Introduction
The decision to either shop online or offline depends on the consumer preferences based on a variety of factors. The challenge to the online industry is to ensure that the supply chain is satisfying the demand chain, therefore, enhancing its efficiency. The amount consumers who are willing to pay for the services depend on how they become satisfied with the services that are provided for by the offline or the online industry. Since the online industry in a recent development, it has to apply new selling and branding techniques to convince consumers to buy from them. Proper considerations have to be done by the online industry to ensure that right quantities are available in stock as well as making profits from the business. In any online platform, having the needed data bank so that one can get the required services becomes an imperative step in making the stores function. Thus, the Internet World Stats is responsible for having the information of the consumers all over the world with respective shopping patterns and market preferences. It enables any online users to have their information monitored, as they shape customers based markets.
The dynamics of both online and offline buyers are evident in shopping of many commodities. The initial buying habit of laptops and personal computers used to be online, but after some time, the buyers opted to have the touch and test of the computers before purchasing. This is from what they viewed as the styling, shape and weight. The selling of online may sometimes pay an image that is illusionary. Although, for instance, the purchase of PC’s starts with online research, the online platform may not offer the ideal testing platform as wished by the buyer. The online sellers must revamp their websites so that they bring their products to life which will make consumers feel the product or purchase before having to go to the store.
Much as people believe by seeing, out rightly it is very easy for many people to go for offline shopping. This is because offline shopping is more appealing due to the attractiveness and the arrangement of a variety of goods. In this regard, the online shopping becomes a risky business to be involved in it. Therefore, there have to be super and efficient online operations provision of special services to win consumers to the online platform. The online industry thus becomes a platform to provide exceptional services and goods and make timely deliveries. While conducting online sales, the people involved in the industry must be aware of delivery fees within the state or outside the state. This factor also applies where the product bought online needs to be delivered by first being shipped to the appropriate continent. In the case of non-durable goods, proper measures have to be considered to ensure that fresh products are delivered in due course.
This paper aims to determine the considerations that consumers make to either shop online or offline. Any decision they make to make an informed choice is based on the extent to which their needs are met.
Literature Review
The need to be met when a service is provided is an outcome of the initial decision that a consumer has made. The consumers, therefore, take the time to review both advantages and disadvantages of either way of shopping (Internetworldstats.com, 2015). One has to make proper adjustments to meet the requirements that necessitate a need being met (Clitheroe, 2015). One of these adjustments is payment of a delivery fee in the case of online shoppers once the item is delivered to their doorstep. The other consideration is the urgency with which a right is required. There are also after-purchase services that may come regarding discounted prices or a free product which affects the making of a decision to do shopping (Lawton, 2007). Other factors include the lifestyle of a person and their working habits, which dictate what time one is available to make purchases. Those people who work while indoors may prefer to go for online shopping due to its convenience since they are constrained by time (Lim &Ting, 2012).
The usage of internet and its availability is a factor that allows or limits people from conducting online or offline shopping regardless of their preferences (Lin, 2007). The geographical location of consumers may allow or deter them from doing online shopping. Areas with limited internet access cannot do online shopping. Those people with the availability of internet can choose whether to shop online or not. The other limit that affects whether one will engage in online shopping is illiteracy (Wu & Wang, 2005). Those individuals that are not knowledgeable on the computer basics cannot benefit from online shopping. Same case applied to those who because of education, that is a lack of it, do not understand how to read and write. The other group that cannot benefit from online shopping is those who are visually impaired either due to age or visual disability.
A major assumption in online shopping is the fact that the world is becoming globalized, and so every person can access the internet while in their residential homes. In this regard, it is assumed that online shopping will quickly replace offline shopping (Wu & Wang, 2005). However, there are great risks involved in online shopping. Firstly, the people delivering goods and services to the doorstep are unknown to the consumer. This poses a risk to the lives of both parties should either of them have hidden motives. A sales deal can turn into a sour affair when of the parties have wrong motives to kill, kidnap or even rape. To avoid getting involved in such risky affairs, consumers prefer to do offline shopping. In other instances too, there are instances where online shoppers get a slightly different brand from what they asked for. In this case, offline shopping is preferred since one is assured of the brand that they need. Other consumers’ preference may be offline shopping regardless of the fact that they can easily access the internet (Lim &Ting, 2012).
