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Until now, the profitability of e-tailers has not been substantial enough to improve their stock prices, although Internet shopping is now a mainstream activity. Widespread and instrumental adoption of the Internet as a shopping medium is the key that will ultimately drive online sales and profitability. However, the interactive and widely connected web-based marketspace enables today’s consumers to be even more demanding. It is far more challenging to attract and retain customers in the online environment than in the traditional one. Therefore, there is a growing need for a better understanding of consumers’ behavior in the commercial online setting.
The research examines consumers’ adoption of the Internet as a shopping medium through an integrated perspective of innovation adoption and the consumer decision-making process. This research proposes a conceptual framework describing the types and degree of consumer adoption of the Internet as a shopping place and how interrelated factors impact such adoption.
Existing Literature
In recent years, considerable research has been devoted to understanding consumer behavior in this new consumption arena. Some research has focused on those individual factors such as personal shopping orientations, demographics, and innovativeness that lead individuals to adopt the Internet as a shopping medium, whereas other research has focused on the impact of Internet vendor attributes such as vendor type, website design, marketing strategies, site usability, and service quality on consumers’ online shopping behavior.