With the explosion of social media platforms in the interactive digital media realm and companies increased comprehension of the importance of having loyal customers, the question of social media usage in developing customer loyalty has become more and more prominent. Since social media allows firms to engage directly with the end‐consumer at a relatively low cost and with a higher level of efficiency, it is particularly important for small online branded retailers with limited marketing and PR budgets. The purpose of this study is to research how the use of social media can enhance customer loyalty on the Internet. A both qualitative and quantitative approach to data collection and interpretation form the methodological basis of the study. An in‐depth interview was conducted with small online branded retailer L’Homme Rouge to get an understanding of the brands current social media usage as well as future goals and aspirations. An online survey was conducted with L’Homme Rouge’s customers to examine their opinion concerning brands and social media as well as L’Homme Rouge’s social media usage. A total of 82 questionnaires were collected from customers in the age 20‐30 years. The findings indicate that small online branded retailer L’Homme Rouge has a good understanding of what their customers want to see on their social media platforms. This provide them with the possibility to post and upload content that the consumers value. However, the retailer to a certain extent lack knowledge of which factors are important for customers to be loyal and consequently how social media can be used to enhance customer loyalty. The study has found that gaining trust as well as getting customers to recommend a brand, are two important factors in terms of establishing customer loyalty on the Internet. Due to its interactive nature, which is useful for establishing relationships as well as sharing content, the study further provides compelling evidence that social media is an effective tool when it comes to trust and recommendations. The study concludes by presenting various suggestions that small online branded retailers can use to develop and maintain customer loyalty on the Internet. The fact that only one small online branded retailer was examined means that the exploratory findings need to be investigated more rigorously. A larger sample, including more online branded retailers, would permit a more detailed exploration of customer loyalty and social media and further strengthen and extend the results. / Program: Master Programme in Fashion Management

This research investigated the ability of online video to mediate the development of trust in the e-merchant, against the following objectives: (1) determining the drivers of consumer trust in an online environment, (2) investigating the perception of trust in an e-merchant in the absence of video, (3) investigating the perception of trust in an e-merchant in the presence of video and (4) investigating the impact of video mediated trust drivers on the consumer’s willingness to purchase and recommend the e-merchant. The research recommends that businesses in a ‘clicks’ environment, or those in a mortar & bricks environment that maintain a degree of online presence, would do well to consider the prominent usage of video on their websites as a means of mediating trust between the consumer and the online brand.

Master of Science / Department of Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health / Delores Chambers / With increasing global e-commerce scenario, online shopping has become a part of our day-to-day life for products ranging from food to clothing and electronics. With globalization on one hand and tremendous change in the lifestyle of people, on the other hand, eating food outside of the home has also become an inevitable part of life nowadays. This study was designed to understand how photographs and information of the products influence the purchase behavior of consumers, to increase the purchase intent and liking of clothing sold online and food in a restaurant. The objectives of this study were to determine which type of photograph/description would have higher liking and purchase intent by consumers when they are shopping for clothes online and when ordering food in a restaurant. It also aimed to use different types of product descriptions to find any differences in overall liking, product perception, and purchase intent. An online survey was conducted with Indian women (n=600) through Qualtrics software. Data about demographics, overall liking, purchase intent and level of information gained based on the photographs were inquired for different type of photographic presentation of saris and Indian curries in two different sections. ANOVA, Correspondence Analysis (CA), frequency count analysis and descriptive statistics were employed for data analysis using XLSTAT software. In case of online shopping for clothing, especially saris, the results revealed that adding photographs of a model with/without a description to be a better presentation method as it acts as a virtual representation of the seller and is believed to establish trust between the consumers and the sellers. This thereby would lead to significantly higher overall liking, level of being informed and purchase intent. Similarly, in the case of restaurant shopping for food where the effect of photographs on a restaurant menu was studied, adding photographs of the food along with the sides with/without description was found to be a better presentation method. This was in turn related to significantly higher overall liking, level of being informed and purchase intent. Though there are no differences in the type of description added to the picture, adding information about the product was still found to be a critical factor for higher liking and purchase intent in both cases.

