A Study of Customer Perceptions towards Online Shopping in Indore.

INTRODUCTION
When you buy a product or a service over the internet, instead of going to a traditional brick-andmortar store, it is called online shopping. It is where buyers and sellers don not meet each other and products
can be brought online by saving lot of time. Evolution of ecommerce was first in the 1995 mainly by the
biggest giants Amazon.com and eBay.com.
Globally, an increasing number of people are buying over the Internet because it is more convenient.
In India the online shopping has increased drastically as it is B2C marketing that is Business to
Customer. Every website show their uniqueness by their different features provided.
For example: FLIPKART talks about cash on delivery with many offers, MYNTRA talks about trial (of
garments) and payment after delivery etc. Like this each portal focuses on increasing their sales or visitors to
the site by associating with top brands such as Levis, Melange, BIBA, Gucci etc., not only with dresses and
shoes, but also with other products such as books, accessories, electronics, beauty products, home dcor and
excellent deals and discounts on food with top restaurants.
There is a common saying about the Indian retail consumers' "can't touch, won't buy" mentality.
However, this is gradually changing with the rising trend of online shopping. India's ecommerce market
grew at a staggering 88 per cent in 2013 to $ 16 billion, riding on booming online retail trends and defying
slower economic growth and spiralling inflation, according to a survey by industry body Assocham. It is
expected to touch $56 billion by 2023-- 6.5percent of the total retail market. "Besides electronics gadgets,
categories like apparel and jewellery, home and kitchen appliances, lifestyle accessories like watches, books,
beauty products and perfumes, baby products have witnessed a significant upward movement. In order to
save time and buy products online marketing has helped a lot of customers as variety of brands are available
to choose from, providing value added services at lower prices, giving discounts and other gift items on
purchase, security, clear information regarding delivery time, transparent information regarding the product
and providing price comparisons.
Finally tendency of Indian customers is to mainly purchase the best brands that do not cost much.
Customers are ready for Online shopping as India ranks 3rd after the USA and China in the usage of internet
as per economic times April 2012.
Various researches have conducted research on increasing trend of online shopping. Some have
studied factors as to what influences customers towards it, some have done a comparison study between
Male and Female customers as to study who is attracted more towards it, while some have studied customer
perception towards online shopping.

Online shopping has become a new trend and people find it more convenient and easy. In this busy
era people don't have time to spend several hours in traditional way of shopping, online shopping has solved
this problems of consumers and have made shopping possible just at a click.
Organisations have long used the traditional media like television, cinema, radio and newspapers for
promotional purposes. Advertisements have been existent in various forms such as print, radio, outdoor, TV
etc. The media consumption habit of today consumer has a most important change. The growth of internet in
last two decades has however, changed the scenario of promotion for organizations. Internet is a short form
of the technical term internet work that is the result of interconnecting computer networks with special
gateways or routers. The Internet is also often referred to as the net.
Internet marketing first began in 1990 with just text-based websites which offered product
information. Since then, this new mode of marketing has grown by leaps and bounds. Internet has made it so
flexible and convenient for companies to approach consumers and vice versa around the clock 24*7. The
internet boom has enabled new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, internet forums, and
social networking. Internet has also revolutionised the world of business through online shopping etc. that
has come as a boon both for major retail outlets and small artisans and traders. Internet browsers and online
shoppers are the target audience of companies that heavily promote through the online. Due to the increasing
penetration of internet and activities such as social media networking; consumers, especially youth, are
spending longer hours on the internet which makes it an efficient tool for companies to generate
advertisements to attract them. Online advertising industry in India is growing dynamically and is set to
increase further.
Online advertising is a form of advertising that uses the Internet and World Wide Web in order to
deliver marketing messages and attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on
search engine results pages, banner ads, Social network advertising, advertising networks and e-mail
marketing. The unique characteristic of online advertising is the availability of information and content that
is not limited by geography or time for its audience. Companies are now spending huge amounts on
advertising through the online medium that helps them to target their specific group of consumers. With
rapid changes and advances in technology, companies are experimenting with various forms of online
advertisements like floating ads, click ads, pop up ads, flash ads, pop under ads and video ads. The
consumers are also responding in terms of their varying attitudes towards the use of technology for
promotions.

Attitude is a learned predisposition to behave in a consistently favourable or unfavourable manner with

respect to a given object (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2006). Consumer attitudes are a composite of a consumers.
(1) Beliefs about
(2) Feelings about
(3) Behavioural intentions toward some object--within the context of marketing. These components are
viewed together since they are highly interdependent and together represent forces that influence how the
consumer will react to the object. Numerous researchers have investigated on-line buying behaviour over the
past several years (e.g., Jarvenpaa and Todd1997, Lohse and Spiller 1999, Swaminathan et al. 1999,
Bhatnagaretal. 2000). However, little research has addressed consumer attitude towards online promotions.
The purpose of this research paper is to assess the consumer reactions towards online promotions. We first
review background relevant to online shopping and promotion tools used by companies operating in the online environment. We next develop research questions to guide our investigations. We then report the results
of a large survey aimed to get insights into consumers experiences with on-line promotions and on how
companies can take maximum advantage of these tools.

