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INTERNET SHOPPING AND ITS IMPACT ON

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

MSc INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

By

Fayu Zheng

2006


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research is the final dissertation for MSc International Business at the University of

Nottingham, during the summer term of 2006.

Firstly, I would like to thank Vicky Story for her invaluable support, guidance and

availability throughout the course of this project.

In addition, I would like to thank all the participants for sparing the time to take part in

the questionnaire.

Finally, I would like to express my love and appreciation to my parents, Juxiu Zheng and

Yangfang Wang, and also my fiance Wei Jiang for their supports in the past few years.


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ABSTRACT

The main goal of the paper is to obtain quantitative evidence describing the actuality of

internet shopping in the case of the UK and China in order to explain the development of

internet shopping and its impact on consumer behaviour. The paper builds on the relevant

literature and at the same time examines consumer behaviour by questionnaires.

Furthermore, the future development of internet shopping will be measured, and a deep

comparison of consumer behaviour between these two countries is also analysed. To

reach those objectives a co-integration analysis and quantitative research methods are

used to identify all aspect of the internet shopping and impact on consumer behaviour.

The data results obtained revealed in the paper support the research questions that

including recent trends and various issues of in internet shopping, and principal factors

for consumer behaviour.

The paper, therefore, provides information for analysing these research questions to

conclude the status of internet shopping and its impact of consumer behaviour among UK

and China consumers. More specifically, the empirical results suggest how the E-

commerce company make marketing strategies according the research data and analysing

results.

Keywords: Internet shopping, Consumer behaviour, E-commerce, Consumer purchase

decision making process.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Introduction 8

1.1 Overview 8

1.2 Internet Shopping Development 9

1.3 Background of Book Industry 10

1.3.1 Internet Shopping in the Book Industry 10

1.3.2 Difference between Online/Offline Bookstores 11

1.4 Aims and Objectives 12

1.5 The Framework of Study 14

Chapter 2 Literature Review 16

2.1 Traditional Shopping Behaviour 17

2.1.1 Overview 17

2.1.2 Definition 17

2.1.3 Perspectives 18

2.1.4 Factors 19

2.2 Internet Shopping 20

2.2.1 Nature of Internet Shopping 21

2.2.2 E-commerce Website 25

2.2.3 Online Security, Privacy, Trust and Trustworthiness 28

2.3 Online Consumer Behaviours 33

2.3.1 Background 33

2.3.2 Shopping Motivation 37


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2.3.3 Decision Making Process 39

Chapter 3 Research Methodology 51

3.1 Participants & Apparatus 51

3.2 Research Methods 51

3.3 Method Selection 52

3.4 Questionnaire Design 56

Chapter 4 Results Analysis and Discussion 65

4.1 Detailed Analysis of Results 65

Chapter 5 Conclusion 93

Chapter 6 References 95

Appendix I Questionnaire 104


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TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1. Comparison of Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods.

Table 2. Which features do you value when visiting an e-commerce website?

Table 3. Do you think the following need to be improved for e-commerce websites?

Figure 1. An Integrative Model of Consumer Trust in Internet Shopping.

Figure 2. Research Model of Consumers#Online Shopping Attitudes and Behaviours

Figure 3. The consumer decision making process and its five stages.

Figure 4. Results from UIE.

Figure 5 & 6 $How many years experience of using Internet?

Figure 7 & 8 $How often do you use the Internet for the following purpose?

Figure 9 & 10 $What kind of goods do you purchase from the Internet?

Figure 11 & 12 $Reasons for Internet shopping?

Figure 13 & 14 $Which search engines do you use for Internet shopping?

Figure 15 & 16 $How do you make payments when shopping on the Internet?

Figure 17 $How do you recognize that the website offers secure payment?

Figure 18 & 19 $Gender?

Figure 20 & 21 $Which age group do you belong to?

Figure 22 & 23 $Are you?


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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION


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Introduction

1.1Overview

The internet is being developed rapidly since last two decades, and with relevant digital

economy that is driven by information technology also being developed worldwide. After

a long term development of internet, which rapidly increased web users and highly speed

internet connection, and some new technology also have been developed and used for

web developing, those lead to firms can promote and enhance images of product and

services through web site. Therefore, detailed product information and improved service

attracts more and more people changed their consumer behaviour from the traditional

mode to more rely on the internet shopping. On the other hand, more companies have

realized that the consumer behaviour transformation is unavoidable trend, and thus

change their marketing strategy. As the recent researches have indicated that, the internet

shopping particularly in business to consumer (B2C) has risen and online shopping

become more popular to many people. According to the report, The Emerging Digital

Economy II, published by the US Department of Commerce, in some companies, the

weight of e-commerce in total sales is quite high. For instance, the Dell computer

company have reached 18 million dollars sales through the internet during the first

quarter of 1999. As a result, about 30% of its 5.5 billion dollars total sales were achieved

through the internet (Moon, 2004). Therefore, to understand internet shopping and its


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impact on consumer behaviour could help companies making use of it as a form of doing

e-business.

1.2Internet Shopping Development

There are many reasons for such a rapid developing of internet shopping, which mainly

due to the benefits that internet provides. First of all, the internet offers different kind of

convenience to consumers. Obviously, consumers do not need go out looking for product

information as the internet can help them to search from online sites, and it also helps

evaluate between each sites to get the cheapest price for purchase. Furthermore, the

internet can enhance consumer use product more efficiently and effectively than other

channels to satisfy their needs. Through the different search engines, consumers save

time to access to the consumption related information, and which information with

mixture of images, sound, and very detailed text description to help consumer learning

and choosing the most suitable product (Moon, 2004).

However, internet shopping has potential risks for the customers, such as payment safety,

and after service. Due to the internet technology developed, internet payment recently

becomes prevalent way for purchasing goods from the internet. Internet payment increase

consumptive efficiency, at the same time, as its virtual property reduced internet security.


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After service is another way to stop customer shopping online. It is not like traditional

retail, customer has risk that some after service should face to face serve, and especially

in some complicated goods.

1.3Background of Book Industry

1.3.1 Internet shopping in the book industry

The catalogue of internet shopping could be segmented by industry, choosing book

industry for analyze the internet shopping and its impact on consumer behaviour as it was

provided with representative and ripe.

Amazon.com is the biggest online retailer in the world, and it is also the earliest and the

most successful e-commerce company. To review its growing, we can see that it starts

from selling books in 1995, and after 1999, Amazon.com start expands their category of

selling products which including music and movies, clothing, toys, computing and so on.

There are more than 20 categories products so far. From the data in 2003, the sale of

Amazon.com achieved about 4 billions US dollars, and its sales of books occupy the total

sale of books in the US at 8-9%.


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In contrast, the internet shopping is just becoming increasingly popular in these years. As

it is a result of the dramatic development of internet technology and the popularization of

computer in China. There are 111 million people who surfing on the internet, and 24.5 %

internet users purchased goods online, and 47.2% of them have purchased books in last

half year (Statistical Reports on the Internet Development in China, 2006). The recent

status of internet shopping development shows that there is a huge potential in the

Chinese e-commerce market, and thus it attracts international company come and invest

in this area. Dangdang.com is the most famous business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce

Company in Chinese online book retail market at the moment. It was established by

couple in 1999, and its business mode is the same as Amazon.com. Furthermore,

compare with Amazon#s huge bibliography database around the world, Dangdang.com

have built its own bibliography database since 1997, and there are 210 thousands

catalogue of books in their database so far. According to recent development and sale

annual report from Dangdang.com, after 6 years developed, the total sales in year 2005

has reached 2700 million Chinese Yuan, and about 40% sales come from selling books.

