Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 21 (2014) 1068–1074

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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jretconser

E-lifestyles of Indian online shoppers: A scale validation

Shweta Pandey n, Deepak Chawla 1
International Management Institute B-10, Block A, Qutub Institution, New Delhi 110016, India

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Online shopping in India is growing at a dramatic rate and marketers are still working on understanding
Received 11 April 2014 the lifestyles of online shoppers for purpose of segmentation, targeting and promotions. The scales for
Received in revised form such requirements developed in other countries may not be apt for use in India. Hence there is a need to
30 June 2014
develop appropriate scales applicable in the Indian context. By way of review of the previous literature
Accepted 30 June 2014
Available online 1 August 2014
as well as exploratory study through interviews and focus group with online shoppers and experts in the
field, the authors develop a pool of items relating to electronic lifestyles, henceforth called e-lifestyles of
Keywords: Indian online shoppers. Further using exploratory as well as confirmatory factor analysis, reliability and
E-lifestyles validity of the scale is confirmed and a six factor scale consisting of e-enjoyment, e-distrust, e-self-
India
inefficacy, e-logistic concerns, e-negative beliefs and e-offers is developed. The study is a first step
Scale validation
towards identifying a more holistic picture of factors that influence Indian online shopper lifestyles or
Online shopping
e-lifestyles. The findings of this study can be integrated into marketing and promotional strategies of the
web retailers.
& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction across various contexts and using various measurement instruments

As per a report by Crisil (BL 1, 2014), online retail in India will
become $10 billion industry by 2016, growing at a rate of 50–55%
annually over the next three years. Concurrent to this rising online
shopping trend, marketing researchers have been increasingly
engaged in developing frameworks that enable practitioners to
understand online consumer behaviour. However, there is a multi-
tude of factors that shape online consumer behaviour like beliefs,
attitudes, lifestyles and so on which may be culture and country
dependent (Pavlou and Chai, 2002). Hence there is a need to
validate such frameworks and scales in the context of the country
(Gefen and Heart, 2006) before further application for research.
Marketing and psychology based research suggests lifestyle to
be an important determinant of consumer behaviour (Lazer, 1963;
Fullerton and Dodge, 1992). Jih and Lee (2003) in their study
argued that lifestyle is a better predictor than demographic
information for purpose of understanding shopping behaviour of
customers. Kim et al. (2009) found that consumer lifestyles
directly and indirectly affect purchase on the internet and their
activity, level of interest and opinions also vary depending on their
lifestyles (Gehrt and Shim, 1998). Hence, it is important to delve
deep into lifestyle drivers of shoppers in order to comprehend
their shopping behaviours. Consumer lifestyles have been studied
n
Tel.: þ 91 9811805039.
E-mail addresses: shweta.f13@imi.edu (S. Pandey),
dchawla@imi.edu (D. Chawla).
1
Tel.: +91 9810246473.
(Wells and Tigert, 1971; Mitchell, 1983). However, given the changing
lifestyles of consumers in a technological era, the earlier instruments
may not be applicable (Swinyard and Smith, 2003; Yu, 2011).
Different countries may have varied consumer lifestyles. Therefore
studies about online shoppers in India should be embedded in the
lifestyle context of the Indians.
1.1. Objectives of this study
Convergence of internet and mobile communications has
resulted in societal changes resulting in overt consumer conduct
(Yu, 2011). The context and internal beliefs like time and technol-
ogy consciousness of customers have undergone a sea change
thereby activating different patterns of consumer behaviour (Yu,
2011). Such interactions of individuals in the electronic environ-
ment wherein online activity is omnipresent result in a different
electronic-lifestyle herein termed as e-lifestyle. Chanaron (2013)
described e-lifestyle as one of the three type of innovative life-
styles which have come about due to technological and organisa-
tional innovations. Hence, e-lifestyle represents a progressive way
of living in the modern era and can be assessed using psycholo-
gical and sociological variables (Yu, 2011). Previously existing
inventory of lifestyle instruments may therefore be inept in the
current context (Brengman et al., 2005; Swinyard and Smith,
2003). A fairly large body of research exists on the online shopper
lifestyles or e-lifestyles in developed countries like US and Europe.
The web-usage related lifestyle instrument of Swinyard and Smith
(2003) and Brengman et al. (2005) has been used as well as cross-

