Republic of the Philippines

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN PHILIPPINES

Tamag, Vigan City
2700 Ilocos Sur

ONLINE SHOPPING HABITS AND ATTITUDES OF SECOND YEAR COLLEGE

STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN PHILIPPINES

A Research Paper

Presented to

College of Business Administration and Accountancy

Batchelor of Science in Business Administration

In Partial Fulfilment of the

Requirement for the Subject

Research

By:

Reballos, Krystale Gayle B.

Remolete, Tiffany Cyrille

Reutotar, Michelle Angela

BSBA-2E

May 30,2022
 Chapter 1
THE PROBLEM
Introduction
People were caught off guard as the pandemic spread without warning or understanding.

As a result, they have gone from having solid careers to being unemployed almost overnight.

Many individuals COVID-19 has caused people to lose their jobs, businesses to fail, and, most

importantly, a shortage of basic necessities like food and alcohol. The pandemic made life

difficult for the population. Must recover and recover from the damage COVID-19 caused them,

particularly to employees and businesses, companies, and the nation as a whole. Many people are

looking forward to COVID-19.

People come up with a plethora of ideas and solutions in order to meet their fundamental wants

and make money while working from home. using social media and the internet. Many people

are taking risks to adopt a new means of earning money online, which is online selling. Many

individuals shop online to buy goods and services, gain product information, or simply to have

fun. This generation of technology has benefited consumers by allowing them to readily

purchase items they desire through online shopping, as well as businesses by allowing them to

effortlessly attract customers through the use of social media.

The process of a customer purchasing a service or product over the internet is known as

online shopping. In other words, a customer can shop for things from an online store from the

comfort of their own home. Text, images, and multimedia files are used to explain all products in

online stores. Many internet businesses provided links to additional product information. T.

Berners-Lee established the first World Wide Web server and browser in 1990, and by 1995,

Amazon had expanded its online buying options (Parker-Hall, 2009). Many elements of life have
changed as a result of the internet's arrival, and the world has become a small but global village.

The quick and widespread use of the internet has resulted in significant changes in practically

every aspect of life, including communication, education, business, politics, and society as a

whole. The internet has had a significant impact on our culture and how we go about our daily

lives. Online shopping, often known as online trade, is a type of electronic commerce in which

customers can buy goods or services directly from a vendor over the internet using a computer

browser. It has enabled the corporate world to thrive, benefiting both businesses and customers.

It opened up new business opportunities and introduced new business practices in a novel

setting. The prospects and challenges for businesses have changed dramatically as a result of

online commerce or online buying. Customers' perceptions of local and global commercial

enterprises and/or products have narrowed, with quality, value, time, convenience, style, and

other factors becoming increasingly important.

Generally speaking, the trend of e-commerce has been increased rapidly in the recent

years with the development of internet and due to the easy accessibility of internet usage. Easy

access to internet has driven consumers to shop online in fact according to the University of

California, Los Angeles (UCLA) communication policy (2001), online shopping is third most

popular activity on the internet after email using and web browsing. Globally more than 627

million people have done online shopping so far, World’s biggest online shoppers include

Germans and British. Books, airline tickets/reservations, clothing/shoes videos/games and other

electronic products are the most popular items purchased on the internet. (ACNielsen Report on

Global Consumer Attitudes towards Online Shopping, 2007). Through electronic marketing and

internet communication business firms are coordinating different marketing activities such as

market research, product development, inform customers about product features, promotion,
customer services, customer feedback and so on. Online shopping is used as a medium for

communication and electronic commerce, it is to increase or improve in value, quality and

attractiveness of delivering customer benefits and better satisfaction, that is why online shopping

is more convenience and day by day increasing its popularity. Not only benefits but also risk is

associated with online shopping. Generally speaking, internet users avert online shopping

because of credit-card fraud, lack of privacy, non-delivery risk, lack of guarantee of quality of

goods and services. Concerned authorities are devising policies to minimize the risk involved in

e-business.

On the other hand, E- commerce has been grown very fast because of many advantages

associated with buying on internet because of lower transaction and search cost as compared to

other types of shopping. Through online shopping consumers can buy faster, more alternatives

and can order product and services with comparative lowest price. (Cuneyt and Gautam 2004).

