| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 商學研究所 === 89 === The sales of consumer goods on the Internet grow from $7.8 billion in 1998 to an estimated $108 billion in 2003 (Forrester Research, Nov. 1998). Despite the importance of B2C, little has been known about the factors in determining consumer purchasing behavior online. To effectively choose its target market, it is important for an online marketer to understand the difference between consumers who have ever purchased products on the Internet and those who have never purchased on the Internet in terms of their behavior, their attitudes towards the Internet channel, and the benefits they seek in selecting distribution channels. In this paper, using a survey data of students from eight colleges, we empirically discriminate consumers who have ever purchased books on the Internet from those who have never purchased books on the Internet.
From 1151 valid observations, we find that respondents who have ever purchased books on the Internet account for only 5% of the whole sample. Among others, the major findings are as follows:
1. Compared with offline purchasers, respondents who have experiences of purchasing books on the Internet tend to have higher incomes and higher Internet usages, to value shopping convenience versus leafing through books. Interestingly, they have higher demands for books than consumers who have never purchased books on the Internet.
2. There are 55% of all respondents who never visit the websites of on-line bookstores and 40% of all respondents who have visited the websites of but never buy books through on-line bookstores. Consumers in the latter group do not think that on-line bookstores are not more convenient and the prices are cheaper than traditional bookstores. Moreover, they are concerned about transaction security on the Internet and prefer to review the contents of books before purchasing.
3. Among respondents who have experiences of buying books online, 12.3% of them are not willing to do so again. The major reasons for that are long delivery time and complicated purchasing process associated with shopping books online. Interestingly, compared with actual on-line shoppers, potential on-line bookstores shoppers are found to have more favorable attitudes toward on-line bookstores in terms of promotion activities and delivery service.
4. On-line bookstores shoppers, though accounting for only 5% of the whole sample, tend to be heavy users. Our conjecture is that since on-line bookstore shoppers have higher disposable income, they are less risk averse and thus satisfy part of their demands through the Internet as a new distribution channel. Basically, it is trial-oriented and, as mentioned earlier, the associated shopping experiences would change consumers’ intentions of repeat purchases.
Finally, we discuss marketing strategies for on-line bookstores.
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