Annexure-V- Cover Page for Academic Tasks

Course Code: MGN206 Course Title: Research Methodology

Course Instructor: Mr. Mohd Nasir

Academic Task No. : 01 Academic Task Title: The role of E-commerce in consumer purchasing
Behavior
Date of Allotment: 16 January, 2020 Date of submission: 17th March, 2020

Student’s Roll no: 25, 27, 14, 16 , 10 Student’s Reg. no: 11805696, 11806415, 11805752, 11803400, 11804291

Evaluation Parameters:

Learning Outcomes:

Student’s Name: 1)- Abhishek Jha, 2)- Aslan Jiwani, 3)- Aniket Das, 4)- Sudeepthi,
5)- Mohd. Tarique

Evaluator’scomments (For Instructor’s use only)

General Observations Suggestions for Improvement Best part of assignment

Evaluator’s Signature and Date:

Marks Obtained: Max. Marks: …………………………

The Role Of E-Commerce In Consumer
Purchasing Behaviour

INTRODUCTION
Online shopping is the easy solution for busy life in today’s world. In the past
decade, there had been a massive change in the way of customer’s shopping. Despite
consumers’ continuation to buy from a physical store, the users or buyers feel very
convenient to online shopping. Online shopping saves crucial time for modern
people because they get so busy that they cannot or unwilling to spend much time
shopping.
In the twenty-first century, trade and commerce have been so diversified that
multichannel has taken place and online shopping has increased significantly
throughout the world (Johnson, Gustafsson, Andreassen, Lervik, & Cha, 2001).
Globally, e-commerce constituted about 2.29 trillion dollar market (John, 2018) and
expected to reach 4 trillion dollar by 2020 (eMarketer, 2016) due to the double-digit
worldwide growth in sales (15%) and order (13%) (eMarketer, 2018) in all sorts of
e-commerce such as business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C)
(Zuroni & Goh, 2012).
Asia Pacific region is leading the growth of online shopping as compared to the
mature market such as the US, UK, Japan and European Countries. The Asia Pacific
recorded massive growth, especially in China. In 2016, Asia Pacific region made
about $1 trillion in online sales and majority came from China constituting about
$899 billion (eMarketer, 2016). With more and more consumers become
increasingly familiar with the Internet and its benefit, online shopping is becoming
popular and getting preference among a group of consumers seeking better value
proposition regarding information, convenience, cost, choice. Like other young
Asian citizens, youngsters in India are experimenting with new ways of shopping
that have led to the popularity and growth of online shopping in India.
Unlike a physical store, all the goods in online stores described through text, with
photos, and with multimedia files. Many online stores will provide links for much
extra information about their product. On the other hand, some online consumers are
an adventurous explorer, fun seeker, shopping lover, and some are technology
muddler, hate waiting for the product to ship. Consequently, online consumer
behavior (user action during searching, buying, using products) became a
contemporary research area for an increasing number of researchers to understand
this unique nature of online shopping.
The primary goal of a business is to offer product and services that best serve their
consumer needs. A business which fulfills the customer needs with satisfaction very
well is more successful than its competitors as satisfied buyers tend to make a
repetitive purchase. Moreover, in India, online shopping has been evolving fast and
has the potential to grow exponentially in time to come, as Internet penetration
reaches far and wide across the rural areas. However, it is also true that India people
are traditionally conservative in their approach to shopping due to modernization
and fast-paced life, dependence on online shopping will increase. Thus, the purpose
of this study is to understand the consumer behavior towards online shopping, their
liking, disliking, and satisfaction level.

1. Impact of Internet on Consumer Behavior

The influences on consumer behavior 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 behaviors. 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 behavior 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.
1.1. Internet 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 give 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 134 Arjun Mittal 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.

