NIGHT COLLEGE PROGRAM

Consumer’s Attitude towards Online Shopping

Factors Influencing Consumers to Shop Online: A
Research

In Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Subject

Marketing Research

Submitted to:

Dr. Nelson Layague

Professor

Submitted by:

Marquez, Emmanuel
Medina, Darlene
Sola, Jestine Marie
Valebia, Regina

November 10, 2017

1|Page
 CHAPTER I

Introduction

Generally speaking, the trend of e-commerce has been increasing rapidly in the recent

years with the development of internet and due to the easy accessibility of internet usage.

Having an easy access to the internet has driven entrepreneurs to create an online shop and

the customers to shop online. Through electronic marketing and internet communication,

entrepreneurs are coordinating different marketing activities such as market research,

product development, inform customers about product features, promotion, customer

services, customer feedback and so on. Online shopping is used as a medium for

communication and electronic commerce, it is to increase or improve in value, quality and

attractiveness of delivering customer benefits and better satisfaction, that is why online

shopping is more convenient and day by day increasing its popularity.

Not only benefits but there are also risks in online shopping. There are fake stores, credit

card fraud, lack of assurance for the quality of the items, non-delivery risks, etc. On the

other hand, despite of having a downside, e-commerce is growing fast – customers can

buy faster, there are more alternatives and can order product and services with comparative

lowest price. Customer’s attitude towards online shopping refers to their psychological

state in terms of making purchases over the internet.

2|Page
I.A. Statement of the Problem

The prime purpose of the research is to identify and analyze the factors influencing

consumers to shop online. The findings of this research will not only help the marketers to

formulate their marketing strategies for online shoppers but will also increase the

knowledge and research in field of online shopping.

i) What factors influence consumers to shop online?

ii) Who are online shoppers in terms of demography?

One of our research objectives is to work on factors that influence consumers to shop

online, researchers have decided to study two factors such as Convenience and Website

Design/Features. While it is important to investigate the motivation behind consumer

purchasing but it is equally important to find as how the consumers form attitudes and

behaviors towards online buying because consumer attitude towards purchasing online is a

conspicuous factor affecting actual buying behavior. When marketers get to know the

factors affecting online buyer’s behavior then it create huge opportunity for the marketers

to develop the marketing strategies accordingly and turn the potential customers into

actual one and retain the exiting buyers.

3|Page
 CHAPTER II

Review of Related Literature

E-commerce is a tool for reducing administrative costs and cycle time, streaming business

processes, and improving relationships with both business partners and customers

(Charles, 1998). The Internet and electronic commerce were the two most significant

development of information during 1990s. There has been a marked increase in the

number of consumers who purchase over the Internet, as well as an increase in sales

worldwide conducted via electronic commerce. Innovation and electronic commerce

relationships have resulted in tremendous changes in market competition among various

industries (Blosch, 2000; Hamid & Kassim, 2004). Customer purchasing decisions are

influenced by perception, motivation, learning, attitudes and beliefs. The perception is

reflected to on how the customers select, organize, and interpret information to form

knowledge. The motivation is reflected to the customer’s desire to meet their own needs.

Learning is reflected to the customers’ behavior experience arising. Attitudes are reflected

to customers’ steadily favorable or unfavorable assessments, feelings, and inclinations

towards object or idea. Finally, Beliefs is reflected to customers’ thoughts about a product

or service (Kotler & Armstrong, 1997).

The Factors of Consumer Purchasing Decision

There are many factors influences and affect customers in related to how consumers make

purchasing decision. The purchasing decision process starts long before actual purchase

and continues long after. Usually in more routine purchases, consumers often reserve or

4|Page
skip some of purchase decision process (Kotler & Armstrong, 2004). The researcher used

2 independent factors in this study.

Convenience

Convenience and saved time were offered by online shopping which were two motivating

factors for online purchases (Lee, 2002). The main reason that motivated consumers to

shop online was conveniences (Swaminathan et al., 1999). Convenient access to product

information could facilitate and help shoppers’ making an online purchases decision

(Loshe & Spiller, 1999). Empirical research shows that convenient of the internet is one of

the impacts on consumers’ willingness to buy online (Wang et al., 2005). Online shopping

is available for customers around the clock comparing to traditional store as it is open 24

hours a day, 7 days a week (Hofacker, 2001; Wang et al., 2005). Research shows that 58

percent chose to shop online because they could shop after-hours, when the traditional

stores are closed and 61 percent of the respondents selected to shop online because they

want to avoid crowds and wailing lines, especially in holiday shopping (The Tech Faq,

2008).