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2014.06.012
0969-6989/& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 S. Pandey, D. Chawla / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 21 (2014) 1068–1074
validated across several studies (Ye et al., 2011). Brengman et al.
(2005) reported six lifestyle factors underlying the scale viz. –
Internet convenience, perceived self-efficacy, internet logistics,
internet distrust, internet offer and internet window-shopping
across Belgium. Similar factors were found for online users in
United States (Swinyard and Smith, 2003) and also for China by Ye
et al. (2011). However, there is dearth of such studies in the Indian
context (Gehrt et al., 2012). Hence, the objectives of this study are
twofold:
(1) To develop and validate an e-lifestyle instrument.
(2) To confirm the factor structure of the same using confirmatory
factor analysis.
The paper is structured as follows: In Section 2, we review the
literature on lifestyle relevance and e-lifestyle studies. In Section 3,
we describe our scale construction. In Section 4, we provide results
of scale validation – both exploratory and confirmatory factor
analysis. In Section 5, we discuss data analysis results followed by
conclusions in Section 6. Section 7 comprises of limitations of the
study and future research suggestions.
2. Literature review
2.1. Lifestyle and its relevance
Past research has typically defined lifestyle by examining a
consumer's attitudes, interests and opinions (Kim et al., 2000).
Lifestyle comprises of what consumers do, like and think (Wells,
1975). It can be defined as a “set of behaviours reflecting individual
psychological concerns (internal beliefs) and sociological conse-
quences (external stimuli)” (Yu, 2011, p. 217). Lifestyle is concep-
tualised as a function of inherent individual characteristics
modified via social interaction (Hawkins et al., 2002).
Lifestyle studies comprising of attitudes or beliefs about the
people, place, products, etc. are used to assess consumer buying
behaviour (Hawkins et al., 2002) with authors concluding that
lifestyles are a significant link to the consumption as well as
shopping behaviour of customers (Cosmos, 1982; Wu, 2003).
Lifestyle is expressed by customers across work as well as leisure
in the form of activities, interests, opinions and values (Chanaron,
2013). Lifestyles are helpful in understanding customer psyche and
therefore can be used as basis for communicating and marketing
to them (Plummer, 1974; Brengman et al., 2005). Study of
consumer lifestyles has been used as an important tool for
segmentation (Plummer, 1974). Bellman et al. (1999) argued in
favour of measuring consumer lifestyles and not only demo-
graphics for predicting both online and offline consumer shopping
behaviours. Thus, there is a need to develop a valid instrument for
measuring lifestyles of consumers.
2.2. E-lifestyles
Internet is changing the way people work, live and learn with
one of the biggest impact being on shopping. Donthu and Garcia
(1999) cite that development of online shopping market has been
driven by not just technological changes but also changes in
lifestyles. Electronic lifestyles or e-lifestyles have been stated to
differ from traditional lifestyles and hence traditional lifestyle
concepts maybe inadequate in explaining e-lifestyles (Hoon,
2002). With the ease of shopping at click of a button, consumers'
perception of time have changed, making them unwillingly to wait
which has traditionally been the way of traditional shopping.
Time-deprivation and multi-tasking are graduating consumers to
an attachment towards online shopping and being reliant on it
1069
(Assael, 2005). The same is affirmed in the report on Indian
e-commerce by Ernst and Young (2012) which states that the
onset of internet commerce coupled with changes in consumer
lifestyles has brought along myriad changes in Indian shoppers
with online shopping becoming an alternative to conventional
shopping. Bellman et al. (1999) stated that online buyers have a
wired lifestyle as in they have been on internet for years. The
study also found that such people patronise online shopping and
use internet for not only searching information, reading news but
also for recreational purposes. They have higher time constraints
and tend to shop frequently. Innovations on the internet as well as
mobile telephony front contribute to change in lifestyles of people
to the extent that the two concepts of lifestyle and innovation have
been compressed into a new dimension of innovative lifestyles
(Chanaron, 2013). One such innovative lifestyle termed as
e-lifestyle has been associated with information and communica-
tion technology enabled products and services (Chanaron, 2013;
Yu, 2011). Online shopping is becoming an alternative to conven-
tional brick and mortar shopping (Wang et al. 2006). Such impact
of electronic-lifestyles or e-lifestyles on shopping behaviour of
consumers therefore needs to be studied in detail.
Whilst there are myriad studies relating to consumer lifestyles
(Wells and Tigert, 1971; Plummer, 1974; Green et al., 2006; Hsu
and Chang, 2008; Kumar and Sarkar, 2008; Jensen, 2009), there is
a dearth of study of e-lifestyles in context of online shopping.