1.2. Convenience
Internet provides a big convenience for shopper as the main reason for the 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, 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 9th User Surveys, 1998).
1.3 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, organizations have realized 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 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.
1.4. Consumer Trust in Internet Shopping
Mayer, Davis, and Schoolman (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
E-commerce: It’s Impact on consumer Behavior 135 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,). 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 Bick more, 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 Sir Deshmukh, 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 will think their E-
commerce transactions through Internet are secure and thus the site is more reliable
to them. Beside this point, if the Ecommerce web site can provide the information
about their customer services, location of the office, contact telephone number, and
a help button on the web site, customers could also increase their trustiness as they
can feel that the online retailers is truly exist (Lohse and Spiller, 1998).
An Integrative Model of Consumer Trust in Internet Shopping.
 *LITERATURE REVIEW
1.
The study by Al-Alwan & Al-Shirawi (2015) aimed to find that influenced
customers’ intentions and attitudes towards online shopping in Bahrain. Independent
variables used were perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, trust, security,
website features, culture and attitude against one dependent factor that was intention
to online shopping. A total of 170 questionnaires were distributed to five local
institutes. Data analysis was done using statistical package for social science (SPSS)
18. Cronbach’s alpha test revealed that all the tested variables were reliable. The
results of the study showed that trust and security were significantly correlated with
consumers’ attitude. Consumer’s attitudes towards online shopping were
significantly correlated with intention to shopping online.

2.
Bhatt (2014) studied consumer attitude towards online shopping based on
consumer’s buying behavior, beliefs, preferences and opinions in Vadodara and
Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The sampling was done by convenient sampling method. Data
analysis was done through SPSS. It was found that perceived information, perceived
usefulness, perceived enjoyment, security and privacy are the five dominant factors
which influence consumer perceptions on online purchasing. Online shopping is
usually popular among younger generation. However, it has gained popularity in all
age groups in recent times. The results also show that the Review of Literature 24
consumer of both region of city found that description of product accurate. They
found online shopping to be comfortable because of features like paying for products
upon delivery (COD), customization or personalization of the websites and home
delivery etc. The result reveals that the mode of payment consumers choose is
dependent on their annual income. People with monthly income less than Rs 1,
00,000 prefer to pay for products via cash on delivery and those with income above
Rs 3, 00,000 prefer paying through internet banking. Consumers from various age
groups shop online on a regular basis.
 3.
Aimol et al., (2014) explored the factors affecting the consumer Buying behavior
towards online shopping. The study used purposive random sampling method to
collect the data from 105 respondents i.e. 55 male and 50 females from the age group
18-30 years who had experience of shopping online and the respondents were taken
from trans Yamuna area of Allahabad. The data was analyzed using percentages,
frequency and chi square test. The study found that the respondents accessed the
internet daily for their work-related queries. However, respondents occasionally
accessed the internet for shopping online. According to the research, the main factors
influencing online shopping behavior of consumers were saving of time, convenient
shopping, information in detail related to products and easy comparison of prices. In
other words, convenience of shopping and availability of detailed product
information attracted the consumers towards shopping online.

4.
Mathew & Mishra (2014) examined the Buying behavior of online consumer in
Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Jaipur, Chandigarh,
Hyderabad and Cochin in terms of internet usage, perceived risks, and website
attributes. The respondents were selected using quota-sampling technique. The data
was collected through an online survey using a structured questionnaire that was
distributed to 600 consumers. The results revealed that online buyers in India had a
high level of perceived risk and were worried about the delivery of the products
bought using online shopping. It was also found that information quality, product
range and after sales service were most preferred website attributes which influence
Indian online users’ behavior.

5.
Jusoh & Ling (2012) studied the factors that influence consumers' attitude towards
e-commerce purchases through online shopping. The study also investigated the
impact of socio-demographic, pattern of online buying and purchase perception on
consumers' attitude towards online shopping. Convenience sampling method was
used to collect the data. The sample size consisted of 100 respondents of Taman
Tawas Permai, Ipoh. One-way ANOVA were used to assess the differences between
independent and dependent variables. The independent variables taken were age,
income, occupation and pattern of online buying. The dependent variable included
in the study was attitude towards online shopping. The findings revealed that there
was no significant difference in attitude towards online shopping among age group,
occupation group and types of goods group but there is a significant difference in
attitude towards online shopping among income group. Pearson's correlation was
used to assess the relationship between independent and dependent variables. The
independent variables included were experience related to e-commerce, time in
hours spent using the internet, perception of product, customer service of the retailer
and consumers' risk. Also, the dependent variables used included attitude towards
online shopping. The results concluded that there was an important relationship
between e-commerce experience, product perception, customers' service and attitude
towards online shopping among the respondents. However, there was no significant
relationship between hours spent on internet, consumers' risk and attitude towards
online shopping among the respondents.

