Gender and Behaviour Differences Influencing on Web Shopping

Abstract

Despite several pieces of evidence showing the growth of Internet usage by Indian consumers. Online sales show less than 1 percent of the total retail sales in India. This may represent a great potential to grow yet some obstacles to overcome for online retailers. Many Indian consumers have low self-efficacy in using the Internet and feel shopping online to be eccentric. It seems that even for those who use the Internet regularly, the Internet is mainly for searching product information, comparing prices, and checking consumer reviews rather than making a purchase. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify factors affecting Indian consumers’ attitudes towards shopping online. This information will help Internet retailers find a way to encourage Indian shopper’s online purchase behavior. Previous studies (i.e., Bhatnagar et al., 2000; Jarvenpaa and Todd, 1997; Vijayasarathy and Jones, 2000) attempted to identify factors affecting Indian online consumers’ online purchases. However, only risk and benefit factors identified from the US studies were applied to the Indian web shopping context, failing to incorporate Indian culturespecific factors. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify factors affecting Indian consumers’ web shopping gender behavior, specifically elucidating them in the Indian context. In addition to the previously identified factors (i.e., Convenient and time-saving, on-time delivery, availability of detailed information about the product, safe and secure while shopping online, selection of goods available on the internet is a very broad, special offer/discounted prices, convenient and time-saving, shop online from a trustworthy website, easy price comparison to online and offline stores. Web shopping only if online prices are lower than actual price etc.); this study included Indian gender-specific factors that may play an important role in determining Internet adoption for e-commerce. Also, a potential gender difference in identifying factors affecting male/female purchase behavior was investigated.