Thus, this study is aimed at understanding e-lifestyles for Indian
online shoppers. Most of the studies on web related e-lifestyles (Li
et al., 1999; Brengman et al., 2005; Allred et al., 2006; Ahmad et al.,
2010) have been done in countries more developed than India.
Amongst the various lifestyle scales, one of the most well-known
scales is the activities, interests and opinion (AIO) rating scale
originally conceptualised by Wells and Tigert (1971) widely used
in numerous research studies (Plummer, 1974) and further devel-
oped in specific context of online shopping by Swinyard and Smith
(2003). Activities are how people spend their time and money,
interests depict the degree of excitement and attention to an
object, event or topic and opinion represent the specific beliefs
about objects, events and topics (Lee et al., 2009). AIO item
batteries generally assess psychographics of customers and can
be modified to specific domains. Peter and Olson (1994) defined
lifestyle as a culmination of the activities, interests and opinions of
people wherein activities are manifest actions (work, hobbies,
entertainment etc.), interest is the degree of excitement that leads
to special and continuing attention to certain objects, events or
topics and opinions are descriptive beliefs ( of oneself, social
issues, politics, culture etc). Lee et al.(2009) concluded that AIO
items assessing factors like fashion consciousness, leisure orienta-
tion, internet involvement and e-shopping preference are direct
and indirect antecedents of high-technology products. Technolo-
gical convergence of various kinds of computers with other media
like mobile have shaped the activities, interests and opinions
related to e-shopping. Hence, Swinyard and Smith (2003) applied
38 AIO statements to assess internet shoppers' lifestyles in US.
Allred et al. (2006) found two additional factors: like sociability of
brick and mortar and have an online social support group apart
from the six lifestyle dimensions cited by Swinyard and Smith
(2003) namely: love for e-shopping, finding e-shopping a hassle,
having online financial fears, not knowing how to shop online and
liking the value of online shopping. Bellman et al. (1999) stated
that most online shoppers belong to dual-income households and
seek fast and convenient shopping channels. They concluded that
online shoppers value convenience more than cost savings. They
also found that privacy and security concerns lingered in the
minds of online shoppers across U.S., Europe and Asia but were not
significant predictors of whether to shop online or not. Kim et al.
(2000) proposed 27 items to understand internet users’ lifestyles
1070 S. Pandey, D. Chawla / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 21 (2014) 1068–1074
whilst Ghazali et al. (2006) found Malaysian customers to be high
in their experiential shopping orientation, thereby not preferring
to buy fish online. Apart from AIO, values and beliefs also play a
critical role in serving as guidelines for people's attitudes and
behaviours. In the consumer behaviour literature, values and
beliefs have been studied through instruments like Rokeach Value
survey (Rokeach, 1973), List-of-values (LOV) (Kahle, 1983) and
Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles (VALS) (Mitchell, 1983). However,
most of these lifestyle instruments have been developed outside
India and therefore may not capture the essence of Indian culture.
For example, Ness and Stith (1984) critiqued the fact that Rokeach
values are basically for American middle class. Hence, for purpose
of this study, we seek to adapt and modify an existing AIO based
online shopping scale to the Indian context and validate the same
through qualitative interviews as well as focus group discussion.
This qualitative perspective will also be used to identify specific
India related beliefs and values in the domain of online shopping.
In the Indian context, a study on Indian consumers found them
to be more willing to disclose personal information on the internet
as compared to US consumers (Gupta et al., 2010). Another study
found that Indian online shoppers appear quite willing to buy
services online that are high in their intangible value proposition
but not too keen to buy the frequently purchased products Jain
and Jain (2011). They also found that touch and feel as well as
financial risk is an important factor underlying the customer's
reluctance to buy expensive products online and product expen-
siveness was inversely related to future purchase intentions. Gehrt
et al. (2012) found very few shopping orientations of Indian
shoppers as compared to other countries, namely, value orienta-
tion, quality with convenience orientation, recreation orientation
and reputation with convenience orientation. They therefore
strongly argued for the need to do further research to reveal
Indian consumers' perceptions of the marketplace. They also found
that Indian shopping lifestyles or orientations did not have
consistency of theme with other more developed economies. Thus,
given the inconspicuous dearth of studies about Indian e-lifestyles
as well as some differences as compared to other countries (Gehrt
et al., 2012), this study aims to understand the Indian shopper
