Determinants of Online Buying Behavior

Abstract

The emerging digital economy has opened up new paradigms for retailing, and consumers across the world face new opportunities and challenges. However, the online firms face various problems today. The shopping cart abandonment in online shopping context is one such serious concern at present. On average, 71% of shopping carts are abandoned without a purchase. As a result, the researcher intends to probe the causes of online shopping cart abandonment in this study. According to the theory of planned behaviour, if there is a positive behavioural intention supported by favourable perceived behavioural controls online customers should end up with buying the product. However, abandonment of shopping cart is a situation that goes against this theory. The data was collected from online buyers across the world (n = 521) who were selected based on convenience in accessing them. This study while supporting the demographic factors of Age, Status and Gender to determine the abandonment behaviour shows there is no such relationship between geographical divide and abandonment behaviour. Moreover, this study suggests the executives and scholars to consider Age, Status and Gender when segmenting the markets in online context to minimize the abandonment behaviour and not to focus more on the geographical divide in such instances.