Equitation Modelling (SEM) Chi-square test was used to test the theoretical model developed by the researcher through SPSS and AMOS. The study reveals that developed constructs by the researcher are valid for measuring online shopping construct in the Indian context. The study proves that there is a significant impact of customer attitude towards price, quality of the product, product delivery, online services, website information attributes and consumer buying behavior in online shopping.

This data was collected a single time due to cost and time constraints. Longitudinal studies are more suitable to understand the customers purchasing preference. Thus, future study may adopt the longitudinal approach. The sample of the survey was from Indian metro cities, i.e., Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata. Therefore, the future studies can focus on semi-urban and rural areas of the country. The study developed and validated the scale of online shopping predominantly in an Indian context, which may not be applicable in other cultural and market settings. The study helps online service providers or E-retail industry to understand customer attitudes and buying behavior in India. It also contributes to formulating the best marketing/e-marketing strategies to tap potential customer in India. Hence, the study also helps the e-retailers to provide better convenient policies to tier-1 tier-2 cities and rural customer in India.