e-lifestyles and develop and validate a scale for the same.
3. Scale construction
3.1. Data collection instrument
Churchill (1979) in his research work on developing measures
suggested using a mix of original and adapted scale items to
provide an assessment of the construct and all its dimensions.
Existing scales can provide useful starting point for adaptations to
new contexts (Karatepe et al., 2005). The Swinyard and Smith
(2003) scale is amongst the most widely used e-lifestyle scale. It
has been validated across various countries (Brengman et al.,
2005; Allred et al., 2006; Ye et al., 2011). Hence, this study also
draws heavily from the same. Further, Wells and Tigert (1971) as
well as other researchers (Swinyard and Smith, 2003; Ahmad et
al., 2012) suggested that qualitative research using methods like
in-depth interviews with relevant base are also important to yield
good lifestyle items. Therefore though, we used the original
Swinyard and Smith (2003) web-usage based lifestyle scale as
the starting point, we modified certain items as per the Indian
context. We added items based on an initial qualitative investiga-
tion regarding e-lifestyle drivers of online shoppers. Ten in- depth
interviews spread across various age groups as well as one focus
group discussion with college students including both males and
females was conducted. The interviews and focus group discussion
inputs were used to explore the contours of the lifestyles
associated with internet shopping. The additional items generated
from the qualitative inputs were combined with those existing in
the internet lifestyle scale by Swinyard and Smith (2003) as a
consequence of reviewing and discussing iteratively with several
marketing academics and researchers for content and face validity.
A structured questionnaire with 42 lifestyle statements mea-
sured on a 5-point Likert scale (with 5 implying¼strongly agree to
1 implying¼strongly disagree) was finalised. Out of the 38 items
in the original scale developed by Swinyard and Smith (2003), 36
were used with minor language modifications. Three new state-
ments specific to media drivers for online shopping, one item
related to the mode of payment- cash on delivery (highly pre-
valent in India) as well as two items related to internet related
negative beliefs were added. Apart from that some demographic
variables as well as variables linked to frequency of purchase and
items purchased were also part of the questionnaire.
3.2. Data collection
Syzmanski and Hise (2000) state that online approach is most
logical for identifying and studying online consumer, as they allow
ability to reach a larger target audience with minimal interviewer
bias. However, physical questionnaires along-with mail based
online survey method with convenience sampling was used to
ensure capturing of a diverse set of internet users; and also to
ensure that adequate responses were generated. A total of 424
usable responses were collected.
4. Scale validation
For the purpose of data analysis and hypotheses testing, the data
was analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS).
The sample of 424 was randomly split into two subsamples of sample
sizes, n1 ¼212 (termed sample 1) and n2 ¼ 212 (termed sample 2).
The split allowed one sample to provide guidance about item
selection and factor reduction while the second sample was used
to confirm data structures. This method avoids relying on a single
sample for both confirmatory and exploratory analysis. Thus, sample
1 was used for exploratory factor analysis and sample 2 was used for
confirmatory factor analysis. The data in Table 1 shows spread across
various demographic dimensions for each of the samples.
4.1. Exploratory factor analysis
According to Churchill (1979), factor analysis can be used to
confirm whether the number of dimensions conceptualised can be
verified empirically. The key statistics associated with factor
analysis are being explained briefly. Bartlett's test of sphericity is
a test statistic used to examine the hypothesis that the variables
are uncorrelated in the population, i.e. the population correlation
matrix is an identity matrix. Kaiser–Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure
of sampling adequacy is an index used to examine the appropri-
ateness of factor analysis. High values (between 0.5 and 1.0)
indicate that factor analysis is an appropriate analysis. Values
below 0.5 imply that factor analysis may not be appropriate.
An exploratory principal component factor analysis with varimax
rotation was performed on the exploratory sample to assess the
validity of the consumer lifestyles construct and to determine the
potential groupings of the 42 lifestyle items. For the given data,
Bartlett's test of sphericity (approx. chi-square¼3081.539, d.f. ¼ 861,
po0.05) was found to be significant, which signified that the
variables are correlated in the population. The high value of Kaiser-
Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of 0.761 indicated that the sample could
be subjected to factor analysis. We did further iterations based on
items that had high loadings on meaningful factors. Finally, based on
 S. Pandey, D. Chawla / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 21 (2014) 1068–1074 1071