Consumers not only look for products, but also for online services. Some companies have

online customer services available 24 hours. Therefore, even after business hours,

customers can ask questions, get necessary support or assistance, which has provided

convenience to consumers (Hermes, 2000). Some customers use online channels just to

escape from face-to-face interaction with salesperson because they pressure or

uncomfortable when dealing with salespeople and do not want to be manipulated and
5|Page
controlled in the marketplace (Goldsmith and Flynn, 2005; Parks, 2008). This is especially

true for those customers who may have had negative experience with the salesperson, or

they just want to be free and make decision by themselves without salespersons’ presence.

Website Design / Features

Customers can be influenced by the image of the web site when they decide what website

or buyer they should buy from (Lim and Dubinsky, 2004). Not only should companies

create their secured website, but also should create it to be more attractive and more

useful. Online stores can change a shopper into a buyer if the stores provide variety and

useful information of product, good customer service, and easy-to-access website (Laudon

and Traver, 2009). Their websites should have enough information but should not be too

overwhelming. Putting unstructured or useless information in the website can reduce

internet usefulness and ease of use (Bigné-Alcañiz et al., 2008). Also, companies and

sellers should double-check any single words in their website to reduce mistakes and

customers’ misunderstanding. Information quality and visual design is important effect on

repurchasing (Koo et al., 2008). The willingness to purchase online will be low if the

online store lacks of ease in searching and comparing shopping, and product updates.

Online store should make their website to be easy for consumers to search product and

service. Making web designs and portals novel and sophisticated and web atmospherics

friendly is a key to attract visitors. Moreover, if online stores want to convert visitor into

buyer, they should improve their website by offering customer a comfortable, logical,

interesting and hassle-free process and easy language by creating fast website with

functional design as smooth as possible (Broekhuizen and Huizingh, 2009). Online

6|Page
payment process is another issue that should be taken care of because it affects the

willingness to pay (Wang et al., 2005). Online stores should make their payment process to

be as easy and secure.

Website design and online shopping activity is one of the vital influencing factors of online

shopping. Website design, website reliability/fulfillment, website customer service and

website security/privacy are the most attractive features which influence the perception of

the consumer of online buying Shergill & Chen (2005). Kamariah and Salwani (2005)

claims the higher website quality, the higher consumer intends to shop from internet. Web

design quality has important impacts on consumer choice of electronic stores, stated by

Liang and Lai (2000). Another study conducted by Zhang, Dran, Small, and Barcellos

(1999, 2000), and Zhang and Dran (2000) indicated that website design features of the

website are important and influencing factors that leads consumer’s satisfaction and

dissatisfaction with a specific website. A study conducted by Yasmin and Nik (2010)

shows a significant relationship between online shopping activity and website features.

Website design features can be considered as a motivational factor that can create positive

or negative feelings with a website (Zhang, et al 1999). A study by Li and Zhang (2002), if

website is designed with quality features it can guide the customers for successful

transactions and attract the customers to revisit the website again. However, worse quality

website features can also hamper online shopping. According to Liang and Lai (2000),

web design quality or website features has direct impact on user to shop online. Moreover

researchers such as Belanger, Hiller and Smith (2002) concluded that a large segment of

internet users have serious concerns of security.

7|Page
 CHAPTER III

Methodology

III.A.Research Method

Our research regarding Consumer’s attitude towards online shopping is a descriptive

research because we just want to draw a picture of our topic as what are the factors that
influence consumers to shop online. We would like to go for quantitative method in our
research as it is a precise way. Research projects normally done for academic reasons are
limited to time as our research is also being done for academic purpose and is time limited
so that is why we are going to prefer quantitative approach.

III.A.1.Survey Questionnaire

8|Page
III.B.Data Collection

The data collection method used by researchers to is a questionnaire method. It includes

questionnaire from consumers as what are the factors that influence them to purchase

online. As our study covers online shoppers so we feel it would be easy for us to distribute

the questionnaire and then analyze the situation.

