E-tail Evolution: Motives and Behavioral Intentions of E-shopper Segments

Abstract With the expansion of Internet penetration and consumers’ continuous efforts to discover new ways to use the Internet, marketers strive to gain a competitive advantage by understanding the factors driving consumers to shop online and identifying target consumer segments. Despite the growing interest among researchers and retail marketers, still, there is a general lack of research on, and a need to improve understanding of, the drivers of consumer e-shopping behavior and e-shopper groups for apparel products. According to McGuire’s (1974) model of motivation theory, human motives driven by unfulfilled needs lead goal oriented behavior such that people strive to achieve subjective satisfaction and gratification regardless of the type of motive. Marketing research has explored various shopping motives which mainly encompass goal-directed and experiential shopping motives. In addition to traditional shopping motives, this study considers shoppers’ beliefs about technology use as e-shoppers are both consumers and technology. Taking shopping motives and technology use-related beliefs into account simultaneously would help better understand consumers’ e-shopping motives and e-shopper segments exhibiting different apparel online shopping behaviors. In exploring these aspects, this study addresses the following research questions: (1) what are the key motives driving customers to shop for apparel products? (2) what are the unique segments of online consumers based on the shopping motives? And (3) how can different patterns of behavior be explained by different e-shopper segments? Online surveys were administered to college students at a large, midwestern university in the U.S. Using the context of browsing for/purchasing apparel products online, 298 usable responses were gathered. First, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with shopping motive items was performed to identify e-shopping motives and yielded 12 factors. The factors include six functional factors (convenience, ease of use, economic value-seeking, usefulness, security/privacy, and merchandise assortment) and six nonfunctional motives (company reputation, home shopping, informative service, company clientele, customer service, and hedonic value). Three of the functional motives relate to beliefs about technology; ease of use, usefulness and privacy/security, and one functional motive, hedonic value represents the experiential aspect of online apparel shopping. Second, in order to develop a shopper typology based on the 12 e-shopping factors identified, cluster analysis was performed. The analysis revealed five e-shopper segments: apathetic, accommodating, demanding, convenience-oriented recreational, and technology-oriented shopper segments. Last, MANOVA was conducted to examine differences across the five e-shopper clusters with respect to attitude toward and intention to perform online apparel shopping. The results indicated significant differences in e-shopping behavioral intention across the five clusters with respect to both attitude toward e-shopping and intention to shop online. This empirical examination of motives driving online shopping behaviors extends our understanding of a variety of underlying dimensions and provides new apparel shopper profiles for the Internet format. Findings that online consumers have utilitarian (functional) as well as hedonic (nonfunctional) shopping motives empirically validate the multidimensionality of shopping motives pertinent to the Internet shopping context. Given that online shopping behaviors are likely to be driven by product/service acquisition (marketing) motives and/or technology use (i.e., Internet) beliefs, investigating both simultaneously sheds light on online shopping motive literature. By taking both aspects into consideration, this study revealed three unique motives underlying Internet shopping that encompass beliefs about technology (ease of use, usefulness, and security/privacy) and one motive, hedonic pertinent to experiential features of online shopping. Findings firstly revealed the technology-oriented shopper group who is motivated to shop online due to its ease of use, usefulness, informative service, and security/privacy. The emergence of this new segment of online consumers warrants additional research. There are differences in the online shopper classifications generated in this study relative to those in prior research. Differences were also found in e-shopping behavioral responses of the various online shopper segments. Two groups, the convenience-oriented recreational shoppers and the technology-oriented shoppers showed more favorable attitudes and greater intention toward online shopping than the apathetic group. This study provides managerial implications for online apparel retailers. First, most of the five groups were motivated by security/privacy and this suggests to retailers the importance of ensuring a secure shopping environment for their customers. The convenience-oriented recreational shopper and the technology-oriented shopper, exhibiting the most favorable attitude and the highest intention to shop online, seem to be attractive target customers for online retailers. Assuring time and place convenience, courteous and informative customer service, and managing e-store sites in a way that helps shoppers perceive the stores are convenient, easy to use and useful are key tactics to attract and retain patronage of these two groups. The demanding shopper, one of the largest e-shopper segments can be attracted by emphasizing promotional offers or sales on branded products, high-quality customer services, and fun shopping experiences.