1.3.2 Difference between online/offline bookstores

Even the internet shopping has been rapidly developed, especially in book industry, but

there still have a big difference between traditional and online bookstores. Referred to

sales in the US book industry above, the online sales occupied at a very low percentage


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rate. That could be caused by many reasons, but the most importance is the advantages

exist in both traditional bookstores and online bookstores; both of them have specific

characteristics. For example, the traditional bookstore can provide convenience in

parking and shopping, it allows customers come to read and check the printing quality of

books before they purchase, and the after service is more directly to customers. However,

the traditional bookstore has limited number of books, and the selling cost is higher than

online bookstore. By comparison, we can find out the limitations of traditional bookstore

are more likely as the advantages of online bookstore, in contrast, the weakness of online

bookstore is also seems as the advantages of traditional bookstore.

1.4Aims and Objectives

It is clear from the overview of internet and internet shopping development that e-

commerce is being used in many corporations due to the dramatic development of

technology and competitive advantages of web selling. Moreover, the expansions of the

usage by individuals also become main contributors to the development of internet

shopping.

Relatively few studies have investigated in the internet shopping and impact on consumer

behaviour. The previous studies are more focus on the marker#s point of view, such as


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how to establish a more efficient marketing channel online rather than the traditional

offline channel. Therefore, this research will combines with previous studies from

literature reviews, and focus on the impact of the internet shopping on consumer

behaviours to find out a comprehensive analytical framework which showing the

essential ingredient of marketing and business to satisfying the consumer#s needs, and a

deeply understanding of online consumer behaviour as a reference for any e-commerce

company to make marketing strategies.

By carry out this work, the following research questions will be answered:

Recent status related to internet shopping in the UK and China.

The impacts of factor of Internet shopping influence online consumer behaviours.

Through analyze data collected from the questionnaire survey to indicate the

current online consumer behaviours.

Examine the business strategies affect online consumer behaviour in conclusion,

and applications and recommendations for future research.


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1.5The Frame Work of Study

This study includes five chapters. In chapter 1, the background of internet shopping,

recently development of internet, book industry reviews, and the purpose of this research

is revealed. Chapter 2 refers to the literature review in which three main sectors are

discussed. First, it provides a general overview of consumer behaviour in the traditional

mode. In the second section, it shows some recent researches in relation to internet

shopping, and discussions will be followed by each point of view. The section three gives

a deeper insight into consumer behaviour in association with online and offline shopping.

Chapter3 goes to the methodology section of study. In the first place, the selection of

methodology will be identified after the introduction of data analysis methods, and the

reasons will also be presented afterwards. Next, the questionnaire design is described

what data will be collected, and the process of sample selection will indicate how to

analyze them. In chapter 4, the research data will be analyzed and will get the final result.

A deeper discussion in chapter 5 will describe which part of recent research has

agreement with data get from questionnaire, and what weaknesses of recent research are.

Moreover, a future usage of the questionnaire data by e-commerce Company will be

discussed as well. Finally, a summary of internet shopping and its impact on consumer

behaviour will be provided in the end.


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CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW


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Literature Review

For better understanding the factors of internet and consumer shopping behaviours

towards internet shopping, this chapter would provide academic research reviews and

relative ideas expressed in the literature that associated with this subject. Furthermore, a

number of hypotheses will be tested to answer the research questions that mentioned

already in the introduction. Due to the recent research shows that internet shopping

becomes a full and effective business model (Black, 2005), therefore there are several

studies that already investigated more or less related on internet shopping and consumer

behaviour. In the following chapter, some point of view will be taken from literatures,

and needs careful review to achieve them as the basis of the subsequent research

investigation.

This chapter will begin with the briefly talk about the traditional landscape of shopping,

and following the principles of consumer shopping behaviour. Through indicated that, the

essence of internet shopping consumer behaviour will be indicated in the second section.


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2.1Traditional Shopping Behaviour

2.1.1 Overview

To study the consumer behaviour is very complex as it is a kind of human behaviour, and

human beings are always not easily studied, understood and sometimes quite ambiguities.

Therefore, the complexity of consumer behaviour represents a challenge to anyone who

wants research the subject including marketers. From the concept of marketing, it is

based on the notion of creating satisfying relationship between sellers and buyers. In this

kind of exchange process, consumer is being an important partner to make requirements,

and thus it is essential for marketers who want to possess an understanding of consumer

behaviour in order to make marketing strategies (Malcolm).

2.1.2 Definition

According to Warner, consumer behaviour defines that %the study of the mental and

physical activities performed by individuals or groups that result in decisions or actions

associated with the purchase, use or disposal of goods and services&(Malcolm). Warner

emphasized the consumption related behaviours are often undertaken collectively. For


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example, some activities performed by individuals but consumed by a family or group of

people, similar as organization purchasing activities usually followed by group decisions.

Beside this point, the consumer behaviour is not just purchasing, but has usage and

disposal the goods, this type of information always be useful for company to make

marketing decisions (Malcolm).

2.1.3 Perspectives

Traditional consumer behaviour shopping has its own model, which the buying process

starts from the problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, then

purchase, and at last post-purchase behaviour (Crawford, 1997). During these serials

actions, the perspectives on consumer behaviour could be divided into two parts: Macro

perspective and Micro perspective. Macro perspective mainly influences by modes of

thought and deploy form of enquiry. Micro perspectives mainly include the decision

theories (Malcolm).


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2.1.4 Factors

The influences on consumer behaviour are often made between external and internal

factors. External factors are come from the environmental conditions, and internal factors

are usually from the consumer#s mind. There are many factors could influence

consumer#s behaviours. According to Warner, the external influences could divide into

five sectors: Demographics, socio-economics, technology and public policy; culture; sub-

culture; reference groups; and marketing. The internal influences are variety of

psychological processes, which include attitudes, learning, perception, motivation, self

image, and semiotics (Malcolm). In addition to these, Sheth (1983) also suggested that

the consumers have two types of motives while shopping, which are functional and non-

functional. The functional motives are mostly about the time, shopping place and

consumer#s needs, which could be like one-stop shopping to save time, the environmental

of shopping place such as free parking place, lower cost of products and available to

choose from widely range of products. The non-functional motives are more related with

culture or social values, such as the brand name of the store.

The traditional shopping is simply about the customer to purchase their needs. This

behaviour will be influenced by the seller#s advertising and promotion which attracts

customers goes there and purchase goods, afterwards a part of new products will be taken

home and be used.


