Online Shopping Popularity vs Retail Outlets - Research Paper Example

of the of the Online shopping Popularity vs. Retail outlets Introduction The purpose for carrying out this research is to determine internet marketing and sales over the internet popularity in today’s world. The benefits of opening an online store versus retail store. The paper aims at discovering answers to the following questions: Is it money-wise useful to open an online store in this day and age? Who are the chief consumers buying online and what are the trends and buying habits of the consumers, and the leading products bought online? How to target consumers buying over the internet and how to make online store fruitful? The chief objective of the research is to estimate and inspect the consequences and decide is it worthy of time and effort when opening an online store (Laura, 2011). Online shopping turned out to be widely held 10 years ago. 94 percent of Americans use PCs for individual purposes. Nearly two-thirds have "a great level of dependency”. Nearly 70 percent of Americans shop online and 88 percent of that number has shopped online to some degree in the previous six months. Profits for products bought online now average over and above $34 billion annually, up to 500 percent further from the year 1999. According to a website which gives people a lot of discount vouchers, “The highest percentage of both men (77 percent) and women (68 percent) shop online in the mornings before lunch. Top level professional males and females prefer to shop at night. Stay-at-home moms tend to shop in the mid-afternoon, perhaps during nap time” The research also states that twenty-nine percent of males and 30 percent of females said their picks are "recurrently" inclined by online ads while 43 percent say choices are "from time to time" swayed. For this research, the use of random sampling method will be employed, since every living person has an equal right of being carefully chosen. The objective is to define the age group as well as gender from the people who purchase online. Likewise, the aim is to determine how repeatedly people shop online and what is the attractiveness of online shopping, and similarly to observe the most repeatedly bought products online. Literature Review Referring to an article by Gerald & Trifts (2003; n.p.), it is evident that a distinctive characteristic of online shopping is that they permit sellers to form retail crossing point with extremely intricate communication types. One looked-for method of interactivity from a customer viewpoint is putting into practice refined tools to help customers in their buying choices by adapting the electronic shopping environment to their separate preferences. The most important objective of this paper is to explore the environment of special effects that communication decision supports may have on customer choice-making in online shopping environment. Although while making buying-choices, customers are every so often incapable to assess all accessible substitutes in great deepness and, as a consequence, have a habit of using two-stage procedures to influence their judgments. At the major phase, customers naturally monitor a great set of offered goods and categorize a subcategory of the most auspicious substitutions. Afterwards, they appraise the latter with more gravity, carry out comparative judgments across goods on significant qualities, and make a buying choice. The two interactive tools used: RA (Recommendation Agent) and CM (Comparison Matrix) are used in the first and second stage respectively. In conclusion the major findings by the two authors put forward are that the communication tools, used to support customers in the early selection of accessible substitutes and to assist in-depth judgments among carefully chosen substitutes in an online shopping environs, may have strong promising effects on both the superiority and the good organization of buying decisions-shoppers; this can make much improved choices by buyers who can spend considerably less energy this way. This also recommends that interactive decision assistances have the prospective to radically make over the way in which customers hunt for product facts and make buying choices. An article Gefen, Karahanna & Straub (2000; n.p.) reveals that a distinct and different interface with both the real e-seller and with its IT Web place intersection is at the core of online shopping. Aforementioned research has recognized, thus, that online buying objectives are the invention of both customer valuations of the IT itself and effortlessness-of-use (TAM) as well as trust in the e-seller. Nevertheless these standpoints have been scrutinized self-sufficiently by IS scholars. Incorporating these two outlooks and probing into the aspects that form online trust in an atmosphere that otherwise lacks the standard human interface, frequently hints to trust in other conditions and progresses our thoughtfulness of these concepts and their relationships to actions. The research on practiced reiterated online buyers’ displays that customers’ trust is as vital to online business as the far and wide acknowledged TAM use, which offers apparent practicality and supposed ease of use. Together these adjustable factors explain a substantial percentage of adjustment in envisioned actions. The study also delivers confirmation that online reliance is put up through (1) a credence that the seller has zero to gain by double-dealing, (2) a trust that there are security instruments built into the website to ensure privacy, (3) by having a distinctive interaction, and (4) one that is easy to handle and has no language difficulty. The next article reviewed is by Faraga, Schwanena, Dijsta & Fabe (2005), which indicates that the need to gain a thorough product information and purchasing merchandises online are becoming more and more common practices that seem to be expected to have an impact on shopping sprees. On the other hand, little firsthand proof about the relations between e-shopping and in-store spending is offered. The goal of this study is to refer to the rate of recurrence of online searching, online purchasing, and non-daily shopping journeys’ relation to each other, as well as the way in which they are predisposed by aspects such as approaches, actions, and land use types. In this study, opinion survey data were obtained from 826 respondents located in four towns (one inner-city, three peripheral) in the middle of Netherlands. Fundamental equation modeling was used to look at the variables’ manifold and multifaceted