Factors Influencing Online Shopping Behaviour of Consumers in India—An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Online shopping is a recent phenomenon in the field of E-business and is definitely going to be the future of shopping in India. Though online shopping is very common outside India, its growth in Indian Market, which is a large and strategic consumer market, is still not in line with the global market. The potential growth of online shopping has triggered the idea of conducting a study on online shopping in India. The study has used factor analysis, correlation and multiple regressions to analyse the impact of various categories of factors and variables on online shopping behaviour of consumers. The data were collected from five metropolitan cities of India assuming high internet diffusion rate, like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore, through in-depth interviews and questionnaires on a sample of 41 and 580, respectively. The results support that online shopping behaviour was impacted by four major factors—psychographics, online shopping feature and policies, technological and security factors. The most significant variables under these four categories of factors influencing online shopping behaviour of consumers were quality of product, option of comparison, privacy and safety, representativeness of product's pictures and colours. The results of the study could be used by marketers across the countries to revamp their strategies for Indian consumers, and researchers and practitioners could use it for conducting future studies in the similar area.