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2.2Internet Shopping

Internet shopping and traditional shopping are sharing many similarities, at the same time,

it still exists some differences between them, such as the Internet shopping could provide

convenience and interactive services (Jarvanpaa and Todd, 1997), and the traditional

shopping could gives customers more comfortable shopping environment and good

quality of products (Lee and Chung, 2000). Both aspect of shopping malls are trying to

improving their services by learn commutatively from each other, such as traditional

shopping malls provide more parking spaces, more counters, and closer to residential area

in order to improve services in convenience; Internet shopping malls adopt virtual reality

(Lee, 2001) and 3D techniques (Miller, 2000) to improve the presentation of products.

In the following sections, the study would provide the nature of internet shopping at first,

then the E-commerce web site will be indicated to comprehend the essence of internet

shopping, after that, online security, privacy and trust will be discussed. All of these

general overviews and discussions about the internet shopping will provide a background

to the study and help to building the foundation of academic researches. Moreover, there

will be a summary provided in the end of this chapter.


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2.2.1 Nature of Internet Shopping

As mentioned above, the Internet shopping is another mode of shopping and it can

provide customers with new experience. Therefore, the Internet shopping has its special

nature to difference with traditional shopping. According to Miller (2000), the product

and services for Internet shopping could be influenced easily by their type, and he also

indicated four sources that could explain the nature of Internet shopping. In this section,

the nature of Internet shopping will be discussed below with three main parts:

convenience, technology, and product and price.

Convenience

Internet provides a big convenience for shopper as the main reason for they shopping

online has been agreed by most of researcher and customers (Wolhandler, 1999). Due to

the feature of Internet, it allows customer to shopping online anytime and anywhere,

which means customer can browse and shopping online 24-hours a day, 7 days a week

from home or office, which attracts some time-starved shoppers come to Internet for save

time to searching products in physical store. Additionally, Internet offers some good

ways to save money and time. For example, shoppers do not need go out to the physical

store and thus there is no transportation cost. Compare with the traditional shopping,


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there is no waiting line for shoppers on the Internet, and some shoppers reported that they

feel pressure from the sales people sometimes, but Internet offers them more enjoyable

while shopping online (Wolhandler, 1999; GVU#s WWW 9thUser Surveys, 1998).

Technology

The convenience based on Internet is mainly according to the technology development,

and which plays a key role during the development of Internet shopping. In the last

decade, organisations have realised that the new technology could impact on Internet

shopping deeply, and thus there are many important technologies like virtual reality and

3D techniques have adopted to gain big competitive advantages (Clark, 1989).

Information technology has used in the form of the Internet improved better quality of

product information, which help shopper#s decision making (White, 1997).

Through the wide range of surveys about the Internet use, the growth of Internet and the

rate of growth of Internet usage have been rapid increased in the last decade. According

to the BMRB International (2004) and GVU#s WWW 9th User Surveys (1998), the

number of Internet users in Great Britain has increased to 22.7 million among 48.4% of

the adult population, and about 53% of Internet users have reported that shopping is a

primary use of the Web. Moreover, a statistical report on the Internet Development in


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China from CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Centre) have released in July

2006. From this report, in the aspect of Internet shopping, there are 30 million users often

shopping online, and near 1/4 Internet users have online shopping experience. Both

surveys shows that more and more Internet users prefer online payment while they

shopping, thus the security of online payment certainly will become a significant factor to

influence the Internet shopping.

The provision of the security is becomes the highest or almost the highest budget in the

service development of Internet retailer. As this kind of technology is quite complexity

and costly for Internet retailer develop by them own, therefore, they usually ask for

professional security service provider to check their E-commerce web site, and get the

verify or certificates from the provider like VeriSign, in order to let shopper knows that

shopping on Internet is very safely.

Another Internet technology has adopted for improving the Internet environment is

developing a virtual community. As Yoo W., Suh K. and Lee M. (2002) mentioned in his

report, personal interactions with other customers and service providers play a very

important role while shopping online. Because of the feature of Internet, customers can

not check the products and service carefully, almost all of trade between sellers and

buyers are through a virtual world, and people can not meet each other directly, therefore,

the Internet retailers offering not just products or services but also a nice and efficient


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interface for interactions with customers, and which could increase the happiness of

customer to shopping online and let them gain new shopping experience.

Product and Price

The Internet allows consumers to browse products or services extensively, search the

newest products or services information, check and compare prices among all of the

offers, and make/change orders instantly and easily. These allowable activities offer

another way of convenience to consumers. For browsing the products/services,

consumers only need to do is open a browser and exploring the shopping sites, which

gives them more pleasure to seeking out the new information about the products and

services than searching in physical stores, even some of them did not actually buying

anything, but they still gain a new kind of shopping experience (Punj and Steelin, 1983).

Moreover, the web based contexts can easily and flexibility show the inventory of some

niche products, and thus shoppers could looking for it by search through a large scale of

product database. For some products, such as books and CDs, which shoppers are already

known the quality, and that means the less quality concern for shoppers purchase it from

online. Therefore, if the brand name and equity of products or services have embedded in

shopper#s mind, that means this products or services are more amenable to web based

marketing.


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According to the research by Bulkely and Carlton (2000), the majority of Internet

shopping behaviours consist of one-time purchases, which is mainly according to

consumer#s different shopping motivations, such as convenience. Therefore, the E-

commerce shopping websites need improve their services or reduce the cost of products

in order to motivating these one-time purchase shoppers to become loyal and regular

consumers. In the aspect of costs, the E-commerce shopping websites have their strength

than physical store, as they can remove the middle marketers (brokers, distributors), and

that the lower warehousing cost and distribution expense can be added to online retailing

channels for reducing the marketing price, which could greatly attract the price-sensitive

shoppers come and purchase.

2.2.2 E-commerce Web Site

According to Zwass#s (1998) definition for Electronic commerce is %the sharing of

business information, maintaining business relationships, and conducting business

transactions by means of telecommunications networks&. For doing business, the Internet

provides a lot of technologies to enhance the E-commerce. For example, for the aspect of

the sharing of business information, the Internet provides shared databases (such as the

databases of books have been shared among all of the publishing company in the US);

email, web based forum, electronic data interchange (EDI) and other software could


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increase the interactions with customers and business partners, and also conducting

business transactions much easier and more efficiently.

The Internet mad the world become smaller and closer, and it becomes very popular in

the people#s life. From the firm#s view, as the Internet makes much easier to running an

online business for firms, and the associated costs will be decreased in some ways, thus

that strength of the Internet attracts firms to enter this new marketplace. On the other

hand, actually there are some problems are exist in the international market, and some of

this are not fully solved, such as the currency, taxes and tariffs. Despite those problems,

the adoption of E-commerce for Business Company could gain more advantages than

disadvantages.

There are three components in the E-commerce processing: sellers & buyers, products &

services, and E-commerce web site. Each component plays a key role in the Internet

shopping. The advantages of E-commerce could be divided into four sides: cost reduction,

revenue expansion, time reduction, and relationship enhancement (Swahney and Zabin,

2001). The E-commerce can be essential complementarities for the firms as the store

rents and the cost of for sales staff can be greatly reduced by transferring physical store to

online, beside this big cost for traditional firm, the Internet also provides many

applications (e.g. email) to reduce the costs, such as printing and mailing cost, and web

based advertising can lead to small expenditure. By the reduction of costs, the firm can


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provides much cheaper products and services to attract more customers, and thus it can

helps firm increase the revenue expansion. For the time reduction side, as the traditional

store have difficult and very costly to update the products information, but the online

information is all the time updated, and the interaction between service staff and

customers and instant feedback to customers could be mad possible, in other words, these

activities improve the relationship with customers indirectly, and also the enhanced

interfaces and operational functions.