Table 1  Love brick and mortar relates to the experiential shopping experi-
Comparison of characteristics (demographic, internet shopping) for sample 1 and ence of a brick and mortar shop as compared to online shop.
sample 2.

Sample size Sample 1 Sample 2 Further these factors were subject to confirmatory factor
analysis on the confirmatory sample, with sample size n2 ¼212.
212 212
4.2. Confirmatory factor analysis
Gender
Male 69.8 68.9 Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) allows testing very specific
Female 30.2 31.1
hypotheses regarding the number of factors, factor loadings and factor
Occupation inter-correlations. CFA was done using SPSS AMOS 18.0. On applying
Student 33.0 32.5
CFA, we found that standardardised regression weights for items
Business 10.8 14.2
Profession/service 50.0 46.7 belonging to the seventh factor were o0.5. Therefore we eliminated
Others 4.7 4.2 the seventh factor (Love brick and mortar) to improve model fit. A six
factor model was finalised with model fit statistics given in Table 3.
Age
Upto 30 years 48.1 47.6 The finalised factors post CFA along with their reliability measures are
31–42 years 29.7 29.2 shown in Table 4 with the final model shown in Fig. 1.
4 43 years 22.2 23.1

Education 4.2.1. Model fit

Upto-undergraduate 4.2 5.7 The CFA results are stated in Table 3. The overall model χ2 is 117.13
Graduate 50.0 49.1
with 62 degrees of freedom. The p-value associated with this result is
Post-graduate 45.8 45.3
0.00 is significant. Thus, the χ2 goodness of fit statistic does not
Marital status indicate a good fit. However, given the problems associated with
Married 50.9 53.3
Unmarried 49.1 46.7
using this test alone (Hair et al., 2010) we used multiple criteria with
each index having different strengths and weaknesses in assessing
Annual household income
the model fit (Hu and Bentler, 1999). Normed chi-square which is
Upto $ 8185 23.1 25.5
4$8185-$16,368 33.0 42.9 calculated as χ2/d.f.¼1.889 is less than 5 which suggests a good fit.
4 $16,368-$24,552 21.7 16.0 RMSEA (root mean square residual) which is 0.065, GFI (goodness of
4$24,552-$32,741 9.4 7.1 fit index)¼0.93 and AGFI (adjusted goodness of fit index)0.839 also
4$32,741 12.7 8.5 indicate a good fit. CFI is 0.926 which is greater than cut-off value of
Time spent/day on internet 0.9 indicates a good fit. Other studies using similar items have
o 1 hour 12.3 12.7 yielded comparable fit indices (Brengman et al., 2005, Ye et al., 2011).
41–4 hours 49.5 50.0
44–8 hours 25.0 26.9
48 hours 13.2 10.4 4.2.2. Convergent validity
Factor loadings, composite reliability, and the average variance
Buying frequency in last 3 months
0 time 4.7 5.2 extracted (AVE) are used to assess the convergent validities. Factor
1–3times 45.8 42.9 loadings exceed the acceptable criteria of 0.5 for all items (Hair et al.,
43–5 times 20.8 17.9 2010; Fornell and Larcker, 1981) with most of the items exceeding
45 times 28.8 34.0
0.70. The composite reliability exceeds the acceptable criteria of 0.7
(Hair et al., 2010; Fornell and Larcker, 1981) for most of the factors and
the average variance extracted (AVEs) for all latent variables is greater
content validity, reliability measures as indicated by Cronbach alpha than the threshold value of 0.5 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981) except for e-
which ranged between 0.5 to 0.8 (Churchill and Peter, 1984), negative beliefs as given in Table 4. Overall, the model shows reason-
adequacy on variance explained of 65.9% (Hair et al., 2010), as well able convergent validity.
