Factors Influencing Online Purchase Behavior:An Instrument Development and Empirical Investigation

Nowadays, consumers are moving from the traditional channel to the electronic channel for purchasing products. The lack of physical appearances or face to face contact between buyers and sellers makes business transactions difficult to accomplish. This concern gives a reason for e-vendors to trade on communication with buyers and attract potential customers through their websites (Li and Yeh, 2010). Purpose - The question in which (until now) researchers trying to answer is how to “convert” web surfers to web customers (Schlosser et al., 2006); as consumers have several online stores to choose from when s/he wants to purchase product via online. In the sense of that, e-vendors must experience how to gain customers’ awareness. Due to a choice of situations which customers’ have, we are curious on investigating the determinants factors which influence the online purchase behavior of a user. The purpose of this research is to develop and validate a theoretical model concerning the characteristics of a web shop which determine the online purchase behavior of users. Design/methodology/approach - Choi et al. (2006) proposed two rational bases for web design in order to gain customers’ awareness. First, a commercial web shop needs to be built in order to enhance customers’ experiences concern the lacking products (Jahng et al., 2000 cited in Choi et al., 2006, p. 93). Second, the absence of some properties of offline stores (e.i. sensory appeal), but posses some others (e.i. flexibility across time and space). In particular, we shall employ the field experimental research design. Utilizing the Popper’s (1992) falsifiability, we divide our research approach into four phases: testing internal consistency, distinguishing between the logics, comparing the theory, and empirical testing. Building the item measurements, we start by employing the sorting exercises. Sorting exercise aims to assure that the item measurements are measuring the right constructs. This also aims measuring the content validity and construct items validity through the fit placement test ratio. In addition, the research is executed in an experimental research design. Employing workshop (face to face) and online questionnaire, we gathered 122 respondents. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is applied to test the Ogenio’s (2009) proposed framework. To show the instrument validity, an encompassing methodology consisting of conceptual validations, pre-test and pilot test are used. Findings - The first important conclusion is that our finding supports Ogenio’s (2009) framework with some specific additional characteristics. The determine characteristics are statistically supported yielding from (p<.1 and p<.01). These characteristics can be used by e-vendors or practitioners to understand the customer’s decision dynamic, and begin to build a web shop which taking into account consumers’ preferences on a web shop’s characteristics. Thereby increasing the web shop’s likelihood, customers will do purchase on an online store. Second, this research gives novelty on the determinant of the online purchase behavior of a user as most of the researches established are investigating the perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived risk, etc and not investigating the very specific web shop’s characteristics. Third, we build and test the measurements creation for the online purchase determinant. The measurement creation or processes included surveying the established instruments, selecting the appropriate items, creating new items as necessary, and then test an extensive scale development process. It is believed that the method gain appropriate degree of confidence with 88% placement fit ratio which beneficial for the Information System and E-commerce literature.