Online Shopping V/S. Offline Shopping: An Analysis o f Consumer Buying Preferences | Original Article

ABSTRACT:

Recent advancements in technology have facilitated e-commerce around the globe. The online medium of e-commerce has provided and will continue to provide great opportunities for consumers and business. Research has shown growth in the interest o f consumer in online shopping from 40% in the year 2012 to 78% in the year 2014 in the online shopping behaviour. Online shopping is now-a-days preferred because o f better prices they offer, the convenience they provide because o f shopping on our leisure, variety ofproducts offered at one place, fewer traps as in the traditional shopping where the salesperson try to lure the customer to buy the product but in online shopping they '11 lure the customers with offers but not pressurize them. Ixistly customers privacy is valued in online shopping which is difficult in shopping offline. It is yet to be fully understood what more factors influence online shopping decision process. The Traditional shopping also has its pros like the feel-and-touch the products, face to face interaction with the salesperson, trying out o f your outfit before buying and many other reasons to shop offline. The objective o f this study is to provide an overview of online shopping decision process by comparing the offline and online decision making and identifying the factors that motivate online customers to decide or not to decide to buy online. The approach is used to find out whai is different product a consumer buys and what is the most preferred and searched one. The research will also investigate the sources that attract consumer to prefer shopping online. The results also indicate that those attracted to purchase online perceive significantly lower channel risk, search effort, evaluation effort, and waiting (delivery) time online than offline and express significantly higher price search intentions online than offline. Although consumers attracted to offline channels also perceive lower search cost and higher price search intentions online than offline, their perceived online search effort and price search intentions are significantly lower than those attracted to online channels It also suggests that demographics might not be effective bases for market segmentation. This study attempts to prcn’ide an exhaustive review on consumer behaviour o f shopping online v/s offline.