Understanding female consumers’ intention to shop online

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a model to examine the female consumer’s intention to shop online. The rising number of female online shoppers has compelled the analysts and online vendors to believe that understanding the attitude and behaviour of the female consumers is very crucial for their growth. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual model is proposed that expands the theory of reasoned action (TRA) with three additional constructs, namely, trust, convenience and customer service. The proposed model is examined with the help of questionnaire responses collected from 909 online shoppers from India. Findings The paper empirically shows that there is a significant influence of attitude, convenience, customer service and subjective norm on the female consumer’s intention to buy online. Customer service acts as the most crucial factor in influencing the attitude of female consumers towards online shopping. The paper also points out that trust does not directly affect the female’s intention to shop online but indirectly influences it through attitude. Practical implications The paper has significant implications for practitioners. First, the results advocate that convenience and customer service are the vital antecedents to both behavioural intention and behavioural attitude. Second, the paper also showcases that trust influences behavioural intention indirectly through attitude, stressing the need for the online retailers to develop consumers’ trust in online shopping. Originality/value The paper examines TRA framework in the context of female online shopping, while earlier studies have concentrated completely on efficiency-based software tools like word processing, spreadsheets, etc. The integration of the three constructs – trust, convenience and customer service – in the TRA framework has not been studied in the past. The interaction effect of the different elements of customer services on the female consumer behaviour has never been examined in the previous research works.

What is a Population in Online Shopping Research? A perspective from Malaysia

“…As to ensure a valid and reliable evaluation from the customers, it would be more appropriate for online shopping study to consider only the existing customers who have adequate experience with buying products through online shopping website (Awad and Ragowsky, 2008;Al-Debei et al 2015;Chin and Goh, 2017;Raman, 2019). Thus, consistent with many of the previous studies that set six months to qualify for the customers to evaluate their attitudes and behaviours (Han et al 2009;Han and Kim, 2010;Kilger and Romer, 2007), the respondents of online shopping study should also fixed to customers who have been using the online shopping platforms to purchase any products for at least six months.…”

Repurchase Intention among Mobile Shoppers with Mediating Effect of Satisfaction on Mobile Shopping

“…TR has been the focus of a great deal of attention and extensively study in numerous contexts such as banking (Chang & Hung, 2018), retailing (Wobker et al, 2015), online shopping (Raman, 2019) and mobile shopping (Jimenez et al, 2016). Given the massive expansion of mobile devices, findings in the marketing literature have shown that trust plays an important role as a precedent for good perception for mobile shopping as well as maintaining long-term buyer and seller relationships.…”

“…This research defines trust as the consumer belief, confident or expectation of mobile shopping that fulfil their needs and not taking unexpected actions produces negative results. A great number of prior studies have demonstrated that trust is the most vital aspect that determines a consumer's behaviour (Chang & Hung, 2018;Raman, 2019;Jimenez et al, 2016). Chang and Hung (2018) stated that trust is an important predictor of behavioral outcomes in the context of mobile banking.…”

Consumer Attitude towards Online Shopping Activities of Halal Cosmetic Products in Malaysia

“…Several studies investigating online purchase intentions made use of the Theory of Reasoned Action or Theory of Planned Behavior in order to explain future online purchase intentions (Raman, 2019;Chin and Goh, 2017;Butt et al, 2017). The theory of reasoned action (TRA) explains the relationship between attitude and behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) and suggests that human beings are rational individuals with the ability to process decision-making information.…”