6.
Javedi et al., (2012) conducted a study on perspective of Iranian consumers to
determine the effect various perceived risk factors had (financial risk, product risk,
convenience risk and non-delivery risk) on online buying behavior of consumers. In
order to test the hypothesis of the study, online stores were selected and the data was
gathered through 200 questionnaires. Finally, regression analysis was used on data
in order to test hypothesizes of study. It was found that financial risks and non-
delivery risk negatively affected attitude towards online shopping behavior of
Iranian consumers. However, the effect of product risks and convenience risk on
consumer attitude towards online shopping was not noteworthy. Yoruk et al., (2011)
conducted a study on online shopping behavior among Turkey and Romanian
consumers. The data was collected from 185 students from Turkey and 142 students
from Romania. The results in both the countries showed that the consumers were
hesitant to shop online. The major reasons for consumers not shopping online was
due to the security while shopping online, consumer liking to shop from retail outfits,
preference to buy on getting a feel of the actual product and being able to use
products instantly. The study concluded that most important reasons to shop online
in both the countries were due to availability of detailed product information, home
delivery, convenience, product quality and lower prices. It was concluded that
consumers showed positive attitude toward shopping online.
 7.
Rehman & Ashfaq (2011) examined the factors which prevented the consumers
from opting online shopping. A survey was conducted and data was gathered from
200 students, 50 housewives and 50 random people, using a structured questionnaire.
Five-point Likert scale was used to analyses the data. The results revealed that most
of the respondents already used online shopping and preferred to buy online but
some attributes such as psychological, social and emotional factors along with
privacy affect consumer’s online buying behavior. The results of the study conclude
that various factors affect the consumer buying behavior and include better prices,
convenience of shopping and recommendation. The study also concludes that
consumers hesitate to buy online due to two major reasons namely security and
privacy.

8.
Jun & Jaafar (2011) conducted a study on Consumers’ attitude towards online
shopping. The research was conducted on consumers from three major cities in
China that included Beijing, Shanghai, and Fuzhou. Perceived usability, perceived
security, perceived privacy, perceived after sales service, perceived marketing mix,
and perceived reputation were used for analysis. Snowball sampling technique was
used in this research. The target respondents of this survey were adults with an
experience of online shopping. The results indicated that there was a positive
relationship among the attributes mentioned above and the consumers’ attitude to
get inclined towards online shopping. However, only two factors namely marketing
mix and reputation were found to have a major impact in affecting the consumers’
attitude to adopt online shopping.

9.
Sultan & Uddin (2011) studied the factors that encouraged the consumers to shop
online. The respondents included in the research were students from Gotland. The
sample size was 100 and data was collected through convenience sampling
technique. The results revealed that the main influencing factor for consumers to opt
for online shopping were design of the website, convenience of online shopping,
time saving and security. Apart from these, some other factors that influenced the
buying behavior of consumers were lower prices, discounts, customer reviews and
product quality.

10.
Osman et al., (2010) conducted a research on the socio-demographic background
of students, quality of website, purchase perception and consumer’s attitude towards
online shopping. Purposive sampling method was used to collect the data. A self-
structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 100 undergraduate students
from University Putra Malaysia. The study concluded that the quality of website,
purchase perception, gender of the respondents along with educational background
had a significant influence on the attitude of consumers while shopping online. The
research further established that a good quality of website includes availability of
accurate information and quick launch of webpage. Further, they concluded that
77% of the respondents buy online because information of product is available while
76% online consumers prefer buying through websites with safe and easy to use
website design.

11.
Ahuja et al., (2003) focused on examining shopping preferences of consumers
based on purchasing attitudes and behavior for categories of products and services.
This behavior was examined in context of both products and services. A sample size
of 265 was taken for the study out of which 190 were college students and 75 was
non-students. Most important reasons for students to prefer online shopping was
convenience (28%) followed by better prices (25%) and time saving (23%). For non-
students it was 31%, 23%, 27% respectively for convenience, better prices and time
saving. Convenience and customer service were found to be primary motivators to
buying online whereas unavailability of these factors acts as great barriers.

