Analyzing the purchase motivation of online shopping for health food

Abstract

For the fact that health awareness is on the increase and there is improvement in medical technology, the health food industry is vigorously developing. In the past, traditional physical store was the major means of selling health food, but at present e-commerce has induced the traditional physical store to threat gradually. According to MIT, the growth of online shopping market in Taiwan reached $ 8 billion in 2008. So, analyzing the purchase motivation of online shopping of health food is important. Therefore, the aim of this study is to find the key motivation to online shopping of health food by a questionnaire survey in Taiwan. First, the results found that there were four major motivations (convenient needs, safety needs, variety needs and health needs) used to effect online shopping of health food, and these motivations explained the ability of the variables for the construct (total variance explained as 60.80%). Secondly, the relationships between the four major motivations and online shopping were all positive (r = 0.733, 0.570, 0465, 0560). Finally, the convenient needs was the most important motivation to online shopping (r = 0.733). In the future, the industry will enhance convenient needs to promote competitiveness. Key words: Online shopping, health food, factor analysis, correlation analysis.