There are two types of E-commerce web sites: Business to Business Electronic

Commerce (B2B) and Business to Customer Electronic Commerce (B2C). B2B is

commerce where business activities between companies through web site channel. B2C is

commerce where the purchase and sale transactions between the consumers and sellers

(Lee H., Cho D. and Lee S., 2002). The Internet retailers can both have B2B commerce

and B2C commerce as they can use B2B commerce to link directly to their suppliers and

use B2C commerce to sell products and services to individual consumer through E-

commerce web site. The B2B commerce and B2C commerce have some similarities, such

as they both use electronic payment systems, and facing the lack of trustiness between

both sides. Even there are some challenges exist for doing E-commerce, but it is the trend

that the E-commerce is an indispensable constitutes for firms while they are doing

business.


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2.2.3 Online Security, Privacy, Trust and Trustworthiness

Compare with the in-store shopping, the internet shopping has much higher risks during

the purchasing process. As internet shopping is one of the non-store shopping formats,

others such as mail order (Spence, 1970), telephone shopping (Cox and Rich, 1964),

catalogue (Reynolds, 1974) and so on, which have proved by recent studies shown that

consumers perceive a higher level of risk. Even though the internet provides many

functional advantages, but it still have some disadvantages, such as in the sections of

security, privacy, trust and trustworthiness.

Security

Due to the characteristics of internet, the information across the web could be lost or

stolen quite easily, especially the customer#s personal information and monetary details.

In B2C E-commerce area, there are many web merchants are offering third-party privacy

and security protection, such as encryption and password protections. The web merchants like

TRUSTe provide a third-party verification program for their customers, once a Internet retailer

joining the program, there will be a seal offered by TRUSTe shows that their commitment to

security. Therefore, because of the third party verification, the customers considered this seal

could make them more confident to provide their information to the site.


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Even some websites have secured certified by professional organisation, but still have

some customers lost their money through internet every year. These financial risks are

mostly caused by customers themselves. The reasons could be widely, some customers

have apparent sense of using credit card online in the insecurity way, such as public

credit card details to unknown people or website, leave credit card in the public place

where other people can easily reach, and internet shopping on the computer with virus. In

the Maignan and Lukas#s research (1997) shows that the financial risks have been cited

as a main reason to stop internet shopping, and security has become a major concern both

in online transaction relationships (Rowley, 1999).

The security treats can be made through the network and data transaction, and also

through unauthorized use. Thus, the Internet retailers have responsibility to keep

monetary and personal details of customer#s safety during the process of online shopping.

To improve the effectiveness of the Internet shopping environment could benefit both

sellers and buyers and make much convince to the customers.

Privacy

Another type of risk that consumer will faced is psychological risk, such as

disappointment and frustration of shopping online, which is mainly caused by the privacy


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information lost. On the Internet, the privacy information could be tracked and collected,

and then it can be used to sharing with third parties, in order to send spam mails or emails.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has statutory authority to prohibit the web site to

acquire information by %unfair and deceptive& trade practices (Earp and Baumer, 2001);

however, it does not have ability to comprehensively control every activity among the

Internet.

According to Earp and Baumer#s research, because of the lack of legal remedies, this

implies electronic customers should be aware of privacy risk and it could affect

customer#s obstacle to shopping on the Internet. Moreover, it also leads to customers

more carefully to decide what kind of information will be revealed online, and to which

web site. From the survey results, most of customers willing to reveal their gender and

ages, and 18% of respondents willing to provide credit card details to well-known web

site while only 3% of respondents indicated willingness to provide the same information

to lesser-known web sites. Moreover, web site that has privacy statement and third-party

verification could reduce some customer concerns, but the evidence is not strong. Overall,

customers are being very carefully to reveal their personal information since the legal

environment of Internet is uncertain.


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Trust and Trustworthiness

Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995) defined trust as, %the willingness of a party to be

vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will

perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor

or control that other party& (p.712) (Cheung and Lee, 2006). This definition is widely

recognized and the most frequently cited (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998).

People purchase products and services are the most based on their level of trust in this

product or services, and sellers either in the physical store or online shops. Online trust is

the basic and essential element for building a relationship with customers. A present

research shows that online trust is lower level than the face-to-face interactions in the

physical store (Cassell and Bickmore, 2000), and the result from Cheung and Lee (2006)

shows that trustworthiness of Internet merchant (perceived integrity, perceived

competence, and perceived security control) and external environment (third-party

recognition and legal framework) have considerable impact on consumer trust in Internet

shopping (see figure 1). The trustworthiness of E-commerce web site is very relying on

the how much privacy security can be provided. For example, a highly technical

competence can be a factor to influence the trustworthiness (Singh and Sirdeshmukh,

2000). As mentioned above that the web merchant can provide third-party verification to

E-commerce web site, and while this privacy and security strategies are used, customers


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the transactions on the Internet are safe; the privacy must be protected by the web sites;

and the trust transference programs are needed to help engender customer trust in the

Internet shopping environment.

2.3Online Consumer Behaviours

As the traditional shopping behaviours are also could be transferred to internet shopping

behaviour. Therefore, this chapter will pick some points of view in association with

consumer behaviour that mentioned above and together with other ideas to have a deeper

discussion. The current status of studies of online consumer behaviours is investigated

through an analysis of existing literatures as background studies of consumer behaviours

in order to understanding of the dynamic of online shopping field. After the consumer

behaviour background examined, the shopping motivation of consumers and decision

making process are considered to be separate into two sections in this study.

2.3.1 Background

Since the explosion of the World Wide Web in the 1990#s, relative Electronic commerce

has been developed rapidly, and it has become an essential characteristic in the Internet


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era. According to UCLA Centre for Communication Policy (2001), Internet shopping has

become the third most popular Internet activities, immediately following email using and

web surfing (Li and Zhang, 2002). Online consumer behaviour is complex and can be

described as the process of purchasing products or services via the Internet, and Kardes

(1995:5) suggested consumer behaviour is %the study of human responses to products,

services, and marketing of these products and services&. As Liang and Lai (2000)

indicated in their research that this process have similarities with traditional shopping

behaviours. During the process of Internet shopping, the potential consumer recognized a

need for products or services, and then, they use Internet for searching related

information. If the information search result can meet their needs, the potential

consumers evaluate alternatives in order to choose one of the best products or services,

and final purchase is made and following with post-purchase evaluation.

According to Li and Zhang#s (2002) taxonomy that developed based on their analysis,

there are ten impacts of relevant factors on online consumer behaviours (see figure 2).

These ten factors could be categorized into five independent variables (external

environment, demographics, personal characteristics, vendor/service/product

characteristics, and web site quality) and five dependent variables (attitude toward online

shopping, intention to shop online, decision making, online purchasing, and consumer

satisfaction). The five independent variables are identified as antecedents, which directly

determine attitudes towards online shopping. In the antecedents, the

vendor/service/product characteristics and web site quality are directly impact on


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consumer satisfaction. The figure clearly shows that the antecedents, attitude, intention,

decision making, and online purchasing are series of processing stage. Consumer

satisfaction is separated and occurs among at all possible stages depending on the

consumer#s involvement during the Internet shopping process, and this two ways

relationship could influence each reciprocally.