Therefore, Marketers have carefully analyzed the consumers’ attitude and behavior towards the

online shopping and spend billions of dollars to facilitate all the demographics of online

shoppers.

Consumer’s attitude towards online shopping refers to their psychological state in terms

of making purchases over the Internet. Online buying behavior process refers to the products

purchased online. The process of online buying behavior consists of five steps and it is similar to

traditional shopping behavior (Liang and Lai 2000). For instance, consumer recognize the need

for buying some product (book), they refer to the internet to buy online and start to search for the

information and look for all the alternatives and finally make a purchase which best fits to their

needs. Before making final purchase, consumers are bombarded by several factors which limits

or influence consumers for the final decision.

Statement of the Problem

This study aims to assess the online habits and attitudes of second year college students

in University of Northern Philippines.

Specifically, it seeks to answer the questions:

1. What is the profile of the second-year college students in UNP to the following terms?

a. Age;

b. Sex; and

c. Civil status

2. What is the habits and attitudes of the second year students of UNP in their online shopping in

terms of?

a. Product Category

i. Clothing and apparel;

ii. Consumer bills; and

iii. Food and groceries

iv. Office Supplies

b. Consumer Satisfaction Levels

i. Ease of Checkout;

ii. Free or discounted shipping;

iii. Purchase through smartphone app.; and

iv. Variety of products offered

3. Is there a significant relationship between the profile of the second-year students of UNP and

the online shopping habits and attitudes?

Scope and Delimitation

This study focuses on the online shopping habits and attitudes of the second-year college

students. The data collection will be conducted at the University of Northern Philippines School

Year 2022. The other students in the University that are not in second year college are not within

the scope of this research. The study will be done through the utilization of questionnaires to the

respondents as a survey. By their comments or knowledge, the researchers will be able to know

the online shopping habits and attitudes of the respondents.

The goal of the study is to learn how satisfied respondents are with the prices, quality of

things, and services they obtained as a consequence of their online clothes purchases.

Furthermore, the study looks into the extent to which the participants have participated in a

variety of online commerce firms. The UNP students who are in their second year of BSBA are

the research’s sample. In the primary method of data collection, which will take the form of

survey questionnaires, the age, sexual orientation, and sector of the respondents will be

determined. The students' habits and attitudes as well as their engagement to online shopping

businesses are going to be the primary focal point of this research.

Theoretical Framework

The following are the related studies conducted previously about the habits and attitudes

in online shopping that served as a guide for the researchers in conducting the study.  
 Making a direct, real-time purchase from a seller over the internet without the use of a

middleman service is known as online shopping. Online shopping is the process of purchasing

goods and services from online retailers or merchants. Merchants have been attempting to sell

their items to Internet users for as long as the World Wide Web has existed. Consumers can buy

a wide choice of products from online retailers while sitting at their computers at home. Online

shopping is the process of purchasing goods directly from a seller without any intermediary, or it

can be referred to as the activity of buying and selling goods over the internet. Online shopping

deals provide the customer with a variety of products and services, wherein customers can

compare them with deals of other intermediaries also and choose one of the best deals for them

(Sivanesan, 2017).

Online shopping is basically a process of selling and buying of goods and services on

World Wide Web. As (Forsythe and Shi, 2003) explains” Internet shopping has become the

fastest growing use of the Internet; most online consumers, however, use information gathered

online to make purchases off-line”. As online shopping is a new medium so the consumer

behavior in the field of online shopping is also pretty diverse in nature compare to traditional

consumer behavior, so it is equally important for one to identify what factors influence

consumers to shop online. In order to reach towards purchase decision, it consists of several

factors which influence consumers to shop online. These factors are important for retailers to

compete in the market and to make their product more compatible.

Online buying became popular. It has seen a huge increase in popularity. We can now

buy almost anything on the internet. Online shopping entails going online, landing on a seller’s

website, making a purchase, and coordinating delivery. The buyer can pay for the item or service
using a credit or debit card online or at the time of delivery. According to Souca (2014), Online

shopping is the main part of electronic commerce and many customers are guided by this

electronic commerce regarding the way of buying products from the companies. Online shopping

is the act of buying a product or service through any e-stores with the help of any website or app.

Tarhini et al. (2021) stated that shopping through online channels is actively progressing due to

the opportunity to save time and effort. Furthermore, online shopping varies from direct e-store

and indirect e-store about their perception against the actual experience.  Developing countries

still face various conflicts and issues while promoting and utilizing e commerce to the maximum

compared with the developed countries (Rossolov et al., 2021). 

