E-shopping: An Extended Technology Innovation

- Online shopping is a new way in the world of retailing and future of ecommerce world definitely. A report by Avendus Capital in “India goes Digital” Indian ecommerce market was estimated at 28,500 Crore in 2011. According to Forrester, ecommerce market in India will grow fastest within Asia-Pacific region at a CAGR of 57% between years 2012-2016. Both single branded and multi branded companies are selling their products and services online. This increasing growth has generated the idea to conduct this study. In this context, research paper explores three factors that influence consumer intentions to purchase products online: safety oriented, convenience oriented and price oriented. The study analyzes the perception of 150 online shoppers in Bangalore regarding convenience, safety and price and their intention and attitude towards online shopping. A structured close ended questionnaire was administered to online shoppers. The collected data were analyzed in two stages. In the first stage correlation was performed to analyze between online shopping features and consumer purchase intention. In the second stage factor analysis was carried out to find the critical factors responsible for making consumer purchase intentions towards online shopping. The findings of this research shows that „safety‟ produces trust, „convenience‟ originates user friendliness and „price‟ provides economy, all three influenced directly the attitude towards purchase intentions of consumers to shop online. This paper provides useful insight for the researchers to understand the consumer‟s attitude towards online shopping intention.

retailers and consumers and hence e-retailers are facing issues in retaining consumers. This study focuses on consumer purchase intentions towards online shopping and explores the factors responsible for making purchase decisions. This research study can help online marketers to reframe their e-retailing strategies. Consequently, this study expects to engage more number of consumers to shop online.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Review of previous studies develops an in-depth understanding of consumers' perception towards online shopping and their intentions towards shopping. Subsequently, demographic and experiential groups also responded comparably during surveys. First the inclination of using internet and its effect on consumer purchase behavior was perceived as male oriented activity. In past surveys males had shown greater preference towards technology (Wilder, Mackie, & Cooper, 1985). According to Bredin, Granitz, &Koernig, 2001, due to different society norms and lesser access to internet, women show lesser attitudes than men for online shopping technology. In later surveys there was no difference discovered between genders with respect to attitude towards use of technology (Settle, Dillon, &Alreck, 1999). Age is the more important discriminator regarding respondents' interest for technology (Settle, Dillon, &Alreck, 1999). Online shopping is very popular among youth, although it is expected that after some time other buyer characteristics will also affect the consumer's buying process. Effect of age, gender, marital status and years spent on internet was included in study of Bhatnagar, Misra, and Rao (2000) on risk, convenience and internet shopping behavior. According to their study marital status had no effect on purchase intentions of consumers and found mixed results for other characteristics. A study by Ratchford, Talukdar, & Lee, 2001 concluded that online shoppers are younger and they are more educated as well as earn higher income than conventional buyers. 75% of internet shoppers say that they use internet for shopping but yet they have not made any online purchase (Udo& Marquis, 2001-2002. The most effective and influential factors are towards the perception for price, quality of product and variety of product (Arnold, Handelman, & Tiger, 1996;Baker, Levy &Grewal, 1992;Cronin, 1996). Perception towards price plays an important role in online shopping because different pricing strategies are applied to the products as well as for their services. In dynamic pricing strategy (weekly change or monthly change), prices change over time and it is easy to execute on internet across the consumers (Kannan&Kopalle, 2001). Quality of product is defined as the distinguished characteristics or features of product or service that can make it different from the competitor's product or services (Cronin, 1996). According to Teck (2002), usefulness refers to the utility of the online shopping on World Wide Web. It measures the degree of benefits and advantages of online shopping perceived by individuals. Ramayah, Aafaqi and Jantan (2003) explained that there is a significant impact of usefulness and ease of use perceived by consumers on their acceptance and usage of online shopping and usefulness was found as partial mediator. According to Chau and Hwa (2001), compatibility is one of the essential characteristic for any innovative adoption and it has a significant impact of compatibility on acceptance by users of technology. The report concludes that there is a strong relationship between compatibility and the relative benefits. Karyanni(2003) found that compatibility was a successful distinguisher between online shoppers and traditional shoppers. Anil (2000) found that activities of online shopping include several ways that process personal data. Protection of privacy is important and these personal should be used with care and legitimate purpose and must not be disclosed to wrong persons. Ramayah,Dahlan, Teck and Aafaqi (2003) explained that security and privacy issues are the major hurdles in way of online shopping. These studies bring to a close the importance of improvement in technology for security and privacy in usage of growing online shopping. Consumers are unwilling to shop online due to high privacy as well as security reasons (Udo, 2001;Grandinetti, 1996). Udos (2001) observed a close relationship between security and privacy. Privacy is related with how a company deals with the consumer data and security is about accidental comprises of the consumer data to some other third party (e.g. Identify thief and Hacker). Several obstacles were argued by Salim (2000) regarding the security criteria that hackers may exists inside the company and from. Issues of consumers' privacy like protecting the personal data, product purchased etc., were examined. Yu and Abdulai (2000) initiate that the government may play an important role in protecting privacy and security of consumers and it will contribute in growth of online shopping.Inspite of slow down of regular internet usages, online shoppers are growing in a faster way (Forrester Research, December 2001). From the previous studies, it was found that large percentage of users hasn't made any purchase despite calling themselves as internet shoppers. Studies have shown that the internet shoppers have higher income and more education. Various studies have shown that differentiation of price, product quality and variety play important factors in purchasing decisions. Prices change dynamically online and purchase service is also an important factor. Some studies showed that perceived utility and ease are important factors. Privacy and security factor out as major concerns by consumers and technical advances would help. Government should play important role in consumer protection and security and add to growth of internet shopping. In this context, it is important for to analyse the shopping behaviour of online consumers and their purchase intention towards it.

