A Study on Factors Influencing Consumers’ Behaviours on Purchasing Clothes online

A Study on Factors Influencing Consumers’ Behaviours on Purchasing Clothes Online

1.0 Introduction

Online shopping is process of purchasing clothes and services from the people who sell in the Internet. The customers can shop online comfortably from anywhere like home or other places as long as they have computer to access (Ling, 2012). Online shopping or also known as electronic commerce has become one of the essentials characteristics in the Internet era. It has become very popular among the Internet activities such as social network, web browsing and others. Most of the people who actually browse through the online store in social network media such as Instagram and Facebook and the online store’s website to check on the clothes and services provided (Zhang, 2002). As the clothes market entry barrier in the Internet is very low, the market is very competitive for every competitor selling clothes online. However, these attract customers more as the customers are able to find the comparison among the competitors in terms of price, clothes quality and services. Amazon and eBay are the monster online stores which are very successful in the electronic commerce.

Online shopping behaviour discusses about the purchasing clothes or services process in the Internet. This process has five steps to the people who are related with traditional shopping behaviour (Liang.T., 2000). In the usual process, when potential customers identify the need for certain clothes or services, they tend to browse Internet and search for its information. Nevertheless, instead of searching vigorously, there are times the potential customers are attracted by the information pertaining clothes or services which they needed. After that, the customers evaluate for alternate choices and choose the one which met their conditions. Lastly, a transaction will be done and post sales services will be given after that. Online shopping behaviour discusses about psychological state of the customers in making transaction online (Zhang, 2002).

1.1 Research Objectives

1.11 Customer’s Problems and Expectations

The research objectives refer to the purpose for this whole research. Firstly, problem should be identified in the first place. The reason of choosing this topic is to find out the factors influencing the consumers’ behaviour on purchasing clothes online. As there are people who still do not prefer shop online due to certain circumstances and still believes on traditional shopping which is go to the retail store and shop. Moreover, the number of online shop has tremendously increasing since the introductions of new social networks such as Facebook and Instagram to promote and create more awareness of the online shops. Thus, due to high number of competition online, the price would be cheaper as the online consumer able to compare the prices from the competitor conveniently at home by just sitting in front of the computer.

Certain online seller would tend to sell cheaper than the retail store because of lesser intermediaries. There are some businesses have a lot of intermediaries which causes the cost of the clothes increases. However, cheap prices do not guarantee the quality of the clothes and the credibility of the online seller. Consequently, the online consumer may have no confidence in purchasing online from certain online seller except the branded ones. Online consumers tend to have more confidence on branded clothes as they are aware of the clothes and know the clothes information more or less. Thus, they believe the branded stores are more credible. Moreover, there are certain online stores which do not provide free delivery and it is not included together with the clothes which is bought by the online consumer. Therefore, if the price of the clothes includes the delivery charges may incur much higher rather than buying from the retail store.

Not only that, testimonials or customer reviews from the previous buyers are important as well as it play an important role to convince the potential buyers to make transaction from the particular online store. Else, there would be a doubt on the online store credibility. Certain people often ask for a review or opinion from the public via forum such as forum.lowyat.net in order to prevent risk of making bad purchase.

Moreover, every online store should have the three-click rule which means a consumer should able to find information that he or she wants by just three mouse clicks. Thus, the proper layout and ease of use of an online store website should good enough for the consumer to search information easily. As consumers are unable to touch or try the clothes personally due to store is online. Therefore, angle of the pictures in the website are plays an important role as well for the consumer to purchase the clothes. The pictures of the model who wear the clothes shall be taken in different angle so that the consumer able to identify or imagine how would they look in that particular angle. It does not make sense that a model would just wear just one clothes such as skirt. They would definitely wear more clothes such as shoes, hat, bag or coat to match the clothes they are currently wearing.  Thus, it automatically promotes a few more types of clothes in just one picture.

Nevertheless, customer service is still one of the most main factors influence consumer to purchase. The attitude and efficiency of the online store would definitely give an impact to it such as politeness, professionalism, quick response to the customer’s feedback or comment. After transaction, post-sales service could be influence customer to purchase as well as not all products all 100 percent perfect and there might be some defects. So, the policy of exchange or refund for the products may influence the purchasing behaviour.  

2.0 Literature Review

2.1 Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

Davis is the one who introduced TAM in 1986 which is based on Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). Then, it was further completed by Davis, Bagozzi and Warshaw in 1989 (Azjen, 1980). In TRA, behavioural purpose that may bring to actual behaviour involves the attitude towards behaviour and subjective standard. In the beginning, TAM is not so general compared to TRA as TAM focuses on causal linkages of two key beliefs which are from perceived usefulness to perceived ease of use. The belief of using a certain application system that will increase the performance is called perceived usefulness. The definition of perceived ease of use is a certain application system which is effort free. These two important beliefs in TAM are the primary relevance to the computers acceptance behaviours. External variables such as characteristics of the system, development process and training can be the effects on the attitude in using, behavioural intention to use and actual system use are facilitated by the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use affects the attitude towards using it. It resulted in behavioural intention to use then followed by actual system use. The major factor of behavioural intention to use is usefulness which leads to actual system use. Indirect effect from perceived ease of use can be used on behaviour from its usefulness. Practical implications of TAM suggested that the new system acceptances by users are foreseeable by escalate the systems acceptability to achieve the enhancement of the business impacts following with large amount of investment in terms of time and money in presenting -new information technologies.  It is important to have the acceptance of the use improved due to the key of barrier to use acceptance is not enough in terms of user friendliness  in the existing systems. In the meantime, it also adds the usability-increased user interfaces which are a requirement to get an accomplishment (Nickerson, 1981). Perceived usefulness is more essential than perceived ease of use as the users will bear the difficulty in the interface. It is because the users would like to use the functions in it. Nonetheless, there will be less tolerance for a system perceived if it is not useful for the users.