as inputs from marketing academics and researchers the final result
showed 23 items out of 42 loading on 7 meaningful factors. 4.2.3. Discriminant validity
On examining the items making up the seven dimensions we As suggested by Fornell and Larcker (1981), the discriminant
labelled the factors as shown in Table 2. validity can be assessed by comparing the average variance extracted
The dimensions are as follows: (AVE) with the corresponding inter-construct squared correlation
estimates. AVE values for each latent construct were found more than
 E-enjoyment relates to the enjoyment found whilst shopping the square of the inter-construct correlations as given in Table 5. Thus,
online in the convenience of the home. the measurement model reflects good discriminant validity and
 E-distrust relates to the absence of trust related to privacy and desirable psychometric properties (Hair et al., 2010).
security of information held by the internet vendors. Overall, the six factor e-lifestyle scale was confirmed.
 E-offers relates to the beliefs about offers, quality and selection
being better on the internet as compared to local stores.
 E-self-inefficacy relates to the fear of not knowing how to use 5. Data analysis results
the internet increased by the fact that none of the friends of the
consumer shops on the internet. 5.1. Final factors
 E-logistic concerns relates to the fear of issues with returns
process and policies of the internet vendors. The study found a six dimension e-lifestyle scale wherein the
 E-negative beliefs relates to the notion of not shopping for expensive dimensions are described below:
items on the internet and the onslaught of unnecessary purchases
fuelled by advertisements and promotions by the internet market-  E-enjoyment, composed of items like “I enjoy buying things on
ers. This unnecessary purchases point towards the frugality value the internet”, “I would love to shop sitting at home” and “I
associated with Indians when it comes to spending money. think online buying is (or would be) a novel, fun way to shop”.
1072 S. Pandey, D. Chawla / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 21 (2014) 1068–1074

Table 2
Exploratory factor analysis findings- factor loadings and Cronbach alpha values.

Factors Measurement Items Factor loadings Cronbach alpha

E-enjoyment I enjoy buying things on the internet 0.819 0.85

I would love to shop sitting at home 0.796
I like having products delivered to me at home 0.767
I like browsing on the internet. 0.729
It is easier to do shopping online 0.645
I think online buying is (or would be) a novel, fun way to shop 0.556

E-distrust I am afraid of sharing my personal details like phone number etc on the internet 0.802 0.80
I worry about my credit card number being stolen on the internet 0.790
I just do not trust internet retailers 0.748
I am afraid of buying on the internet 0.728

E-offers I think internet shopping offers better selection than local stores 0.811 0.71
I think internet shopping offers better quality than local stores 0.775
Internet sites provide offers not easily available at the local stores 0.604

E-self-inefficacy I do not know much about using the internet 0.798 0.70
I find the internet ordering process hard to understand and use 0.759
None of my friends shop on the internet 0.739

E-logistic concerns I find it easy to return products bought online-R 0.868 0.68
Returning products purchased online is difficult 0.783
I think local stores have better service policies than internet 0.552
stores, for example returns and repairs etc

