Jonathan Kadet

Multimedia & the World Wide Web
Spring 2013		 Home / Executive Summary / Introduction / Background / Hypothesis / Questions /
Method / Limitations / References / Results / External Data / Discussion / Conclusion


Hypothesis

H1: DePaul students are more likely to shop online for books instead of in actual stores.
H0: DePaul students are less likely to shop online for books instead of in actual stores.

In "On-line Shopping Behavior: Cross-Country Empirical Research" M. Adam Mahmood, Kallol Bagchi and Timothy C. Ford state that the most popular items purchased online are books, CDs, travel vacations, and computer hardware and software (Mahmood, Bagchi, Ford, 2004, p.14).

Results: Upheld
11/23 participants buy books online the most. Almost 50% of them always buy books online. 1/3 (6/18 participants) rarely buy books in the actual stores. 8/13 participants buy books online once a month. The infrequency may be because they buy clothes more often, but need to buy books online because of the schedule of classes. In our free-form questions, a few participants said that they always buy textbooks online because it is cheaper and more convenient. This hypothesis is upheld because participants showed that they buy books online. Buying used books on amazon, or renting them on Chegg, is an easy way to get the books you need for a fraction of the price. Why buy books online? Read "Why Buying Books Online is Better" by Jeremy Parkinson.

H1: More female DePaul students shop online than Male DePaul students.
H0: More male DePaul students shop online than Female DePaul students.

In "Shopping Style Segmentation of Consumers" Purushottam Papatla and Amit suggest that only 6% of men buy clothes online while 26% of women do (Papatla, Bhatnagar, 2002, p. 92).

Results: Null
8 males took our survey, and 15 females took our survey. Out of the males and females, the most common response for how often they shopped online was once a month. Only 1 male and female shopped online everyday. Our data is not sufficient enough to conclude whether our hypothesis was supported or not. Check out Men vs. Women: Online Shopping [infographic] By Diego Martinez-Moncada.

H1: DePaul students shop online for clothes more than anything else.
H0: DePaul students shop online for other kinds of items more than anything else.

In "Shopping Style Segmentation of Consumers" Purushottam Papatla and Amit Bhatnagar state that men are more likely than women to buy books online (Papatla, Bhatnagar, 2002, p. 92).

Results: Upheld
13/23 participants shop for clothing online the most more than anything else. Not 1 participant said that they rarely buy clothes in the actual store. A few participants said they shop online for clothes a few times a month contrary to only buying books once a month or never. Our free-form questions revealed that many people are turned off from buying clothes online because they want to try it on and make sure it fits correctly. Read more about "The Biggest Problem With Online Shopping: Finding Clothes That Fit" By Sarah Perez. What if one day you will be able to try on clothes online?