12.
Monsuwe et al., (2004) studied the consumer buying attitude towards shopping
online and their inclination to shop online. Results show that along with ease of use,
usefulness and enjoyment, the consumer attitude toward online shopping was also
affected by external factors like demographic factors, situational factors,
characteristics of the products, previous experiences while shopping online, and
belief in online buying. The study revealed that breach of consumer trust had a
significant impact on consumer’s attitude towards online shopping. On the contrary,
the consumers had a positive attitude towards online shopping if their personal
information was safe and secure. Trust, therefore, was an important psychological
factor that influenced the customer’s intention to buy online.

13.
Hirst & Omar (2007) studied women’s attitude towards shopping online and found
that women generally show positive attitude towards buying online. Women are
aware of discouraging features of online buying; still they are inclined to buy apparel
online. The sample size used for this study was 210. The study concluded that
positive features of online shopping were convenience, usefulness, ease of use and
some negative features included lack of security, lack of privacy of information and
online fraud.

14.
The study by Al-Alwan & Al-Shirawi (2015) aimed to find the consumer buying
behavior’ intentions and attitudes towards online shopping in Bahrain. Independent
variables used were perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, trust, security,
website features, culture and attitude against one dependent factor that was intention
to online shopping. A total of 170 questionnaires were distributed to five local
institutes. Data analysis was done using statistical package for social science (SPSS)
18. Cronbach’s alpha test revealed that all the tested variables were reliable. The
results of the study showed that trust and security were significantly correlated with
consumers’ attitude. Consumer’s attitudes towards online shopping were
significantly correlated with intention to shopping online.

15.
Alam, et al., (2008) studied key buying factors influencing online shopping behavior
of young Malaysian consumers. This study was conducted on 496 undergraduate
students from two private universities of Malaysia. Regression and ANOVA was
done to analyses the result. It was found that young consumers play an important
role in online shopping. There was a variation in buying of the consumers depending
on consumer service, trust and reliability. The result shows that the increased usage
of internet by young generation provides an emerging prospect for online retailers.
It was also found that website design, website reliability, consumer service and
privacy are the four factors which influence young consumers’ perception towards
online shopping.

Research Methodology

This study is mainly focus on the factors from the Internet and examines those
factors that affect the consumer’s online shopping behaviors. It starts with the
current status of the Internet development, and mentioned the background of
marketing as representation and its difference with physical stores which in order to
show the developing history of Internet shopping since the E-commerce become
popular. In the chapter of literature review, there are three main sections have been
discussed: traditional shopping behavior, Internet shopping and online consumer
behaviors. Each section starts with the concept, and followed by other perspectives.
The research focus on the Internet shopping (include the nature of Internet shopping,
E-commerce website, and online security, privacy, trust and trustworthiness) and
online consumer behaviors (include background, shopping motivation and decision
making process). Those factors were looked at, and examined to reveal the influence
at online consumer behaviors. In addition, the previous researches were used to help
researchers understanding more comprehensively. Moreover, the customer’s
purchase decision making process was also examined to identify the potential
factors. The information search is the most important factor that helps the customers
find the suitable products or services for their needs. Therefore, the online retailers
have to enhance and improve the information supporting such as provide much
detailed product information and use internal search engine in order to increase the
efficient of information search. For the evaluation stage, customers more think a lot
of the reputation from the E-commerce website, and the payment security for the
purchase stage. At the post-purchase stage, the factor of after services which is the
most concerned about. Overall, the factors from the Internet that influenced or
prevented online consumer behaviors need to be carefully concerned by the online
retailers, who can utilize the appropriate marketing communications to support the
customer’s purchase decision making process and improve their performance.
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 PEER RATING

S/No: Student’s Name Peer Rating Signature

1 Abhishek Jha 10 ----

2 Aslan Jiwani 10 ----

3 Aniket Das 10 ----

4 Sudeepthi 10 ----

5 Mohd. Tarique 07 ----