E-negative beliefs I don't think one should buy very expensive products on the internet 0.819 0.55
People get unduly influenced by internet advertisements and promotions 0.776
and purchase things that they really do not need

Love Brick and mortar I like the personal assistance I can get at local stores 0.809 0.55
Shopping in the local store is a pleasant experience 0.757

Table 3
 E-offers, composed of items “I think internet shopping offers
Model fit statistics. better selection than local stores” and “I think internet shop-
ping offers better quality than local stores” about internet sites
Index Value Cut off value
offering better quality, selection and offers.
Absolute fit index Chi-square 117.13, p ¼ 0.00 p 40.05
 E- negative beliefs comprises of two items: “I don't think one
Degrees of freedom 62 should buy very expensive products on the internet” and
Normed chi-square 1.889 o5 “People get unduly influenced by internet advertisements and
RMSEA 0.065 o0.08 promotions and purchase things that they really do not need”.
GFI 0.93 40.9
These can be categorised as a new dimension about customers
Incremental fit index CFI 0.926 40.9
who believe that internet sites unduly influences customers to
buy more, a finding which corroborates the frugal behaviour of
In the Indian context, several customers relate shopping to Indians (Mahi and Eckhardt, 2007). It also links to the belief
recreation and enjoyment (Gehrt et al., 2012). With growing that one shouldn't buy any expensive products online. Another
number of working people and the dearth of time for enjoy- study found that young adults in India purchase items of small
ment by going out to shop, this dimension signifies the value (Gupta et al., 2010) and Indian shoppers are averse to
changed lifestyle of the Indian consumer wherein enjoyment buying expensive products on the internet (Jain and Jain, 2011).
is related to the novelty to shopping on the internet in the
convenience of one's own home. The first five dimensions have been reported in previous
 E-distrust, composed of items like “I worry about my credit card studies (Swinyard and Smith 2003; Brengman et al., 2005, Ye et
number being stolen on the internet”, “I am afraid of buying on al., 2011) but the sixth factor is specific to India, as evident in
the internet”, “I just do not trust online retailers” and “I am this study.
afraid of buying on the internet” point towards the lack of trust
on technology and security aspects. Website security issue was
a key factor found in another study done in India (Gehrt et al. 6. Conclusions
2012).
 E-self-inefficacy composed of items like “I do not know much There is a shortage of marketing scales whose psychometrics
about using the internet” and “I find the internet ordering has been tested in India. This research is a modest attempt to fill
process hard to understand and use” correspond to the lack of this lacuna in existing literature. Appropriate understanding of e-
adeptness at using internet for shopping. The in-depth inter- lifestyles which impact shopping heuristics and subsequent cus-
views conducted also lent support to this feeling of not tomization of marketing-mix and other relevant business strategy
knowing much or enough about using computers to shop. This is important for marketers. Developing and validating an e-
feeling was prevalent more amongst the higher aged segment lifestyle scale relevant to India is the first step towards achieving
of shoppers, especially those who may not have used internet that. Churchill (1979) stated that a multi-item scale should be
much during their youth. evaluated for accuracy and applicability and emphasis should be
 E-logistics concerns, composed of items like “Returning pro- on developing measures, which have desirable reliability and
ducts purchased online is difficult” relate to the return issues of validity properties. This study is a step in the above-stated
online shopping. direction wherein a six-factor scale has been tested for reliability
 S. Pandey, D. Chawla / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 21 (2014) 1068–1074
Table 4
Confirmatory factor analysis – items, average variance extracted and composite reliability.
Factors Measurement Items
E-enjoyment I would love to shop sitting at home
I enjoy buying things on the internet
I think online buying is (or would be) a novel, fun way to shop
E-distrust I worry about my credit card number being stolen on the internet
I am afraid of buying on the internet
I just do not trust internet retailers
E-self- I find the internet ordering process hard to understand and use
inefficacy I do not know much about using the internet
E-logistic Returning products purchased online is difficult
concerns I find it easy to return products bought online-R
