Abstract
The rapid growth of online shopping in almost each of the countries around the world has generated lots of interest among the academicians and marketing professionals to search for up-to-date research-based knowledge on shopping behavioral patterns of the online shoppers to help the decision makers make data-based marketing decisions. The behavioral patterns of the online shoppers among the different countries in the world certainly differ a lot. Apparently, digital divide may be blamed as the main culprit for it, but these differences are there not only because of the nuances of the digital phenomena. There are many other social, cultural, technological, technical, economic, political, legal, educational, religious, etc. factors as well. The article explores the most influential factors, and a number of other factors too, to contribute new contents to the existing literature. It provides some useful perspectives of the various aspects of online shopping by carefully probing into consumers' intention toward online purchase in more depth and detail.
TopBackground
The power of internet is very much evident in this world now which leads customers to choose things sitting at their homes rather than going to a store physically. The online shopping is a crazy thing to do now for people of all ages that is creating crowd for the online entrepreneurs. But this shopping behavior of customers can be affected or influenced by many factors. Some aspects of online purchasing are liked by customers while others are not. It is evident that neither all the aspects of online shopping are liked by the customers, nor any single aspect influences all the customers similarly.
A decent number of studies have been conducted to find out the different factors of online shopping which are proactive and prominent, as well as to measure what factors influence the intention, attitude and behavior of online shoppers, and how do those factors play the respective influential roles in shaping the behavioral pattern of the online shoppers. It is the crying demand of time to understand the shopping behavior and the factors which affect the purchase decision of the online shoppers. A small scale study done by the authors in this area, is reasonably a more comprehensive one to explore the behavioral patterns of these newly generated online shoppers in Bangladesh.
In order to explore consumers’ motivation behind shopping online, evolution of the e-commerce environment, and evaluation of factors influencing consumers to get involved in e-commerce are important. The study aims to determine the factors that originally influence consumers’ online shopping behavior in the city of Dhaka, Bangladesh. For this reason, the study assumes that there might be an association between these underlying factors and the patterns of consumers’ online shopping habits to form their sustainable online shopping behavior. The possible factors have been extracted from the analysis of some related literature. Furthermore, the study also attempts to focus on the existing problems and provide some recommendations to resolve those problems.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Online Shoppers: Anyone who would like to spend some time to search and browse the websites of the business and/or service organizations with the purpose of just passing time, seeing the product / service assortments, comparing prices with those at the brick and mortar stores, intending to purchase or finalize a transaction right away or sometime in future, referring any important information to friends, families, and peers, doing mere research to learn something new, planning to do similar business in future etc.
Digital Divide: A differential condition existing in the countries around the world in terms of the diffusion and usage of the ever developing and most booming information technology, which includes internet infrastructure, data speed, usage of internet, availability & adoption of smart phone, regulatory policies and restriction ranges on different global websites, attitude of the people of any specific country towards technology, etc.
Pattern: A specific form of any activity or anything which is built, cherished, consumed, demonstrated, done, organized, picked, referred, seen, etc. repeatedly in the same or a similar manner within the limits of the reasonable range of variations.
Behavior: Generally, any sorts of responses made by any living organism complying with the driving forces generated from within that organism due to the influence of and interaction with the other stimulus or forces received by the receptor organs of that organism from the surrounding environment at a particular point in or over a period of time.