<p>As an increasing number of people are logging on to the internet to do their shopping, it is imperative for a site to be accessible and usable. Nielsen’s heuristic method is one esteemed method that many web site developers use in their design work. One study suggests that online shopping needs most improvement with the heuristics “User control and freedom” where an undo button often is lacking and in ‘Help and Documentation’ where the user may not easily switch between their work and the help. The study, however, has been made on grocery shops alone.</p><p>The following study adopts the results of the past study as hypotheses and investigates if they hold true for another type of online shopping site – women’s apparel. The results of the study confirm that these two heuristics indeed are the two most troublesome. However, for the biggest usability disaster under each, the results are either inapplicable or only lend weak support. The following results lend more support to a possible generalization for all online sites and better awareness among software developers of online shopping sites. Yet a more consistent base of common usability disasters under these two specific heuristics needs to be developed.</p>

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>Online shopping in EU has been shown to a good potential market. The electronic equipment takes a high percent of the individuals shopping. Compared with other goods, online shopping of electronic goods adds great convenience to the life of the people. Buying electronic gadgets online gives customers an opportunity to find a great variety of product online, and customers can review a wide selection of products and find special offers and discount with the best deals online. In the coming years, the development of online retailers is improving and promises a bright future. However, the tangible and intangible problems of electronic product online shopping still exist and the online store retailers lack the customer knowledge in some extent. Therefore, our intention is to explore customer behavior when purchasing electronic products through investigating the factors that can affect online shoppers‟ attitudes, intention and actual buying behavior. Furthermore, through the findings of our research, we offered the online retailers some suggestions to improve their sales and attract more customers.</p><p>Our research was conducted at Umeå University, the participants are students who come from four different departments. We categorized the important influencing factors into customer-oriented and technology-oriented factors. We utilized quantitative method in the term of questionnaire to exam how the respondents think about these factors, and we figured out the relationship between the factors and the consumers‟ attitudes and online buying intention for electronic product.</p><p>Our final findings show that only the experienced shoppers‟ attitudes highly affect their buying intention. Transaction security and product quality as the most important elements of electronic product online shopping in the customer-oriented factors are voted by the respondents; while in the technology- oriented factors, easy to navigate and useful web content are the most important issues which drawn more customers‟ attention. In addition, we suggested that the online retailers should guarantee a safe and accurate transaction process, moreover, make more efforts to web design and enhance the return and refund after-sales service. Our study is expected to contribute the e-commerce, especially focused on the electronic product field, the further research can take our research as a basic and go deeper to investigate.</p><p> </p><p>Key words: online shopping, electronic product, customer buying behavior, factors</p>

ABSTRACT Online shopping in EU has been shown to a good potential market. The electronic equipment takes a high percent of the individuals shopping. Compared with other goods, online shopping of electronic goods adds great convenience to the life of the people. Buying electronic gadgets online gives customers an opportunity to find a great variety of product online, and customers can review a wide selection of products and find special offers and discount with the best deals online. In the coming years, the development of online retailers is improving and promises a bright future. However, the tangible and intangible problems of electronic product online shopping still exist and the online store retailers lack the customer knowledge in some extent. Therefore, our intention is to explore customer behavior when purchasing electronic products through investigating the factors that can affect online shoppers‟ attitudes, intention and actual buying behavior. Furthermore, through the findings of our research, we offered the online retailers some suggestions to improve their sales and attract more customers. Our research was conducted at Umeå University, the participants are students who come from four different departments. We categorized the important influencing factors into customer-oriented and technology-oriented factors. We utilized quantitative method in the term of questionnaire to exam how the respondents think about these factors, and we figured out the relationship between the factors and the consumers‟ attitudes and online buying intention for electronic product. Our final findings show that only the experienced shoppers‟ attitudes highly affect their buying intention. Transaction security and product quality as the most important elements of electronic product online shopping in the customer-oriented factors are voted by the respondents; while in the technology- oriented factors, easy to navigate and useful web content are the most important issues which drawn more customers‟ attention. In addition, we suggested that the online retailers should guarantee a safe and accurate transaction process, moreover, make more efforts to web design and enhance the return and refund after-sales service. Our study is expected to contribute the e-commerce, especially focused on the electronic product field, the further research can take our research as a basic and go deeper to investigate.   Key words: online shopping, electronic product, customer buying behavior, factors