E-offers I think internet shopping offers better quality than local stores
I think internet shopping offers better selection than local stores
E-negative I don't think one should buy very expensive products on the internet
beliefs People get unduly influenced by internet advertisements and promotions and purchase things
that they really do not need
Fig. 1. Final measurement model.
and validity using appropriate statistical measures. The scale
developed in this research can be used to identify distinct clusters
with varying lifestyles and thereby be used by marketers for
designing communications for their target segments. It can be
effectively used to decide focus areas for marketing efforts
especially groups of people who are technology averse due to
financial or self-inefficacy reasons. Moreover, when communica-
tions are scaled across different regions as well as across national
boundaries, this scale can help the marketer decide the variations
to be brought in the promotions and advertising for various target
segments.
The study measured six lifestyle dimensions impacting online
shopping behaviour based on attitudes, opinions, interests of custo-
mers like E- enjoyment, E-distrust, E-self-efficacy, E-logistic concern,
E-offers as well as beliefs like E-negative beliefs. A number of these are
likely due to the aversion or discomfort associated with the adoption
of a new shopping channel. Out of these six, five have been identified
1073
Factor Average Variance Composite
loadings Extracted reliability
0.69 0.53 0.77
0.86
0.61
0.60 0.52 0.76
0.78
0.77
0.74 0.52 0.68
0.70
0.99 0.64 0.76
0.54
0.60 0.54 0.69
0.85
0.71 0.45 0.62
0.63
in previous studies done across the world (Swinyard and Smith, 2003;
Brengman et al., 2005; Ye et al., 2011; Ahmad et al., 2012). The sixth
one is new and consists of negative internet beliefs about internet
tending to entice customers into buying more and that one should not
purchase very expensive products online. This factor relates to risk
factors due to online shopping along with issues pertaining to impulse
buying and values like frugality associated with the Indians (Mahi and
Eckhardt, 2007). In an emerging online market like India, it is therefore
important for marketers to appropriately address these e-negative
beliefs to ensure rapid acceptance of the new shopping channel.
Financial security and privacy still remains to be key inhibitors of
online shopping and need to be addressed through better fulfilment
processes as well as brand image enhancements. Apart from that
traditional shoppers maybe more conservative in their technological
and shopping orientation and hence marketers may use the younger
generation for influencing the lifestyle and making online shopping an
enriching experience for the traditional shoppers. Further e-marketers
must stress upon the e-enjoyment dimension of online shopping and
incorporate required changes in their website for better hedonic value
resulting in higher uptake.
7. Limitations and future research areas
This study concentrated on the relevance of understanding e-
lifestyles of online shoppers in India. However, another approach
that can be used in future research is to understand e-lifestyles of
online non-shoppers and thereby analyse ways to influence them.
Secondly, whilst the authors aimed at a diverse population
inclusion for the purpose of this study, it still is a result of
convenience sampling and therefore may require further verifica-
tion through random and independent samples. Thirdly, India is a
heterogeneous country; therefore, future research should examine
the e-lifestyle scale in larger and more varied samples spread
across different regions in India. It is also recommended that this
scale be tested in other parts of country, in rural areas by
preparing a questionnaire in Hindi and other regional languages.
Fourthly, we did not use any specific context or product category
in our research. Therefore the factors provided in our research may
be limited and other contexts or categories should be tested out to
ensure generalisability. Further studies can test the e-lifestyle
instrument in specific fields like online-banking, apparel e-retailing
and so on. In summary, although our research provides some useful
insights into e-lifestyles of Indians, more research is needed to
unravel the psyche of the Indian online shopper.
1074 S. Pandey, D. Chawla / Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 21 (2014) 1068–1074
Table 5
Discriminant validity matrix.
E-enjoyment E-distrust E-logistic concerns
E-enjoyment 0.53
E-distrust 0.06 0.52
E-logistic concerns 0.05 0.15 0.52
E-self-inefficacy 0.00 0.33 0.04
E-offers 0.29 0.05 0.07
E-negative beliefs 0.08 0.12 0.08
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