Jonathan KadetMultimedia & the World Wide WebSpring 2013 |
Home / Executive Summary / Introduction / Background / Hypothesis / Questions / Method / Limitations / References / Results / External Data / Discussion / Conclusion |
| The internet is an integral part of many of our lives. It is virtually impossible to go through the day without being connected. In "Consumer Decision Making in Online Shopping Environments: The Effects of Interactive Decision Aids" Gerald Haubl and Valerie Trifts say that the World Wide Web (WWW) has been growing rapidly due to numerous companies using it to sell products, and the adoption for other purposes such as online shopping (Trifts, p.5, 2000). Whether we agree with the importance of technology, we are immersed into it. Online shopping has become an epidemic especially with young people. Online shopping is different because of the ease of use, high level of interactivity and customization. Shopping in an actual store provides a different environment due to the ability to observe quality and features, receive real time feedback, and get quicker responses. They further that the environment, whether online or in store, affect how consumers interact with them (Trifts, p.5, 2000). Businesses have caught on to the trend and found that having an online e-commerce site can be beneficial. Sometimes e-commerce sites alone do very well and do not need an actual store. An easy user interface can make all the difference. Studying consumer online shopping behavior will lead to an appropriate business model. We not only want to find out who shops online, but why and how often. Ward A. Hanson and Daniel S. Putler in "Hits and Misses: Herd Behavior and Online Product Popularity " say that how consumers interact with online shopping environments affects the designers, marketers, investors, and even the consumers themselves. Furthermore, they conducted a study to see how people interact with a manipulated online environment. They found that listing downloads by upload date gave only the newest ones the most uploads. They also found that showing songs with more total downloads than they actually had caused the download count to increase as well (Hanson & Putler , 1996). It is fair to assume that when items seem popular, they become in higher demand. We are conducting our study for an insight into consumer online shopping behavior. |