LITERATURE REVIEW
There are a few studies in literature on online advertising and online promotions and their
implications on the future of marketing.
According to previous studies, consumers characteristics and goals have been found to influence
their behaviours such as purchasing, revisiting intentions, and attitudes toward a website (Wolfinbarger &
Gilly, 2001). Consumers personalities that lead to different shopping behaviours can be classified in two
main orientations, i.e., utilitarian and hedonic. Consumers who are utilitarian have goal-oriented shopping
behaviours. They usually shop online based on a rational necessity that is related to a specific goal (Kim &
Shim, 2002). On the other hand, consumers who are hedonists have experiential shopping behaviours. The
hedonists do not only gather information to shop online but also seek fun, fantasy, arousal, and enjoyable
experiences (Monsuweetal, 2004). In light of this, hedonic and utilitarian consumers handle and interact with
websites differently because of their different personalities and motivations. The companies that engage in
online promotions must accordingly target their promotions to both hedonic and utilitarian groups of
Researchers Alok Gupta , Bo-chiuan Su, Zhiping Walter concluded in their study that the
customers in online shopping cannot be trusted as they have a habit from switching from one site to another
for purchasing. So, it cannot be said that if a customer is buying from a site then next time for shopping
he/she will purchase from the same. Thus, customers are not loyal to a particular site. They say online
shopping has some limitations such as only those customers can shop if they have knowledge of operating
computer and can access internet properly.
Peet, J. (2000) found that online shopping offers a risk factor where the point comes of touching the
product physically. There is no doubt that the description of product is given in a properly organized form
but certain customers find it difficult to purchase until and unless they touch the product. This risk is majorly
involved in certain products such as clothes, food-products, home dcor items etc.
According to the researchers Tonita Perea y Monsuwe, Benedict G.C. Dellaert and KO de
Ruyter there are n type of customers. Some consider online shopping as a destination for purchase; on the
other hand some consider it as a source of fun and entertainment.
Those people who are serious customers say that online shopping offers them a wide range of
products and saves their time of retail shopping where they only have few choices whereas other category of
customer take online shopping just to get a online shopping experience.

Na Wang 1, 2, Dongchang Liu 1, Jun Cheng 2 (2008), there are number of factors that are responsible for
shopping from online websites. They found that some customers find online shopping as a supplement to
traditional shopping. They say that it saves them from travelling in traffic, waiting at every signal and
wander from one shop to another. They also say that they have the flexibility to shop online whenever and
wherever they want and they do not have to take out time from their working hours and go for shopping.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

1. To study the factors influencing people towards online shopping.
2. To know the trend of online shopping particularly in Indore.
3. To know why people hesitate to buy products online.
4. To study which category of people are attracted more towards online shopping

RATIONALE OF STUDY

The rapid growth in number of internet users in India provides a bright prospect for e-marketers. This rapid
growth in the number of internet users has promoted a belief in many business circles that the web represents
a huge marketing opportunity.
As now the days people have more money as they spend more time on the internet so from their busy
schedule the prefer to buy online product, as they get better offer on the various website so they prefer to
shop online rather to go for buying in the shopping mall which saves their time too.
This study will help to analyse various factors which could become an advantage to online sellers in order to
increase the market share.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research includes primary as well as secondary data. The primary data is collected through
questionnaire; Data has been collected from individuals of different age groups i.e. from students, working
professionals and Business Class people. Secondary data has been collected from Various Journals,
Newspaper and Internet.
The Study: This is an exploratory study that aims to identify the different consumer perceptions of online
promotions.
The Sample: The sampling frame will comprise of various Internet users in Indore. Data was collected from

a sample of 100 respondents preferably youngsters.

REFERENCES

1. Alok Gupta, Bo-chiuan Su, Zhiping Walter an Empirical Study of Consumer Switching from Traditional
to Electronic Channel: A Purchase Decision Process Perspective
2. Bhatnagar, A., Mishra, S. and Rao, H. R., 2000, On risk, convenience, and internet shopping behavior,
Communications of the ACM, 43, 98 105.
3. Chiu Y.B, Lin C.P and Tang L.L., 2005, Gender Differ: Assessing a Model of Online Purchase Intentions
in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Innovation & Management, International Journal of
Service Industry Management, 16,5, 416-435
4. Chu, C.W. and Lu, H.P., 2007, Factors Influencing Online Music Purchase Intention in Taiwan: An
empirical study based on the value-intention framework, Journal of Internet Research, 17, 2,139-155.
5. Jarvenpaa, S. and Todd, P.,1997, Consumer reactions to electronic shopping on the World Wide Web,
International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 1, 59 88
6. Na Wang, Dongchang Liu, Jun Cheng (2008) "the Influencing Factors of Online
Shopping, Proceedings of the 11th Joint Conference on Information Sciences (2008)
Published by Atlantis Press
7. Sapna Rakesh and Arpita Khare, "Impact of promotions and value consciousness in online shopping
behaviour in India", Journal of Database Marketing & Customer.Strategy Management (2012) 19, 311-320.
doi:10.1057/dbm.2012.30 shopping-in India- are-we-ready-for-it-.html