电子商务外文翻译学生对网上购物的态度的影响因素.doc

African Journal of Business Management Vol. 3 (5), pp. 200-209 May 2009Factors affecting students attitude toward online shoppingNarges Delafrooz, Laily H. Paim, Sharifah Azizah Haron, Samsinar M. Sidin and Ali KhatibiFaculty of Resource Management and Consumer Studies, University Putra Malaysia.Faculty of Management, University Putra Malaysia.Faculty of Management, Management and Science University, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia.Accepted 1 April, 2009Abstract:To ensure the success of online business, it is important for the retailers to understand their targeted customers. The aim of this study examines the significance of attitude toward online shopping. The objectives of the study are two fold. The first section seeks to determine relationship between attitude towards online shopping with shopping orientations and perceived benefits scales. The second section investigates factors that influence peoples attitudes towards online shopping. A five-level Likert scale was used to determine students attitudes towards online shopping. A self-administered questionnaire, based on prior literature, was developed and a total of 370 post graduate students were selected by random sampling. The regression analysis demonstrated the determinants of consumers attitudes towards online shopping. Additionally, utilitarian orientations, convenience, price, wider selection influenced consumers attitudes towards online shopping.Key words: Electronic commerce, internet, shopping, consumer attitude.INTRODUCTIONToday Internet is not only a networking media, but also as a means of transaction for consumers at global market. Internet usage has grown rapidly over the past years and it has become common means for delivering and trading information, services and goods (Albarq, 2006). According to ACNielsen, more than 627 million people in the world have shopped online (ACNielsen, 2007). Forrester (2006) research estimates e-commerce market will reach $228 billion in 2007, $258 billion in 2008 and $288 billion in 2009. By 2010 e-commerce will have accounted for $316 billion in sales, or 13% of overall retail sales.Pacific indicates that the future forecast for online shopping in Malaysia looks bright and promising (Louis and Leon, 1999). Malaysia moved towards advanced information, communications based on the growing trend of Internet users in the last three years and multimedia services. Moreover, due to a rapid rise in the number of PCs in Malaysia, as well as growth in the proportion of PCs hooked up to the Internet each year, provides greater opportunities for Malaysians to conduct both business and shop online (Legard, 1998).A mid-2005 survey by the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Corporation (MCMC), only 9.3% of Internet users had purchased products or services through the Internet during the preceding three months. Malaysia internet shoppers are relatively young, highly educated, having higher social status, and command a more favorable financial position.Mohd Suki et al. (2006) conducted a study among Malaysian students and found that they enjoyed purchasing books/journals/magazines through the internet.Considering that Internet shopping, is still at the early stage of development, little is known about consumers attitudes towards adopting this new shopping channel and factors that influence their attitude toward (Haque et al., 2006). The consumers attitude towards online shopping is known as the main factor that affects e-shopping potential (Michieal, 1998). Attitudinal issues are also thought to play a significant role in e-commerce adoption. That means that, attitudes directly influence decision making (Haque et al.,2006).Attitudes serve as the bridge between consumers background characteristics and the consumption that satisfies their needs (Armstrong and Kotler, 2000; Shwu-Ing, 2003). Because attitudes are difficult to change, to understand consumers attitudes toward online shopping, can help marketing managers predict the online shopping intention and evaluate the future growth of online commerce.The proliferation of online shopping has stimulated widespread research aimed at attracting and retaining consumers from either a consumer or a technology-oriented view. The two views do not contradict but rather reinforce each other. Because the success of an electronic market largely depends on consumers willingness to accept it. Due to this, we adopted the consumer-oriented view of online shopping in this study.The rest of the paper is organized as follows: first examines the relationship between consumer factors and attitude toward online shopping and second, analyzes consumer factors that influence attitude toward online shopping.Online shopping orientationsConsumers have different personalities, which may influence their perception and how they perceive their online shopping behaviors (Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2001). Consumers personalities that lead to different shopping