Modeling Consumer Adoption of the Internet as a Shopping Medium: ...

Exploratory factor analysis was first conducted to examine the dimensionality of the research constructs: perceived innovation characteristics and perceived characteristics of Internet retailers. Following the exploratory factor analysis, measurement validation was again assessed. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to determine whether the measured variables reliably reflected the hypothesized latent variables derived from exploratory factor analysis. Structural path analysis was then performed to empirically test the proposed research framework and examine the effect of perceived innovation characteristics, perceived characteristics of Internet retailers, and consumer Internet self-efficacy on current online shopping behavior and future online shopping intentions. The moderating effect of product category was tested based on the structural model of current online shopping behavior via a multigroup invariance analysis. Finally, the adopters of the Internet as a shopping medium were profiled with respect to both their current online shopping behavior and the intention to continue shopping online, and the percentage of the four types of online shoppers (i.e., steadfast visitor, steadfast purchaser, latent purchaser, and dropout purchaser) was calculated. Then a multivariate analysis of variance was performed to assess which factor could differentiate among groups of online shoppers. Multigroup comparison was done to examine whether there was any difference in the path coefficients existing across shopper groups.

Findings and Managerial Implications

Thirty-four percent of the respondents were men; respondents ranged in age from 19–65 years old. Most respondents spent more time shopping on the Internet at home than they did at work. The respondents were heavy users of the Internet; more than half spent 2 or more hours per week shopping online.