Figure 2. Research Model of Consumers#Online Shopping Attitudes and Behaviours

There are many studies of online consumer behaviours in recent years, most of them

focus on the factors influencing the online consumer behaviours, and the researchers

seems to find different factors in different way. Moreover, there is a variety of studies


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which focus on comparisons between online and offline consumer behaviour in relation

to different products has been presented.

Consumer behaviour difference within online and offline shopping are mainly because of

consumer#s attitude and interest. Now that consumers have both online and offline

shopping choices, thus when buying books, some consumers using offline store as dating

venues, and then buying from the online sites; or, on the other hand, some consumers

prefer go to the physical bookstore as their perceptions of books and the environment in

the bookstore.

Consumers often use the Internet search for product information before buying from

online or offline stores. According to Anfuso#s research (2004), the online research drives

the offline sales. The study shows that the Internet plays a role as a consumer product

information utility more than its role as a direct selling medium. Consumers use online

product research, and then spending in the offline. Thus, the study found that Internet-

influenced offline spending is now growing faster than direct online spending, in other

words, consumer still prefer shopping in offline store than buying from the Internet.

Compare with convenience of the Internet provided, online consumers could easily go for

research products. However, for offline consumers they may go into a store simply to


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research products, but not over and over. Moreover, many online visitors window shop

more than impulse buy. The research shows that the internet has become a useful tool for

comparison shopping and users often click around various sites to view and compare

products, proceed to leave the site altogether, and then, possibly, return days later to

purchase a product, or they might buy locally (Degeratu, Rangaswamy and Wu, 2000).

Furthermore, online consumer might do this repeatedly, but the offline shoppers would be

less likely to do research products very often. Therefore, the Internet shopping allows

consumers more freedom to continuously visit and purchase products, even they leave

without a purchase (Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2001).

2.3.2 Shopping Motivation

It is true that the E-commerce is increasingly adopted by business organisations, and

there also have many evidences to prove that the online shoppers become much more

active than before. Through the E-commerce web sits provide superior products and

services and interactive communication with online retailers, customers feel more about

values, and thus these beneficial offers from the Internet may turn into motivation for

customers active or arouse their needs.


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Pittman (1998) defines a motivation as the activation of internal desires, need and

concerns which energize behaviour and send the organism in a particular direction aimed

at satisfaction of the motivational issues that gave rise to the increased energy (Mallalieu,

2000). According to Perner#s research, there are several perspectives on behaviour as a

way to understand what motivates the consumers: (1) the hard core behavioural

perspective is based on learning theories like operant and classical conditioning; (2) the

social learning perspective, which allows for vicarious learning; (3) the cognitive

approach emphasizes consumer thinking rather than mere behaviour; (4) the biological

approach suggests that most behaviour is determined by genetics or other biological bases;

(5) the rational expectations perspective is based on an economic way of looking at the

World; (6) the psychoanalytic perspective is based on the work of historical psychologists

(Perner). All of the perspectives help to explain the motivation of consumers in which the

customers do the shopping, and the major study in this research is related to the rational

expectations perspective. In addition, through understanding of the motive for online

shopping can facilitate the comprehension of consumer#s attitudes, intention and

consideration. Thus, the following section %Decision Making Process&will be discussed

about the factors that impact on consumer behaviours.


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2.3.3 Decision Making Process

Decision making process is the cognitive process leading to the selection of a series of

actions among multiple alternatives. Every decision making process will have the final

choice which called decision, and it can be an action or opinion. In this study, we mainly

talk about the consumer decision making processes, which are the decision making

processes undertaken by consumers in regard to before, during, and after the purchase of

a product or service (Wikipedia, 2006).

According to the Wikipedia web site (2006), there are three ways of analysing consumer

buying behaviours in general. They are:

l Economic models

These models are largely quantitative, and they are most relying on the

assumptions of rationality and close perfect knowledge. In these models, the

consumer is seen to maximize their utility, and some theory such as game

theory can be used in some circumstances.

l Psychological models

These models are qualitative rather than quantitative, and they concentrate on

psychological and cognitive processes such as motivation and need reduction.


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Moreover, these models build on sociological factors like cultural influences

and family influences.

l Consumer behaviour models

These models typically blend both economic and psychological models, and

which are practical models used by marketers usually.

In the recent of researches, it suggested that there is a five-stage decision making process

for consumer to go through in any purchase (see the diagram below).

Figure 3. The consumer decision making process and its five stages.

Source from: guuui.com

When people buy things, they will engage in a decision making process. Thus this model

is important for anyone who making marketing decisions to consider the whole buying


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process rather than just the purchase decision. The current research shows that one of the

major problems of E-commerce web sites is that they fail in supporting the customers in

this process (Olsen, 2003). By understanding the customers needs and concerns as they

process the decision making cycle, marketer can provide better products and services.

The model has five stages in the whole process, but it does not means that the customers

need to pass through all stages in every purchase. In some cases, the customers often skip

or reverse some of the stages. For example, a customer buying a favourite food would

recognise the need, so he/she can skip the information search and evaluation, and just go

right to the purchase decision. Moreover, the complexity of the decision making process

can rage from careful analysis (rational) to pure impulse (emotional), like the example

above, the impulse buy can take place instantaneously, but the complexity purchase

always take long time to analysis. Furthermore, this buying decision making process is

iterative process, %where people collect information from different sources and repeatedly

return to re-evaluate and compare the information they have found&(Olsen, 2003).

According to the researches from the usability consultancy UIE, the online buying

decision making process can be acts as a sieve, where customers are filtered out through

the each stage of the decision making process. From the figure below, there are 17% of

customers are filtered out at the information search stage. In this percentage, there are 9%

of customers weren#t able to find the products which they were looking for, and there are


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8% of customers who find the right products but gave up at the end due to lack of

information to identify final purchase. For the customers who want to evaluate their

product alternatives, there are 25% of customers are filtered out due to some reasons:

firstly, some stopped because there is none of the products can fit their needs; secondly, it

is because the information of products was not enough to tell them that products are in

satisfied their need. At the purchase stage, there are 12% of customers lost due to the

inconvenience or disappointed by the E-commerce web site services. Again, there are

12% of customers have problems in the purchase evaluation stage. These customers are

unhappy with the product that they purchased from online as some of them got the wrong

products, some found the product was not what they expected, and extremely some

customer did not receive the product at all.

Figure 4. Results from UIE.

Source from: guuui.com


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Need Recognition

The decision making process starts with need recognition. At this stage, the customer

recognizes a need or responds to a marketing stimulus. Therefore, the Internet can

provide huge amount of information for marketers utilize to stimulate consumer needs.

For the online retailers, they have to do some researches in order to learn which customer

needs and concerns they have when making purchase decision, and that could help them

to support the customers#decision making process. There are many ways to understand

the customer needs: one effective and economical method is to collect information from

salespersons that are in contact with customers very frequently; another way is through

interviews with customers and observations their shopping behaviors in order to gain

information. Moreover, online retailers can use advertising online/offline and web site

promotions to attract customers come and consume. Besides this, if there is email list and

those customers on the list have accepted subscribe to received information of new

products and related offerings, which will also be useful to trigger need recognition (Mae

et al., 1999).