behaviors can be classified in two main orientations, that is, utilitarian and hedonic. According to previous studies, consumers characteristics and goals have been found to influence their behaviors such as purchasing, revisiting intentions and attitudes toward a website (Shwu-Ing, 2003; Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2001).Utilitarian shopping orientationsConsumers who are utilitarian have goal-oriented shopping behaviors. Utilitarian shoppers shop online based on rational necessity which is related to a specific goal (Kim and Shim, 2002). They look for task-oriented, efficient, rational, deliberate online shopping rather than an entertaining experience (Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2001). Their most important anxiety in online shopping is to purchases in an efficient and timely way to achieve their goals with least amount irritation (Monsuwe et al., 2004)Convenience orientation mentioned the utilitarian value of shopping, as a task-related, rational, deliberate and efficient activity (Babin et al., 1994). Therefore, shoppers with convenience orientations try to minimize their search cost as much as possible to save time or energy for activities other than shopping. In terms of the effect of utilitarian shopping orientation, Shim et al. (2001) posited that consumers who highly evaluate the utilitarian aspect of shopping will more likely use the Internet for an information source.Hedonic shopping orientationsConsumers who are hedonist have experiential shopping behavior. Hedonists not only gather information to shop online but also seek fun, excitement, arousal, joy, festive, escapism, fantasy, adventure, etc. (Monsuwe et al.,2004). These experiential shoppers want to be immersed in the experience rather than to achieve their goals by shopping online (Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2001) and their perceived experiences also depend on the medium characteristics that induce enjoyable experiences (Sorce et al., 2005).Generally, when hedonists are satisfied, the possibility of impulse purchases and frequency of visiting the website will increase . Therefore, the design of a website to attract experiential shoppers merits special attention to insure the conversion of shoppers product navigation into purchases. Childers et al.have confirmed that hedonic orientations for online shopping are important predictors of attitudes toward online shopping.Some research findings have shown hedonic motivations to have powerful influences on shopping behavior in both traditional and online shopping environments (Menon and Kahn, 2002). Thus, for systems that are hedonic in nature, researcher can expect hedonic orientations provide to be significant with attitudes toward online shopping. Based on these arguments, we present the following general hypothesis H2. There is positive relationship between hedonic orientation and attitude.Attitude toward online shoppingAttitude towards a behavior refer to “the degree to which a person has favorable or unfavorable evaluation of the behavior of the question” (Grandom and Mykytyn, 2004). Attitudes toward online shopping are defined as a consumers positive or negative feelings related to accomplishing the purchasing behavior on the internet (Chiu et al., 2005; Schlosser, 2003a, b). Buying trends and internet adoption indications have been seen as the overall electronic commerce value in Malaysia rising from US$18 million in 1998 to US$87.3 million in 1999 (Mohd Suki et al., 2006).In order to investigate consumer attitudes, we need to know what characteristics of consumers typically online shopping is and what their attitude in online shopping is. In simple terms, this means that there is no point having an excellent product online if the types of consumers who would buy it are unlikely to be online. In a situation of appropriate e-shopping environment if the product characteristics have electronic appeal and the consumers are familiar and feel confident in buying, e-shopping potential may still suffer from other setbacks.In a greater sense, this may be caused by consumers preference to use traditional shopping modes rather than shopping online. Alternatively, they may switch from ever visiting the store and their shifting tendency may ultimately reduce the profit margin of the physical stores. Therefore, evaluating attitudes of target consumers towards online shopping is critical. Consequently, the group with the higher attitude score should be the target market (ShwuIng, 2003).According to the study by Armstrong and Kotler, (2000), a persons shopping choices are influenced by four major psychological factors: motivation, perception, learningand beliefs and attitude. That means that, through motivation and perception, attitudes are formed and consumers make decisions. Attitudes serve as the bridge between consumers background characteristics and the consumption that satisfies their needs.Therefore, it is thus important to recognize that numerous factors precede attitude