RESEARCH GAP
Analysis of the literature review relating to online shopping and internet has highlighted research gaps and additional research is required to fill this gap. It is inferred from the reviews that most of the research studies related to online shopping have focused only on utilization, usage and adoption of the online shopping. These studies did not study factors influencing consumer's purchase intentions towards online shopping. Jiang et al. (2000) investigated the factors responsible and encourage or discourage consumers when they shop online. The information about the influential factors which form consumers purchase intentions towards online shopping found from this study will enhance and explore the ability in understanding the complexity of online shopping business.

OBJECTIVES
The main objective of the study is to analyze the consumer purchase intentions towards online shopping and explores the factors responsible for making purchase decisions. The specific objectives are 1.
To analyze the demographic characters of respondents with respect to frequency of usage.

2.
To investigate the shopping features of the customers and their purchase intentions.

3.
To find the major factors responsible for the consumers purchase intention.

Data collection
Survey questionnaires were developed to gather information and were distributed to conveniently selected consumers who were experiencing online shopping. The statements and questions were closed ended and choice was limited to fixed response on specific points on Likert type and nominal scales. The questionnaires were distributed to the 150 respondents. It consists of students, house wives, govt. job employees, private job employees and others with different genders, age groups, education levels and income groups.

Statistical tools
Reliability test was performed first to check the reliability of variables included in the study. Cross tabulation was done to analyze the demographic characteristics of respondents. Correlation analysis was done to find relationship between online shopping features and consumers purchase intentions. Further factor analysis was carried out to find out the major factors influencing consumers' purchase intentions towards online shopping.

Reliability test
Reliability test was conducted using Cronbach's alpha. Srivasan (1985) found that a reliability coefficient higher than 0.5 is acceptable. From table 1 in Appendix, it is evident that reliability analysis shows the value of 0.921 which is acceptable. Table 2 in Appendix represents the demographic characteristics and usage of online shopping among the respondents. Here majority of the respondents 90 (60%) are male who are using online shopping. Most of the 58 respondents are using online shopping from past 1 to 5 years and among them most of the respondents are male. Gender has significant impact on usage of online shopping. Online shoppers are mainly youngsters and lies between age group 21-25. Majority of respondents are using online shopping from past one to five years and they are between age group 15-20 and 21-25. Consequently, Age also has significant impact on use of online shopping. Most of the respondents 77 are educated and they have completed their graduation. This table clearly represents students (68) of different age groups use the online shopping most and most of the students (35) are using online shopping from past 1 to 5 years. Although income level of most of the respondents 22 is below 10000, who are using online shopping. The possible reason for low income of this group is they are students and not working. Here we accept hypothesis 1 and results prove that demography of respondents significantly impacts usage of online shopping.

Factor analysis
Factor analysis has been performed to find out the major factors responsible for making consumer purchase intentions towards online shopping. These factors represent the contribution in formation of consumer purchase intentions for making purchase online.

CONCLUSION
Results from the data analysis considered hypotheses and fulfilled the key research objectives. Consumers' demographic profile plays a significant role in online shopping. Most of the youngsters who use internet frequently go for online shopping. Price is the basis for choosing a brand and also it produces trust among online shoppers. Online shoppers go for a brand which can offer them best price as well as fast shipping. Online shoppers also consider friend referral while choosing a particular brand. Positive association between Price, Brand conscious and fast shipping forms strong consumers purchase intentions for online shopping. Among all the factors, price and reliability has been found as the most influential factor in framing consumer purchase intentions towards online shopping. This study will help consumers in developing positive perception towards online shopping. Online marketers can take reference from the study to develop further strategies.

IMPLICATIONS
E-retailing has become one of the most used medium to support the development in e-commerce and reduces transaction costs (Yu &Abdulai, 2000). Pechtl (2003) defined that online shopping consists of a service innovation in the field of retailing and helps consumers in ordering products from their home and delivers to their given private address. The biggest advantage of internet is coverage of suppliers from larger geography. Consequently, with internet search engines, consumers can detect retailers and manufactures that they cannot visit physically due to larger geographical distance. The major barrier in the way of online shopping is perception of consumers towards security related to payment. Many online shoppers still do not prefer to give their credit card numbers to service providers on internet. Positive correlation between trust and fast shipping in online shopping shows that consumers prefer fast delivery in online shopping and that helps in building trust towards online shopping. Due to innovations in technology of processing and payments security of online transactions has improved. Online retailers still are suffering from security issues of customers' credit cards and their accidental exposures. Perception towards online shopping is very powerful and it influences the consumers' purchase intentions towards online shopping. Price and reliability plays major role in forming consumers' purchase intentions and shop online. Perception only cannot be confined to online shopping. Additional skills are required to find the product as well services desired by consumers.  Sig. 0.000