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Information Search

When the customers recognized a need, then they have to decide what and how much

information is required. If there is enough information of products or services they got

recently (which mainly according to their shopping experience), and that also meets the

need close to hand, then the final purchase is likely to be made. Otherwise, there is

information search process starts.

After the customers start looking for information, there are many ways for customers to

obtain new information. According to Tutor2u web site, it suggested four different

sources:

l Personal sources: family, friends, neighbours etc

l Commercial sources: advertising, salespeople, retailers, dealers, packaging,

point-of-sale displays

l Public sources: newspapers, radio, television, consumer organisations,

specialist magazines

l Experiential sources: handling, examining, using the product


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Although there are many different sources help consumer to make purchase decisions,

but consumers still have to make decisions on: 1. whether they will search information

through offline channels or the Internet; 2. whether they will search information through

the Internet and then buy through offline channels; 3. whether they will search

information through offline channels and then buy through the Internet; 4. use the

Internet for both information search and product purchase (Moon, 2004).

As the Internet has one of the main competitive advantages which is the ability to collect

as much products information as possible and makes all of the products can be compared

among the different providers, therefore it plays a key factor to attract customers using

the Internet as the first choice for information search. According to the UIE study is that

the usability problems have exist in the design of the sites, such as customers could not

find product and unable to process the checkouts (Olsen, 2003). Therefore, online

retailers should provide detailed product information and ease use of shopping interface

in order to be able to support the customer#s decision making process. For example, in

the online book industry, Amazon offers book reviews to help customers evaluate and

make purchase decision. In addition to add more details in the product list such as image

and product description, other valuable information such as top sellers can also lead to

increased sales (Lohse and Spiller, 1998).


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Besides the factors from the online retailers, consumers have their own characteristics

which impact on the decision making process, such as their proficiency or knowledge.

The extensive research shows that customer#s prior knowledge and experience of using

Internet can influence the information search result (Brucks, 1985). Moreover, Han (1996)

also examined that the internet usage skill and familiarity with computers can affect

consumer information search through the internet.

With the development in information technology, more and more customers use a range

of search techniques for information search. Search engine is the major and useful tool to

support information search, which covers most likely the entire E-commerce web sites

and produce hyperlinks to every sites which in association with products. Furthermore,

some customers prefer the internal search facilities while they shopping online, which

will increase the effectiveness of web site and also influence the consumer#s decision

making process.

Evaluation of Alternatives

Once the customers obtained enough product information and then gained a number of

possible alternatives, they must choose between the alternative brands, products and

services in the evaluation stage. There is one important determinant of evaluation of


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alternatives is whether the customer perceived relevance of product, which are mainly

according to the price and potential risks.

The online customers not only compare product and price, but also need to consider the

potential risks such as payment security. For the product and price, the online retailers

need to differentiate the products that they were offering, and offer a competitive price or

added other values into products such as lower cost of delivery. However, for the less

price sensitive customers who more likely to purchase good quality product if the online

retailer can improve the shopping interface and provide high quality information. For the

potential risks, the online retailers can build more interactions between them and

customers for increasing the consumer trust, and also need to employ some security

controls during the payment transactions in order to reduce the risk. Moreover, a well

deigned community which allows interactions between customers by leaving comments

or opinions will also helps customer evaluate their alternatives.

Purchase

At this stage, the emphasis should be on providing the secure online payment and the

easies possible way for the customers to go through their orders. The recent research

discovered that 2/3 of all online purchase processes are not completed at the end


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(Wolfmbarger and Gilly, 2001). There are many reasons for that: the first one is some

required registration and poor shipping charge policies made customers leave; secondly,

many customers could not find the information needed to complete the purchase; and

some customers even did not find the way to checkout. In order to solve these problems,

some well known web sites built a large and well staffed team to help customers during

the purchase process, such as the Amazon did. Furthermore, the online retailers have to

offer a wide range of electronic interactivities in order to serve customers efficiently. For

example, the contact email address, instant message based on web, and frequently asked

questions (FAQs) about shipping, payment, and return policy can be added in the design

of E-commerce web site.

Post-Purchase Evaluation

The final stage is post-purchase evaluation of the decision, which results in a level of

customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The post-purchase evaluation is common for

customers to experience concerns, and which is determined by the customer#s overall

feelings about the product after making a purchase decision. If the products or service

meet the customer#s requirement, then they may fell more comfortable and thus may

purchase again in the future. However, some customers after bought a product, they may

feel that an alternative would be much preferable, thus they will not re-purchase the

product and may switch to other brand next time. If the customers got dissatisfaction with


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the product as it does not meet their expectations, the product will be returned to online

retailer.

In order to manage the post-purchase evaluation stage and avoid the product to be

returned, the online retailers with the marketing team to persuade the potential customers

that the product will satisfy their need. Therefore, the customers will be encouraged that

they have made the right decision after having made a purchase.


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CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY


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Research Methodology

3.1Participants & Apparatus

The survey was taken in both UK and China, by sending questionnaire as many as

possible. Only those participants who have completed the questionnaire will be accounted

as valid survey.

Computers with facilities for internet access, volley mail software were used to perform

the survey, and use Microsoft Office Excel to do statistic and data analysis.

3.2Research Methods

The research method of this study is a survey research, which collect information from a

participant through a questionnaire. The purpose of this research is to analyse the current

and future behaviours from consumers to help marketing manager making strategies

according feedback from participants (Churchill, 1999). These behaviours include

attitudes, believes, attribute, motivation and behaviour of sampled participants, and that


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will be taken on a series of measurements based on specific research point. After

questionnaires sent out, and later collected data from feedbacks, the quantitative research

method will be used in this research. Researchers then use SPSS and excel programmes

help to analyse the outcome from the samples and generalize the conclusion in whole

points of view of consumer behaviour. In addition to the collected data, some other data

such as it from official reports of governments or organizations will also be used to assist

complementarities of research.

3.3Method Selection

This section is dedicated to selection of research method in this paper. The research

methods can be classified in many ways, but the most common difference is between

qualitative and quantitative approaches. Qualitative research method can be broadly

defined as %any kind of research that produces findings not arrived at by means of

statistical procedures or other means of quantification&(Strauss and Corbin, 1990). It also

can be simply says that this research method is non quantitative. In contrast, quantitative

research method deal with measurable characteristics by using structured questions (e.g.

questionnaire) and a formalised procedure of data collection


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Qualitative methods

According to Myers (1997), the qualitative research method %was developed in the social

science to enable researchers to study social and cultural phenomena&. Moreover, it also

helps researchers to understand and explain the world from the perspectives of

respondents. Qualitative researches involves collecting information, observation and

interpret data, and that data sources could be used from interviews, documents and texts,

participant observation, and the researcher#s impressions and reactions. Qualitative

research methods can be found in many disciplines and fields, and its motivation for

doing qualitative research is if there is one thing which distinguishes humans from the

natural world. The reasons for using qualitative research is that the goal of understand a

phenomenon from the point of view of the participants and its particular social and

institutional context is largely lost when textual data are quantified (Kaplan and Maxwell,

1994).