formation and change. Consumers characteristics such as personality nature, online shopping benefits and perceptions have also been found to influence consumers online shopping behaviors and online shopping rate (Cheung and Lee, 2003; Goldsmith and Flynn, 2004; Shwu-Ing, 2003; Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2001). Therefore, understanding consumer attitudes help marketing managers to predict the online shopping rate and evaluate the future growth of online commerce.METHODOLOGYConceptual foundation and frameworkThe classic theory of reasoned action (TRA) (Ajzen and Fishbein,1980) and TAM have been extensively adopted for explaining and predicting user behavior in an online shopping environment (Pavlou,2003). TAM posits that actual system use is determined by users behavioral intention to use, which is in turn influenced by their attitude toward usage. Attitude is directly affected by users belief about a system, which consist of perceived usefulness and ease of use (Davis, 1986).This belief-affect-intention-behavior causality has proven valid in the online shopping environment (Chen et al., 2002; Limayem et al.,2000). Researcher developed TAM to predict and to explain consumer acceptance of online shopping by extending the belief-attitude intention-behavior relationship in TAM from the following perspectives:(i) Perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment replaced by perceived outcome to cover perceived benefits of online shopping.(ii) Shopping orientations were added as antecedents of online shopping attitude. Shopping orientations (Lee et al., 2006) is identified from traditional retailing and marketing literature. The research model is shown at Figure 2.The researchers applied the motivation, perception and personality factors in the context of attitude behavior models such as the Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzen and Fishbein,1980) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis et al, 1989). In construction/ development of TAM, Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use can be instrumental in achieving valued outcomes, whereas perceived enjoyment can occur from the technology usage itself without any other reward. Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use reflect the utilitarian aspects of online shopping and perceived enjoyment reflects the hedonic aspects of online shopping.Therefore, in TAM, both utilitarian and hedonic aspects can be considered. Online shopping offers both hedonic and utilitarian aspects (Childers et al., 2001). Past research showing that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use reflect utilitarian aspects of online shopping, whereas perceived enjoyment reflects hedonic aspects of online shopping (Monsuwe et al., 2004). Therefore, in TAM, both utilitarian and hedonic aspects can be considered and also both utilitarian and hedonic aspects of consumer experience influence consumer attitude toward using a new technology or system.The TRA and TAM claim that beliefs such as online shopping perceived benefits are completely mediated by attitude. The TRA assert that beliefs such as perceived benefits are completely mediated by attitude. Verhoef and Langerak(2001) also employed the TRA in a study of 415 Dutch internet shoppers and found that outcome beliefs had a significant influence on the attitude toward online shopping.SampleSince university students have been found to be frequent users of technology and likely to buy products online and activities participate in online purchasing, as a result, postgraduate students were chosen as the target sample during the first semester of 2008. It must be mentioned; the majorities of postgraduate students are employed and have different online cards to purchase products through the internet. In addition, todays university students represent a significant part of the online buying consumers and a long-term potential market (Bruin and Lawrence, 2000).A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 500 students randomly in the selected faculties and institutes. All the selected respondents were enrolled in their respective faculties or institutes doing broad range of courses. Among 500 questionnaires that were distributed, approximately 405 were returned and only 370 fully answered questionnaires from the respondents were utilized.The respondents profile was categorized into groups namely; gender, age, income, education level and race. Table 1 illustrates this pattern. Frequency distribution profile of respondents showed that 64.3% of the respondents are female while 35.7% of the remaining respondents are male. The majority of the respondents 43.8% fall in the age range between 20 to 25 years of age and approximately 1.1% was above 40 years old. Population studied comprised Masters and PhD students, and post-doctoral researchers with frequency distributions of 78, 20 and 2.0% respectively.Respondents having a monthly income ranging form RM 1000 to 2000 comprised the majority income group 37.