Abstract Internet shopping is growing in the UK and worldwide. The Internet has been identified as a significant growth area for retailers. Retailers need to understand the motivations of Internet shopping in order to fully address their shoppers' needs. This research investigates the motivations and determinants of Internet shopping. There is a paucity of international research on the consumer determinants of Internet shopping. This research provides valuable international data in an under researched area. The literature review identified three motivations of significance, these included: price, convenience, and hedonic motivations. These three factors were examined in order to determine the relative importance of each factor to the respondents. The research consists of an Internet survey conducted between 1999-2002 with UK, US and Hong Kong respondents, which gathers quantitative and qualitative data related to the determinants and motivations of Internet shoppers. The results provide an analysis of the determinants of Internet shopping with an international perspective. This includes a conceptualisation of internet shopping motivations, as well as an examination of the differences in relative importance of the major factors. The research strongly indicates that price on its own is a relatively unimportant factor for most consumers in this study in comparison with convenience. However, this traditional 'convenience' view is belied by the finding that price information! time saving is a major motivator for Internet shoppers. The research indicates that hedonic motivations of internet shopping were largely absent from respondents' Internet shopping experiences during the period of data collection. The research concludes that Internet shopping motivations are a mixture of the utilitarian and the hedonic, accessing information about prices leads to satisfaction and perhaps enjoyment. The research also concluded that 'control of information' is a highly significant motivator for Internet Shoppers. Finally, the research proposes briefly that retailers must become 'information retailers' if they wish to expand Internet sales
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:595836 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Vazquez, Delia |
| Publisher | University of Manchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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