Quantitative methods

As opposed to qualitative research, the quantitative research methods were originally

developed for natural sciences to study natural phenomena. The quantitative research

methods includes the survey methods, formal methods (e.g. econometrics), and numerical


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methods such as mathematical modeling (Myers, 1997). It stands that after the data

collection from questionnaire, and then the data will transformed into statistics related

figures which computed by software like Microsoft Office Excel, and also produced

various tables with numbers which have unique meanings.

The distinction between the qualitative and quantitative research methods not only those

points noticed in conception, but also some other distinctions which are commonly made.

It is much clear if there is a comparison of qualitative and quantitative research methods

(see table 1). For example, rresearch methods %have variously been classified as objective

versus subjective (Burrell and Morgan, 1979), as being concerned with the discovery of

general laws (nomothetic) versus being concerned with the uniqueness of each particular

situation (idiographic), as aimed at prediction and control versus aimed at explanation

and understanding, as taking an outsider (etic) versus taking an insider (emic) perspective,

and so on&(Myers, 1997).

Qualitative Methods Quantitative Methods

Open-ended, dynamic, flexible Statistical and numerical measurement

Depth of understanding Subgroup sampling or comparisons

Taps consumer creativity Survey can be repeated in the future and

results compared

Database-broader and deeper Taps individual responses


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Penetrates rationalized or superficial

responses

Less dependent on research executive skills

or orientation

Richer source of ideas for marketing and

creative teams

Table 1. Comparison of Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods.

Source: Gordon and Langmaid (1988)

Each of research methods has positive and negative features, and it can not be say that

one is absolutely better than the other. Although most researchers use either qualitative or

quantitative research method for their work, but still have some researchers have

suggested using one or more research methods in their studies. After consider the

distinction and features of these two research methods, in the literature review stage of

the study, the qualitative and quantitative data were both used for research; after the

literature review helped developing understanding the previous research, and thus some

decisions have been made in terms of the data, a survey will be conducted in order to test

the Internet shopping impacts on consumer behaviours in the UK and China.


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3.4Questionnaire Design

The design of questionnaire is very rely on what data need to be collected and how to

analyze the data, and the questions asked in the questionnaire are need to be defined prior

to data collection. According to the aims and objectives of this study, the questionnaire

was conducted to collect data about the impacts of Internet shopping on consumer

behaviors within the summarized framework in associated with the respondent#s online

shopping experience. From this survey, there are following information will be gathered:

the respondent#s experience of Internet use, the purpose of using Internet, the product

categories which consumers purchased online, attitudes to Internet shopping, and

feedback for E-commerce web sites. In addition, some demographic data will also collect

from the respondents, such as gender, ages, and employment details.

The design of questionnaire differs according to different culture in the UK and China i.e.

some question may be asked in different ways in order to comparable. In the respect of

how it is going to be administered, all of the questionnaires are sent by volley mail

software, and thus these questionnaires are completed by the respondents themselves, and

the answering process is totally without any of intervention from the researcher. After the

questionnaire sent out, the return of such questionnaires are very accordingly. Moreover,

there are some factors of doing questionnaires in this research. For example, the


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questionnaire have to taking a long time to collect, and the time available to complete the

data collection and entry is quite limited.

After the survey finished and all the data gathered, some of the questionnaires may not

acceptable for research due to the lack of answers for the important questions. In the most

cases it can enable researchers to reduce the amount of data needed to collect in order to

keep the result reliable (Saunders M., Lewis P. and Thornhill A., 2000). The following

questions from the questionnaire (include the same question asked in different way for

UK consumers and Chinese consumers) are important for this study. The complete

questionnaire is given at the end (Appendix I).

Questionnaire

Stage 1. The general questions

1. How many years experience of using Internet? (Select one only)Less than a month Less than 1 year 1 $2 years

3 $4 years More than 5 years


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2. How often do you use the Internet for the following purpose?Very often Often Occasionally Never

Search product info.

Surfing (e.g. read news/articles)

Chatting (e.g. MSN / ICQ)

Research a topic

Looking for a job

Internet shopping

Other (Please Specify):

Stage 2. Brief View of Internet Shopping

3. What kind of goods do you purchase from the Internet? (You may select morethan one option)

Books CD/Video Software

Toys Tickets Flowers

Gifts Consumer electronics House wares

Computer (Components) Hotel/Travel bookings

Other Please state


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4. Reasons for Internet shopping?Strongly

agree

Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly

disagree

Saves time

Saves money

More relaxing shopping

Much easier shopping

More efficient

Other (Please Specify):

Stage 3. Information Search for Online Shopping

5. Which search engines do you use for Internet shopping?(You may select more than one option)

Google Yahoo MSN

AOL Lycos Ask Jeeves

Other Please state


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(The following options are only used in the questionnaire for Chinese respondents)

Sohu (!) Baidu ("#) Sina ($%)

21CN Tom AltaVista

Stage 4. Internet Shopping Process

6. How do you make payments when shopping on the Internet? (You may selectmore than one option)

Credit card Personal cheque Third party (e.g. Paypal / WorldPay)

Bank transfer Other Please state

7. Do you feel secure when shopping on the Internet?Yes No

8. How do you recognise that the website offers secure payment?(You may select more than one option)


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Other Please state

Stage 5. About the E-commerce Provider

9. Which features do you value when visiting an e-commerce website? Strongly

agree


disagree

Company profile & brand

identity

Security certificated

Customer service

Detailed product information

Large selection of products

Terms and conditions of

website

Cost of delivery

Speed of delivery


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Simplicity of purchase process

Protection of privacy

information

Ability to track your shopping

history

Website response speed

Website interface

Personalised offers/adverts

10.Do you think the following need to be improved for e-commerce websites?Strongly

agree


disagree

After service

Website security

Delivery on time

Packing of products

11.Do you intend to continue purchasing products from the Internet in the nearfuture?

Yes No


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12.Are you?Full-time employment Part-time employment Student

Unemployed Housewife/husband Retired


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CHAPTER FOUR

RESULTS ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION


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Results Analysis and Discussion

This chapter starts to present and analyse the data collected from the questionnaires. All

data will be analyzed by computer, the Microsoft Office Excel was used to enter the data

and design the graphs in order to help the researcher be able to explore and analyse the

data.

4.1Detailed Analysis of Results

There are two versions of questionnaires which sent separately to the respondents in the UK

and China by attached to emails. There are 78 emails sent in the UK, and 12740 emails

sent to China. Due to many members who register with invalid email address with the

web site or those email addresses are no longer to use or other reasons did not respond to

this questionnaire, so there are only 826 (UK: 47; China: 779) questionnaires have

returned back and which are valid for research before the analysis begins. Although there

is a description in each questionnaire to tell how to fill, but still have many respondents

who use different way to answer the questions. For those questionnaires, if the researcher

can understand their answers, then the questionnaire will be accounted in the list of valid

questionnaires.


