Exploring dimensional structure of antecedents of online shopping behaviour

This paper provides practical insights of conducting Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to reveal the underlying structure of a fairly big set of variables related to antecedents of online shopping behavior. The e-commerce policy formulated by the Indian government in March 2016, compelled online shopping players to focus more on improving customer experience, rather than giving large discounts, to achieve higher levels of loyalty. Therefore, understanding the antecedents of online shopping behavior becomes even more significant. To begin with, extensive scholarly literature review on studies related to antecedents of online shopping behavior was conducted. This helped in generating an initial pool of variables on motives for shopping online. However, since the literature was fairly heterogeneous, there was a need for an exploratory study. Based on the insights generated by a qualitative study and expert opinion, the final set of variables to measure online shopping behavior was shortlisted. An empirical study based on a sample size of 175 was carried out. EFA using Varimax rotation was run three times and a set of 46 items was reduced to 36. The total variance explained was 72.45%, the number of factors was reduced from 12 to 9 and a simple and interpretable dimensionality structure was identified. The study has practical implications for the e-tailers in terms of gaining a better understanding of the online shopper behavior in the context of changing market dynamics.