The online industry thus has to be strategic in making a method that will convince consumers to go for online shopping. Possible methods include creating several distribution vendors near the consumer’s residence places (Lim &Ting, 2012). Details about the right and the identification details of the consumer should be provided. This will ensure the security of both parties as well as prevent loss and theft of goods by the online shoppers (Lin, 2007). There should be a platform of ensuring right signatories so that the intended parties can receive goods. The online industry also ought to make the online site attractive to the buyers. There is the need to increase the pace at which a product is delivered to the consumer. The feedback in the reviewers’ pages ought to be attended to by the online service providers to create customer satisfaction.
Participants
The survey research activity had a total of 51 participants with 31 of the being females and 20 being males. More females were ready to respond to the research question than males. Most of the respondents were middle-aged with an age range of 25-50. 40% of them were aged between 25-35 and rest 35-50. Few respondents were beyond 45 years old. Respondents included a considerable number of working class; beyond 40%, 30% students, and 30% non-working individuals. Of the non-working 30%, 10% were illiterate or less literate individuals with the rest being retirees. The survey activity was facilitated using the questionnaire as the research instrument with each of the respondents being given an opportunity to respond to the questionnaire independently (Phillips & Stawarski, 2008). In the course of answering the questions, the respondents were not allowed to consult (Myers, 2008). Independent personal opinions were highly regarded (Merriam & Merriam, 2009). The pie chart below provides a socio-economic categorization of the respondents as identified in this paragraph:
Figure1: Socio-economic Categorization of the Respondents
Source: Author
Data Collection
The researcher used qualitative research in collecting and analyzing data to answer the research question. As pointed out earlier, the main survey instrument was questionnaire with close-ended questions dominating over open-ended questions as it is deemed easier to use them to assess the opinion using them than it is when using open-ended questions (Brace, 2008). After analyzing the data, the researcher settled on the claims discussed in the next section.
Results and Discussion
Claim 1
Online shopper preference is growing at a higher rate today than offline shopper preference. Most people have higher access to the internet today than in the recent past and the need for internet connectivity both at home and at the workplaces is taking an upward trend (TrustBus et al., 2005). According to the research survey conducted, in spite of the fact that most people access the internet at school Wi-Fi and office, the number of people accessing such services at home also has a fair share (Flick, 2009). The survey results have been summarized in the chart below:
Figure2: Places to Access the Internet
Source: Author
Claim 2
Almost all, if not all, retailers should have online shopping facilities. This is because the number of individuals prioritizing online purchases over offline purchases is higher than those preferring the latter over the former. 20% of the survey respondents strongly agreed that retailers should have online shopping facilities while 58% agreed. Moreover, the percentage of individuals who asserted that they ‘very often’ and ‘often’ make online purchases were sizably higher than those who never as evidenced by the figures below:
Figure 3: Online Shopping Facilities for all Retailers
Source: Author
Figure 4: How often Customers make Online Purchases
Source: Author
What these finding means is the absorption rate of internet shopping is still growing and is a concept that is at infancy for many. People around the world are still stuck in the traditional ways of shopping despite the invention of internet as an alternative method. This opens a gap for researcher to discover whether people are apprehensive to shop online due to internet fraud, security issues or due to ignorance of advantages fronted by internet use in shopping.
In other studies, customers are prioritizing online retailers over offline retailers especially if the retailers are ready to deliver the commodity to the client’s premises (Scupola, 2013). According to Mutum & Ghazali, (2006) internet shopping is growing progressively and soon will bypass offline shopping. Findings of a study conducted by these authors indicate that about 10% of the world’s population, which translates to 627 million people, engages in online shopping at least once in year. The authors estimated that the number of online shoppers increase by 28% annually, which means that the number of online shopper is increasing by day (Mutum & Ghazali, 2006).