With the increasing popularity of online shopping, various new business models are emerging in this area. A successful example is great discount online shops, which quickly attract the attention from Chinese online shopping customers. In order to avoid the risk perception of customers caused by information asymmetry, and maintain competitiveness, great discount online shops should increase their customers’ trust. In this research, a number of key factors are tested from both sellers’ aspect and customers’ aspect. The finding shows both objective influencing factors, such as security, reputation of the online shop, reputation of the products’ brands, sellers’ service quality, and customers’ cognitive factors, such as perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, have significant correlation with customers’ trust to great discount online shop. Among them, the objective influencing factors are more influential and have stronger effect on customers’ trust in ability, integrity and benevolence to the online shops. These findings will further shed light on how to build trust with the customers of great discount online shops.

Aim: The purpose of the study is to do the research that under the e-commerce business model, the impact factors of customer loyalty in an online shopping environment, how to improve the customer loyalty and how to build a long lasting customer relationship. Design/Methodology/approach: Through to the questionnaire survey research, design and collect sample data, combine with the Amazon Company’s current operating mode and the theoretical, and also got the second data. In order to make the data become more and more reliable. Findings: The studying on improving customer loyalty under the B2C e-commerce model is significant for theory and practice. On the background of Amazon company，which is the biggest e-commerce company in America, according to the relevant literature and field surveys，the paper brings forward the importance of customer loyalty at the e-commerce business. It could come to the conclusion is how to improve the customer loyalty and then how to build the long lasting customer relationship. Contribution: The paper according to the characters of the online shopping and combine with the literature about the e-commerce and customer loyalty research, Put forward a certain hypothesis, through questionnaire survey on customers, and statistical analysis of the relationship between customer loyalty and its influence factors make an empirically evaluation. The paper gives contribution to the e-commerce business, how to build the long lasting customer relationship.

In the era of globalization electronic marketing is a great revolution.  Over the last decade maximum business organizations are running with technological change.  Online shopping or marketing is the use of technology (i.e., computer) for better marketing performance. And retailers are devising strategies to meet the demand of online shoppers; they are busy in studying consumer behavior in the field of online shopping, to see the consumer attitudes towards online shopping. Therefore we have also decided to study consumer’s attitudes towards online shopping and specifically studying the factors influencing consumers to shop online. The population selected for the research is Gotland, and narrowed down to Gotland University students, University cafeteria and Gotland Public library, the sample size selected for this research is 100 and we have used convenience sampling technique. Our findings indicated that among the four factors selected for this research the most attractive and influencing factor for online shoppers in Gotland is Website Design/Features, following convenience the second most influencing and thirdly time saving. Results have also showed that security is of important concern among online shoppers in Gotland. The research has also found that there are some other factors which influence online shoppers including, less price, discount, feedback from previous customers and quality of product. For the second research question i.e. who are online shoppers in term of demography: the correlation results for the age and attitudes towards online shopping has showed that elderly people are not so keen to shop online. Whereas for education it is concluded that higher education makes online shopping less attractive, for the income the correlation results are so weak hence we could not conclude anything out of it. It is expected that this study will not only help retailers in Gotland to devise successful strategies for online shoppers but it will also provide a base for similar studies in the felid of consumer attitudes towards online shopping.

As competition among on-line retailers escalates, more services are added to increase shopping convenience, such as free delivery, 24-hour arrival, payment-pickup service in the assigned convenience stores, etc. Many e-commerce researches have included convenience as a critical factor on on-line shopping attitudes and behavior. Although the importance of convenience in on-line shopping (this is abbreviated as e-Convenience) is recognized, very few studies have discussed it in detail. After a review of convenience literature, including physical convenience and e-Convenience, this study proposes a theoretical model to systematically evaluate e-Convenience. We first define e-Convenience with its three constructs relating to the shopping and purchasing process. These are shopping convenience, delivery convenience and post-purchase convenience. The antecedent factors are on-line shopping characteristics, such as one-stop shopping, website design, shopping service, personalized touch, and exhaustive information characteristics. In addition, the dependent factors include satisfaction and loyalty. The discussions in this paper clarify the meaning of e-Convenience and provide further commentary on the role that it plays nowadays on e-shopping.