9|Page
 CHAPTER IV

Results and Discussion

Uncertain/
Strongly Strongly
Modules Agree Not Disagree
Agree Disagree
Applicable
Convenience Frequency
1. I get on-time delivery of product 4 16 10 - -
in online shopping

2. Detail Information of products are 5 21 3 - -

available in online shopping

3. I can buy the products anytime 24 10 11 8 - 1

hours a day in online shopping

4. It is easy to choose and make 13 10 6 1 -

comparison with other products in
online shopping

Website Design / Features

5. The website design helps me in 17 10 3 - -
searching the products easily

6. While shopping online, I prefer to 15 13 2 - -

purchase from the website that
provides safety and ease of
navigation and order

7. The website layout provides 13 16 1 - -

quality of information in
searching and selecting the right
product while shopping online

8. I believe that familiarity with the 14 13 1 - 2

website before making actual
purchase reduce the risk of
shopping online

10 | P a g e
The data collected by the researchers in the form of age, gender, and occupation.

Researchers will use tables and graph to see the demographic profile of online shoppers, in

the same step researchers will do correlation analysis of each demographic factor except

gender, to see the relationship with demographic factors and attitudes towards online

shopping. After finishing first step, researchers will analyze 1 st part of the questionnaire

regarding two factors. In the second step first section of the questionnaire will be analyzed

regarding two factors influence consumers to shop online, it consist of 8 questions. First

factor that is convenience carries four modules, and each module will be analyzed and

discussed separately with the help of table and graph of frequency and with results of likert

scale. Writers have used five point likert scale from strongly agree with score of 5 to

strongly disagree with score of 1. The score of each module (e.g. "I get on-time delivery

by shopping on-line") in terms of frequency will be used to calculate the average for each

module. For instance if we denote "Strongly agree" by "5", the others by "4, 3, 2, 1 " then

we can use the 30 input data as follows: 5*4(frequency) + 4*16 + 3*10 + 2*0 + 1*0 = 114.

Divided by 30 (sample size) we will get 3.8 which is the average result for this module.

In the same way we will calculate the total series for all the 8 modules. First factor that is

Convenience consist of 4 modules and another 4 modules pertaining to Website

design/Features. Firstly we will analyze each module separately and later on we will

analyze in the form of groups (Convenience and Website design/Features). Once this part

will be completed, researchers will take average of each group. Average of each group will

be calculated by taking the sum of averages of each module under each group and the

dividing that sum by number of modules under each group to see trend of consumer
11 | P a g e
attitudes towards online shopping. To make it more clear suppose the average score for

first module (M1) is 3.8, second module (M2) is 3.93, third module (M3) is 3.97 fourth

module (M4) is 4.17, so the average score for convenience will be calculated by adding up

the average scores 3.8+3.93+3.97+4.17= 15.87, then dividing the sum to total number of

modules i.e. 15.87/4= 3.97. Respondent’s answers will be discussed in this section. The

last section summary includes the summary about the factors that influence consumer and

compare our findings with previous literature.

IV.A. Demographic Profile

IV.A.1.According to Gender

According to demography profile, 83% of the respondents are male and 17% respondents

are female. We conducted a random sampling with the total of 30 respondents. At the time

of survey comparatively higher number of female said they don’t have shopping

experience through online. So, according to the survey result it is clear that male

respondents are more interested to shop online than female.

12 | P a g e
 Figure 2
Gender

IV.A.2.According to Age

Age Frequency Percentage

18-20 5 17%
21-23 6 20%
24-26 4 13%
27-29 2 7%
30-32 2 7%
33-35 4 13%
36-38 2 7%
39-41 3 10%
42-44 0 0%
45-47 1 3%
48-50 1 3%
Total 30 100%

Table 3
Age Profile

Table 2 shows that out of 30 respondents, majority of online shoppers are in the age range of

21-23 years old with frequency of 6 or 20% of respondents, followed by age ranged of 18-20

13 | P a g e
with frequency of 5 or 17%. While, the least frequency of age range is 42-44 with 0 frequency

followed by age range of 45-47 and 48-50 with frequency of 1 or 3%. So according to the

respondents group, maximum respondents are the millennials or the younger generations who

has age limit between 21 to 23 years. Overall result shows that between all of them the

respondents who has age limit between 18 to 26 years and 33 to 35 years (17%+20%+13%

+13%=63%) people are more familiar to shop online.

IV.A.3.According to Occupation

Figure 3 shows that majority of the respondents are employed with the percentage of 87%,

followed by the students with 10%, and only 3% are self-employed.

Figure 3
Occupation

14 | P a g e
Table 1 Age Profile
Age Frequency Percentage
18-20 5 17%

21-23 6 20%

24-26 4 13%

27-29 2 07%

30-32 2 07%

33-35 4 13%

36-38 2 07%

39-41 3 10%

42-44 0 0%

45-47 1 03%

48-50 1 03%
30 100%

Table 1 shows that out of 30 respondents, majority of online shoppers are in the age range
of 21-23 years old with frequency of 6 or 20% of respondents, followed by age ranged of
18-20 with frequency of 5 or 17%. While, the least frequency of age range is 42-44 with 0
frequency followed by age range of 45-47 and 48-50 with frequency of 1 or 3%.