Along with its convenience and comfort, more individuals are choosing internet

purchasing over traditional shopping. When making a purchase via the internet, a customer may

have both pleasant and negative experiences. Despite the numerous advantages, some customers

may not like internet shopping as their primary method of purchasing, according to certain

previous research.

Limbu et al. (2011) revealed that when it comes to online retailers, some websites

provide very little information about their companies and sellers, due to which consumers feel

insecure to purchase from these sites. According to other research, consumers are hesitant, due to

scams and feel anxious to share their personal information with online vendors (Miyazaki and

Fernandez, 2001; Limbu et al., 2011). Online buyers expect websites to provide secure payment

and maintain privacy. Consumers avoid online purchases because of the various risks involved

with it and do not find internet shopping secured (Cheung and Lee, 2003; George et al.,

2015; Banerjee et al., 2010). Consumers perceive the internet as an unsecured channel to share

their personal information like emails, phone and mailing address, debit card or credit card
numbers, etc. because of the possibility of misuse of that information by other vendors or any

other person (Lim and Yazdanifard, 2014; Kumar, 2016; Alam and Yasin, 2010; Nazir et al.,

2012). Some sites make it vital and important to share personal details of shoppers before

shopping, due to which people abandon their shopping carts (Yazdanifard and Godwin, 2011).

About 75% of online shoppers leave their shopping carts before they make their final decision to

purchase or sometimes just before making the payments (Cho et al., 2006; Gong et al., 2013).

Moreover, some of the customers who have used online shopping confronted with issues

like damaged products and fake deliveries, delivery problems or products not received

(Karthikeyan, 2016; Kuriachan, 2014). Sometimes consumers face problems while making the

return or exchange the product that they have purchased from online vendors (Liang and Lai,

2002), as some sites gave an option of picking from where it was delivered, but some online

retailers do not give such services to consumer and consumer him/herself has to courier the

product for return or exchange, which becomes inopportune. Furthermore, shoppers had also

faced issues with unnecessary delays (Muthumani et al., 2017). Sometimes, slow websites,

improper navigations or fear of viruses may drop the customer’s willingness to purchase from

online stores (Katawetawaraks and Wang, 2011). As per an empirical study done by Liang and

Lai (2002), design of the e-store or website navigation has an impact on the purchase decision of

the consumer. An online shopping experience that a consumer may have and consumer skills that

consumers may use while purchasing such as website knowledge, product knowledge or

functioning of online shopping influences consumer behaviour (Laudon and Traver, 2009).

Attitude is defined as a person’s overall evaluation of a concept. Two types of attitudes

can be identified: attitudes toward objects and attitudes toward behaviours. As this study

measures the attitudes of working adults toward E-shopping, attitudes toward behaviours are
more relevant to the context of this study. An attitude toward behaviour refers to the “degree to

which a person has a favourable or unfavourable evaluation or appraisal of the behaviour in

question”, whereas a customer’s attitude toward E-shopping refers to a “customers psychological

state in terms of making purchases over the Internet”.

The psychological nature of customers in the context of an online shopping decision affects their

attitude toward E-shopping. Research on the E-shopping behaviours of British and American

consumers has also shown that E-shopping is a determinant of online shopping. Likewise,

consumer research on E-shopping behaviour accepts that attitude represents a description of the

positive or negative self-appraisal of a client’s behaviour, values, feelings, and patterns during

online transactions. The better the behaviour of an individual is, in relation to the behaviour

predicted, the more likely the person wants to participate in the behaviour.

Before defining consumer behaviour, it is better to understand the need of this definition.

For the marketers to design policies and to make better managerial decisions they need to know,

how customers buy and use goods/services, what is their reaction to prices, advertising and the

business settings?  Consumer behaviour is a vast concept and cannot be defined from a single

perspective. Economists states the consumer behaviour is depended on the price of the

product/service. (Zinkhan 1992), According to the utility theory, consumer is a “rational

economic man” and their behaviour is influenced by range activities beyond purchasing.

Conceptual Framework

The framework that will be used in this study is the IV – DV Model which shows the

relevant variables for the study and maps out how they might relate to each other. 

Research Paradigm 
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