Internet usage has surged by 34% year-over-year.

With easier access to Internet to obtain required

information, it translates to increased consumer sophistication - consumers not only want to fulfil their
needs, wants but also expectation. This has created an “e-lifestyle” where people start doing more things on
the internet. This phenomenon resulted in an increase of 150% in online shopping in the past year.

By understanding the involvement level of different consumers, online retailers can better tailor their
marketing activities to different segments to arouse their interest and increase sales. This paper seeks to
achieve this by understanding the different attitudes both involvement groups have towards online shopping.

Based on survey findings, female is the high involvement group while male is the reverse. Nielson
discovered that women tend to spend most of their time on internet browsing online shopping and social
networking sites. Rollins (2009) stated and that women viewed shopping as an important social ritual and
sensual journey of discovery. To better understand the antecedents of product involvement in women’ view,
shopping is seen as high in pleasure value, closely related to self and there is a perceived importance of the
potential negative consequence of a bad purchase. For example, clothes (women comprise 67% of online
buyers) allow them to express their individual style and satisfy their inherent urge to shop, giving high
pleasure value. However, they may get teased by their friends and have lower self-esteem if they make a bad
purchase. Such antecedents translate to higher involvement level for females. In contrast, men are smart and
careful buyers. Generally, they not only look at quality and brand, but weigh the quality of a product against
its price in order to ensure optimum value. Furthermore, they are not motivated to look for alternatives in
other online websites if they find that the quality is not worth the price, resulting in fewer e-transactions and
fewer purchases per transaction. Hence, the difference in personal interest in online shopping and motivation
to search for more information accounted for the difference in involvement level.

Because of the difference in values towards the internet, younger consumers aged 40 and below are more
highly involved than older consumers aged 41 and above. Younger consumers have embraced ‘e-lifestyle’ to
a greater extent, spending approximately 21 hours and above per week. Being online has become part of
their lives, including purchasing their needs and wants online. Older consumers like the personal experience
of feeling and gauging the quality of products available. Furthermore, they are insecure about giving their
credit cards details and giving personal details over the internet. This can be satisfied by making a visit to
the stores which are much accessible in Singapore and making payment by cash instead of online shopping.

Survey questionnaire and procedures with which I collect data

The questionnaire is in multiple-choice to promote ease in responding. Demographics of respondents’ such
as gender, age group are captured as these may affect level of involvement level. As e-commerce behaviour
of Singaporeans are consistent with the internet usage pattern (Roy, 1999), a question on how frequent the
respondent uses the internet is included to ascertain which demographic is likely to embrace ‘e-lifestyle’. To
find the involvement level, The Personal Involvement Inventory (Zaichkowsky,1994) is included. Although I
understand the some items are reverse-coded to minimise acquiescent bias, I have modified the scale such
that the questions are no longer reversed coded. It is to prevent confusion that may arise when respondents
answer many items in the scale. As marketers, we are more interested in the number of purchase transactions
respondents have made rather than their involvement in browsing the online shops without any purchase.
Hence, a question ‘Have you purchased products online in the past 6 months?’ is included to track this. For
effective marketing communications, it is crucial to uncover the attitudes of customers towards online
shopping; question 4 and 5 (appendix) seek to find out more.

A total of 19 participants were involved to have a representative sample size. Of this sample, 47.7% were
males while 52.3% are females. Segmenting the respondents into age groups, 31.6% was aged 20 and below,
42.1% was aged 21 to 40 and 26.3% are aged 41 and above. The survey was conducted in a pen-and –paper
form. The answers of each respondent is then captured in an excel file. I have followed the instructions in
analyzing the data and doing the medium split; the numerical score of each respondent is arranged in
increasing order and the score of the 10th person (middle person) is noted. Respondents with score below that
will be classified as low involvement while the reverse is true. The demographics of each respondent in an
involvement group are then analysed. The low involvement group identified are the male (66.7% of the low
involvement group) and the older consumers (44.4% of same group). The main reason cited by older
consumers for low involvement was uncertainty over the product quality. The high involvement group
identified are the female (77.8% of the high involvement group) and the younger consumers (100% of same
group). Among the high involvement customers, there are distinct differences. Students buy online either to
save money or purchase unique products while employed people purchase online for convenience. In the
survey, it is discovered that 88% of younger consumers spent at least 21 and above hours online per week as
compared to older consumers who spend approximately 12 hours and below in the same time frame.

The results are useful to marketers in formulating marketing decisions

Men have tendency to search their information in a heuristic process instead of taking initiatives to search
sites. Search engines are their main source of information (Teo, 2002) Hence, online retailers targeting at
male-dominated base should index their websites correctly for ease of access. The contents of websites can
be manipulated to secure top placement in results of search engine queries.

For older consumers, online retailers should work on brand equity and establish the image that their products
are reliable. One way is to register the online company with ‘CaseTrust Scheme Singapore’ because being
under national scheme will build trust and confidence in shopping with the retailer online.

Internet usage is the most commonly used among the younger consumers. Businesses that sell relevant
products that are of interest to them such as clothes, movie tickets could revamp their websites to make it
trendier to capture their attention and hopefully close more deals. Products targeted at students should be
either value-for-money or include product involvement; inviting them to give suggestions on how they
would like their accessories to be designed. On the other hand, online retailers targeting at employed people
should seek to improve the efficiency of delivery and ease of purchase.
References:

 “Nielsen Study Revealed : Web Usage Boosted By Women and Teenagers” from
http://blog.cellphoneshop.com/2009/10/mobile-web-usage-boosted-by-women.html

 “ Attitude towards online shopping and the Internet” from

http://www.bschool.nus.edu.sg/staff/bizteosh/TeoBIT2002OnlineShopping.pdf

 “ e-Shopping and e-Transactions” from http://www.ida.gov.sg/News%20and

%20Events/20060926113542.aspx?getPagetype=20

 “She clicks differently from how he clicks--but most e-retailers haven`t figured it out yet” from
http://www.internetretailer.com/internet/marketing-conference/35722-gender-matters.html

 Sebastianelli, Rose, Tamimi, Nabil & Rajan, Murli (2008). Perceived Quality of Online Shopping:
Does Gender Make a Difference? Journal of Internet Commerce, 7 (4)

 Judith Lynne Zaichkowsky, “The Personal Involvement Inventory: Reduction, Revision and
Application to Advertising,” Journal of Advertising 23, no 4 (December 1994):59-70 Copyrighted by
American Academy of Advertising