Online shopping behaviour of college students

Abstract

I nternet has changed the way of businesses, consumer's communication and transactions worldwide. On-line shopping is a recent phenomenon in the field of E-business and is definitely going to be the future of shopping in the world. Internet users in India have been increasing day by day; during 2014 there were about 243 million users. The main reasons for this were affordable price of smart phones and internet tariff plans. Due to these reasons people started moving online for purchase of products and services. E-commerce was growing at 38 per cent per year. The total value of E-commerce was of INR 90,000 crores during 2014 and it is predicted that it will be about INR six lakh crores in next five years. It has been reported that about 70 per cent of internet users and the online shoppers are young generation. Consumers especially youths are playing an important role in online shopping. The increasing use of internet by the younger generation in India provides enormous prospect for online retailers. Most of the companies are operating their on-line portals to sell their products/services on-line. Though online shopping is very common outside India, its growth in Indian market, which is a large and strategic consumer market, is still not in line with the global trend. If online retailers know the factors affecting indian youths buying behaviour and the associations between these factors and type of online buyers, then they can further develop their marketing strategies to convert potential customers into active ones. The present research paper makes an attempt to study the online shopping behaviour of youth and the factors that influenced the same. According to the report by Forrester Research Inc. titled global online population forecast, 2008 to 2013, the number of people having access to the internet around the world will grow more than 45 per cent to 2.2 billion users over the next five years. India will have third largest internet user with China and the US taking the first two spots, respectively. Banerjee et al., 2010 revealed that online shopping is significantly related with family income and frequency of internet usage. Internet users with high disposable monthly income are more Online shopping behaviour of college students P. BALAJI Internet users in India have been increasing day by day. In 2014 there were about 243 million internet users. The main reasons for the high usage were affordable price of smart phones and internet tariff plans. Due to these reasons people started moving online for purchase of products and services. E-commerce is growing by 38 per cent per year. The total value of E-commerce was INR 90,000 crores during 2014. It was predicted that it will be about INR six lakh crores in next five years. It has been reported that about 70 per cent of internet users and the online shoppers were youth. Hence, a study was conducted to assess the internet usage behaviour of youth and factors that influenced them to shop online. The study was carried out with a sample size of 120 students from different colleges in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. About 80 per cent of them were using smart phones and all were using internet daily. Young female students were spent more money for online shopping than young male students. Main factors that influenced them to shop online were informed choice, loyalty, competitive pricing, accessibility, convenience, security issues, knowledge and window shopping.