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The questionnaires have sent to students, friends, workers, and unknown persons through

email. Among the people as known, almost 60% of respondents are male and their age is

all below the 30 years. The questionnaire has six sections: general questions, brief view

of Internet shopping, information search for online shopping, Internet shopping process,

about the E-commerce provider, and personal details. The following analysis of results

will be focused on the important questions which asked in each part of questionnaire.

General questions

In this section, the following questions have been covered in order to know the

respondent#s availability and accessibility to Internet, and also asked about the regularity

of using the Internet.

Do you have access to the Internet?

If you have access to the Internet please indicate where?

How often do you use Internet to support your work?


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Due to this survey is based on sending emails, therefore, all of the questionnaire return

back by respondents who must have the way to access to the Internet, thus there is no one

without Internet access for this survey. Most of respondents have the Internet access at

their home and work place, but especially for most of students who choose public place

as their choice that may because they were living at university accommodation. Moreover,

more than 80% of the respondents said that they use Internet daily, and around 18% of

the respondents use Internet at least weekly.

How many years experience of using Internet?

As we can see that there is 40% of respondents who has been using the Internet for 1-2

years in the UK (as shown in Figure 5), and which is the highest percentage among the

respondents. Compare with the respondents in China, the highest percentage is 36%

which of them has been using the Internet for 3-4 years. Furthermore, the years

experience of using Internet between 1-2 years and more than 5 years are both have high

percentage which are 28% and 21 % (see Figure 6).


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Howmany years exper i ence of usi ng I nternet? (UK)

3, 6%

12, 26%

19, 40%

8, 17%

5, 11%

Less than a month Less than 1 year 1 & 2 years

3 & 4 years More than 5 years

Figure 5

How many years experi ence of usi ng I nternet? ( Chi na)

14, 2% 102, 13%

219, 28%

281, 36%

163, 21%

Less than a month Less than 1 year 1 & 2 years

3 & 4 years More than 5 years

Figure 6


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How often do you use the Internet for the following purpose?

This question contains two purposes: the first one is to investigate the respondent#s

current online activities; and the second one is to discovery how much degree of those

activities has been used. There are six options for respondents: search product

information, surfing (e.g. read news/articles), chatting (e.g. MSN/ICQ), research a topic,

looking for jobs, and Internet shopping. For the degree to which purpose is used, there are

four options for respondents to choose: very often, often, occasionally, and never.

From the Figure 7 and Figure 8, the difference between them can be easily find out: first,

Chinese respondents more likely to use the Internet for information search than British

respondents as there is more percentage of %very often& than %never& and %often& and

%occasionally& are very close; secondly, in the chatting option, %very often& has the

highest percentage among the Chinese respondents; the third which is the biggest

difference between respondents in the UK and China, there are 683 Chinese respondents

who never had use the Internet to research a topic before, but there are 36 British

respondents who did some research occasionally; the last difference is British

respondents have more frequently to use Internet shopping, and most of Chinese

respondents use Internet shopping occasionally. For surfing and looking for jobs, both

respondents from UK and China got similar situation.


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05

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Search

product

i nf o

Surf i ng Chatt i ng Research

a topi c

Looki ng

f or j obs

I nternet

shoppi ng

Howoften do you use the I nternet for t he fol l owi ng purpose?(UK)

Very of ten

Of ten

Occasi onal l y

Never

Figure 7

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

Search

product

i nf o

Sur f i ng Chatt i ng Research

a t opi c

Looki ng

f or j obs

I nter net

shoppi ng

Howoften do you use the I nternet for t he fol l owi ng purpose?

(Chi na)

Very of ten

Of ten

Occasi onal l y

Never

Figure 8


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Furthermore, this section not only covered questions on the purpose of usage of Internet,

but also used to differentiate the respondents who have Internet shopping experience or

not. For those respondents who never shopping online before, they will go to the last

section %personal details& for complete this questionnaire, other respondents will keep

going through the questionnaire.

Br ief view of I nternet shopping

After the selection of which respondents will answer the following questions about the

Internet shopping, there are 41/47 of respondents from UK and 585/779 of respondents

from China will be analyzed in the research.

What kind of goods do you purchase from the Internet?

This question is important issue for Internet retailers, which will help them to analyse

customers need in order to make marketing strategies. The products or services were

listed are the most preferred kind on the Internet. The hotel/travel bookings and books are

the most popular things for online shopping in the UK, which scores are 24% and 32%,

and followed by software (12%) and CD/Video (10%). As there are not too many


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respondents, so the research for this question is quite limited. Beside with survey in

China, it has much more values in the research result. There are three aspects of kind of

products are most frequently purchased: books, CD/Video, and Computer (also included

components). Compare with the British respondents, the hotel/travel bookings are much

less usage of online shopping, which indicated indirectly that the Chinese people are

more traditional to using travel agency instead booking online.

3712

140

62

912

528

0 10 20 30 40

Books

CD/ Vi deo

Sof tware

Toys

Ti ckets

Fl owers

Gi f t s

Consumer el ect roni cs

House wares

Computer

Hotel / Travel booki ngs

What ki nd of goods do you purchase f romthe I nternet?(UK)

Figure 9


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373355

67

28147

10531

19259

62

0 100 200 300 400

Books

CD/ Vi deo

Sof tware

Toys

Ti ckets

Fl owers

Gi f t s

Consumer el ect roni cs

House wares

Computer

Hotel / Travel booki ngs

What ki nd of goods do you purchase f romthe I nternet?(Chi na)

Figure 10

Reasons for Internet shopping?

The aim of this question is to research what feelings of customers about the Internet

shopping, and what motivations activated or aroused their needs. From both of Figure 11

and Figure 12, most of respondents agreed that the Internet shopping could save them

time and money, only few respondents feel that the Internet shopping offers relax, easier

and efficient shopping. It also shows for the online retailers that customers have much

more requires for the high qualities of services from web site.


74/108

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0

5

10

15

20

25

3035

Saves ti me Saves money More

rel axi ng

shoppi ng

Much easi er

shoppi ng

More

ef f i ci ent

Reasons f or I nternet shoppi ng? (UK)

Strongl y agree

Agree

Neut ral

Di sagree

Strongl y di sagree

Figure 11

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

Saves t i me Saves money More

rel axi ngshoppi ng

Much easi er

shoppi ng

More

ef f i ci ent

Reasons f or I nternet shoppi ng? (Chi na)

Strongl y agree

Agree

Neut ral

Di sagree

Str ongl y di sagree

Figure 12


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Do you need help while shopping on the Internet?

Around 95% of all respondents said that they feel confidence in using the Internet and

from research in overall questionnaires show that the respondents who have higher

education (like students), full-time employment, and many years experience of using

Internet is more confidence in using the Internet than less computer skilled respondents.

Moreover, the percentage of %never asked for help&among the respondents who below 30

years old is higher than the respondents who in higher age group. According to this, it can

be measured that older people have much rational on buying decision making process

than young people as they take more seriously in online shopping.

I nformation search for onl ine shopping

As discussed very detail in the decision making process, the information search is very

important for customers to find out products or services which fit their needs very well.

This section contains four questions:

Do you use the Internet to search for product information before purchasing (whether

online or in store)?


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Do you compare prices between websites prior to making your purchase decision?

Which of the following do you care about more when choosing which Internet providers

to purchase from