15 | P a g e
Table 2 Gender Profile
Gender Frequency Percentage
Male 25 83%

Female 5 17%
Total 30 100%

Table 2 shows that majority of respondents are Male with frequency of 25 or 83%.

Table 3 Occupation Profile

Frequency Percentage
Employed 26 87%
Self-Employed 1 03%
Student 3 10%
Total 30 100%

Table 3 shows that out of 30 respondents, 26 of them are employed with percentage of
87%.

Table 4 Computed Weighted Mean According to Convenience

16 | P a g e
CONVENIENCE Weighted Mean Verbal
Interpretation
1. I get on-time delivery of product in online shopping 3.2% Uncertain / Not
Applicable
2. Detail Information of products are available in 4.53% Strongly Agree
online shopping
3. I can buy the products anytime 24 hours a day in 6.3% Strongly Agree
online shopping

4. It is easy to choose and make comparison with 4.17% Agree

other products in online shopping
TOTAL WEIGHTED MEAN 4.55% Strongly Agree

Table 4 shows that the 30 respondents perceived that they can buy the products anytime 24
hours a day in online shopping with a weighted mean of 6.3% or a verbal interpretation of
Strongly Agree, followed by the availability of the detail information of products in online
shopping with a weighted mean of 4.53% or a verbal interpretation of Strongly agree, then
the being able to choose and make comparison with other products easily in online
shopping with a weighted mean of 4.17% or a verbal interpretation of Agree and lastly,
being on-time delivery of product in online shopping with a weighted mean of 3.2% or a
verbal interpretation of Uncertain / Not Applicable.

This means that the respondents consider the convenience of buying products anytime,
anywhere through online shopping with a total weighted average mean of 4.55% or a
verbal interpretation of Strongly Agree.

Table 5 Computed Weighted Mean According to Website Design / Features

17 | P a g e
WEBSITE DESIGN/FEATURES Weighted Mean Verbal
Interpretation

1. The website design helps me in searching the 4.47% Agree

products easily
2. While shopping online, I prefer to purchase from 4.4% Agree
the website that provides safety and ease of
navigation and order
3. The website layout provides quality of information 4.4% Agree
in searching and selecting the right product while
shopping online
4. I believe that familiarity with the website before 4.23% Agree
making actual purchase reduce the risk of shopping
online
TOTAL WEIGHTED MEAN 4.38% Agree

Table 5 shows that the 30 respondents agreed that the website design helps them in
searching the products easily with weighted mean of 4.47%, 4.4% preferred to purchase
from the website that provides safety and ease of navigation and order and the website
layout provides quality of information in searching and selecting the right product while
shopping online. And 4.23% believed that familiarity with the website before making
actual purchase reduce the risk of shopping online.

This means that the respondents consider website design and features of the product is
important in purchasing online with a total weighted average of 4.38% or a verbal
interpretation of Agree.

CHAPTER V

18 | P a g e
 Conclusion

Online shopping is becoming more popular day by day with the increase in the usage of

World Wide Web known as www. Understanding customer’s need for online selling has

become challenge for marketers. Specially understanding the consumer’s attitudes towards

online shopping , making improvement in the factors that influence consumers to shop

online and working on factors that affect consumers to shop online will help marketers to

gain the competitive edge over others.

In this research, 83% are male respondents while only 17% are female; respondents are

mostly 21-23 years old and almost are employed. Therefore, we conclude that men really

want their shopping experience to be straightforward and simple. According to a 2012

study by digital marketing agency iProspect, 70% of affluent men prefer to do their

shopping research and purchases online. Moreover, over a quarter of those who

participated in iProspect's study made weekly purchases. Websites are increasingly being

specially designed for phones and tablets, and a slew of Apple and Android Apps are now

dedicated to the mobile experience. These have massively improved the ease of use on

the small screen and meant that the online experience is no longer tied to your desk. More

and more people are shopping across devices, browsing a bit on their phone, maybe adding

to basket or wish list on their tablet and then purchasing later from their desktop PC or

Mac.

19 | P a g e
It’s been said before that women shop, men buy. In traditional ready-to-wear stores men

are frequently on a mission – get in, get what they need, get out. The online world is

rapidly shifting that formula.

20 | P a g e