Claim 3
Online retailers should seek to ensure total buyer trust in an attempt to deal with customer doubts on transaction security and personal privacy. The reason behind this claim is the fact that most customers site transaction security and personal privacy as the main factors they consider when conducting online purchases. 52% of the respondents to the survey research questions agreed while 38% strongly agreed that one of the factors they consider is transactional security. Besides, 28.5% strongly agreed that personal privacy forms a key consideration when making online purchases (Dmofte, 2008).
Figure 5: Transactional Security as a Factor to Consider
Source: Author
Figure 6: Personal Privacy
Source: Author
The finding indicates that a significant number of online shoppers are apprehensive of purchasing online due to privacy breach or potential credit card fraud. Nevertheless, these findings are anecdotal and there is need for an empirical research to determine the correlation between apprehensiveness to shop online and fear for privacy breach or fraud. Other research studies have identified personal privacy and transactional security as the main factors that customers consider when making online purchases (Kuhn, 2010). The researcher, therefore, used them in the research questionnaire. A study by Dai, Forsythe & Kwon (2014) which was investigating the relationship between fraud, privacy and security perceptions, found a strong correlation between buyers’ apprehensiveness to buy online. The study found that shoppers has a negative perception regarding online perception to paranoia associated with privacy breach and credit card fraud (Dai, Forsythe &Kwon, 2014)
Conclusion
This research paper was developed in sync with a thesis statement which focused on determining those considerations which are taken into account by the consumers before they decide on their offline or online choices. The paper also ascertained the underlying correlation between the resultant buying decisions of the consumers and that of the extent to which their needs were actually satisfied. Thus, the paper primarily analyzed the online and offline buying behaviors of various consumers to affirm those specific considerations that they generally take into account before finalizing their purchases. Also, there were specific claims targeted via the research design which was entirely based on the core thesis statement of the research. This led to the consequent development of the research methodology which involved the consumer response data collection via an open-ended research questionnaire which helped in drawing the findings of this research.
The first claim aimed at analyzing the internet access point for a majority of online shoppers and came upon definite options like Home, office/workplace, school Wi-Fi, etc. The response to the major claim posed in the research came in terms of the majority of the people accessing the internet at the home and at the workplace. However, there were very few number of respondents responded saying that they had no place for accessing internet for their online purchases. This was quite contradictory to earlier research which resulted in confirming the exact reverse scenario of many people responding that they lacked access to internet.
The second claim focused on buyer’s consideration of the fact that a retailer has an online shopping facility was more preferred and whether they preferred online shopping over offline shopping. The resultant responses concluded that most of the buyers were in agreement to the fact that retailers should have an online retailing facility. Further, in terms of analyzing the consumer frequency of online shopping, the majority of responders were in favor of making online purchases under the ‘often’ and ‘very often’ frequencies. The third claim was developed to assess the buyer’s consideration of online transactional security and user-data privacy during making online purchases. The response was highly in favor of the online purchase security features where 52% responders agreed and 38% highly agreed to consider the transactional security. Another 28.5% buyers were in favor of the personal privacy to be the prime consideration in their online purchase decisions.
The implications of the research findings are extremely clear in terms of the considerations which the buyers value while deciding the online/offline purchase decisions. First of all, ease of internet access makes it easier for the buyers to engage in online buying activities. This transition in access of internet puts a legitimate cause behind the growing online shopping tendencies in the buyers nowadays, specifically, when compared that of earlier days when offline shopping was relatively preferred more. Further, buyers prefer those retailers who tend to provide an online retail facility, so this can be a route for retailers to maximize their sales by reaching a relatively larger number of consumers. Finally, online buyers generally prefer the factors of online security in transactions and more privacy of their personal data in the online retailing websites. So, these features should be well marketed and informed to the consumers to make the online retailing more reliable for them.
Coming to the conclusion, the modern day consumer is more inclined towards a buying medium like the internet because it is easily accessible at home, workplace, etc. Further, he/she prefers for using an online retail facility than an offline retail point-of-purchase because of the relative ease to buy online. Also, a retailer should always focus on providing an online retail facility as this can be the best mode of gaining a fair access to a larger segment of online shoppers. Finally, the research has concluded with the fact that the future of retailing is in e-tailing (online shopping) where a reliable retailer will be defined on the basis of the security and privacy features provided to the buyers.
References
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