connections. The outcomes show that searching online absolutely has an emotional impact on the rate of shopping excursions, which is a certain stimulus in purchasing online. An unintended positive effect of time-stress on online purchasing was found as well as a minor adverse outcome of online searching on spending time. These outcomes recommend that, for various individuals, e-shopping could be duty-oriented (a time saving approach), while for others it could be leisureliness-oriented. Inner-city inhabitants shop virtually more regularly than out-of-town inhabitants, for the reason that they are likely to have a faster Internet link. The more buying from a retail store chances one can range within 10 minutes duration by cycle, the fewer times one buys online. The next article reviewed is by Rodgers and Harris (2003), which explains the role of gender as it relates to e-business, and offers a theoretical background that challenges to bring to light the reason women are not as much contented as men are with the virtual shopping practice. Fictional emotional paybacks are debated as a most important reason women lack provision for e-buying action. Supplementary theories in the model take in trust (incredulity) and realism (closeness). The survey conclusions of this study exposed that these three notions—sentiment, trust, and opportuneness—predicted women's disappointment and discontent (and men's gratification) with online shopping, in addition to men and women's definite shopping actions. The authors suggest notions to help e-vendors from heavy-duty emotional promises with female customers. The above four articles reviewed have the following similarities and differences: Trust and easiness in buying a product from a nearby retail store are the two main factors that affect the buying decisions of the consumers; this acts as a major similarity. Likewise, female customers prefer buying from a retail store because their satisfaction level is fulfilled only through that medium; for example, when buying a dress, women prefer to try it on first, feel the material of the product, and then make their buying decision. Furthermore, interactive tools play a significant role when buying online. The more interactive and easy to use a website is, the more people are satisfied with their online shopping. When buying online, the consumers go through four stages: 1) weighing the alternatives, 2) choosing the best alternative, 3) making a consumer matrix, and 4) buying the best available option(s). Major similarity found from the articles is that working class and men are more satisfied with online shopping. Nowadays, shopping online has become the latest most popular trend for shopping due to the ease and time-saving factors. There were not any differences found in the above reviewed articles. Methodology: For my research I plan to use random sampling technique for the reason that each member of population has an equal right of being selected. The population for my research would be around 40 – 50 people. The people for the survey will be picked randomly, i.e. from various age groups, but mainly women as they are more interested in shopping. The main hypotheses for this paper is that people are more interested in buying online due to the reason that buying online is convenient, with the mere need of a credit card, and the item of purchase is delivered to your house. Many online sellers’ offer lower prices since they can dodge renting a location in a shopping center, high bills, taxes and sales’ staff. Likewise, it is convenient for people to buy online due to ease and time saving factors. However, the research showed no matter how easy to shop online is, the other factors, like trust and practicality make it difficult for a certain gender to shop online. If I perform the analysis I would go for quantitative analysis since the goal is to determine the age group, as well as gender that buys online more frequently. Similarly how often people do online shopping and its popularity, as well to find out the most likely purchased products online are all aims of this paper. The outcome is that people prefer buying online; especially the working class and men for the reason that they have time issues; plus men are usually not interested in shopping; and also because every product is very easy to find online so it helps the customers to save the cost of driving for miles to reach a mall and then decide between alternatives. The only disadvantage that the customers have in online shopping is that they cannot test the product before buying. Hence proven that online business would be more successful; firstly because the world is becoming more IT oriented; and secondly because people are getting busier and busier and their lack time drives them to buy a product online. However, this also provides implications for e-tailers to carefully choose and create interactive tools in order to attract more traffic to their web pages and provide more ease and comfort to the customers. References: David Gefen, Elena Karahanna and Detmar W. Straub. “Trust and TAM in online Shopping: An Integrated Model”. March 2003. Vol. 27 No. 1. Reviewed on December 18, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/pss/30036519 Haubl Gerald and Valerie Trifts. “Consumer Decision Making in the Online Environments: The Effects of Interactive Decision Aids”. 2000. Vol. 19 No. 1. Reviewed on December 18, 2011, form http://www.jstor.org/pss/193256 Laura Heller. “The Future of Online Shopping: 10 Trends to Watch”. March 2011. Reviewed on December 18, 2011, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/lauraheller/2011/04/20/the-future-of-online-shopping-10-trends-to-watch/ Louis P. Becklin. Retail Strategy and the classification of consumer goods. n.d. reviewed on December 18, 2011, from http://www.commerce.uct.ac.za/managementstudies/Courses/bus2010s/2007/Nicole%20Frey/Readings/Journal%20Articles/Classics/Retail%20strategy%20and%20the%20classification%20of%20consumer%20goods.pdf Shelly Rodgers and Mary Ann Harris. “Gender and E-Commerce: An Exploratory Study. Journal of Advertising Research”. 2003. 43, pp 322-329 doi: 10.1017/S0021849903030307, reviewed on December 18 2011 from http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=179595 Sendy Faraga, Tim Schwanena, Martin Dijsta and Jan Fabe. “Shopping online and/or in-store? A Structural equation model of the relationships between e-shopping and in-store shopping”. November 2005. Reviewed on December 18, 2011 from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856406000267 Read More