Activities, Interests, And Opinions Of Online Shoppers And Non-Shoppers

Abstract

Internet shopping represents the launch of a new industry with corresponding levels of praise and concern. It is both the “golden child” for innovative net users, and the “evil empire” for anxious brick-and-mortar retailers. Online purchasing is growing at a dramatic rate yet the expectation for an explosion of Internet shopping has not occurred; its market share is small, at just under two percent of total U.S. retail spending.

 This study has been designed to explore why online shopping is growing so fast among some households, and so slowly among others. It focuses on characterizing the fundamental motivators or satisfiers of e-retail shopping, along with its dis-satisfiers and de-motivators. And it examines lifestyles of both Web shoppers and non-shoppers to find that these are not homogeneous groups at all, but discrete market segments, each seeking distinctive benefits from the Internet. 

It examines the lifestyle characteristics of online households. By means of a U.S. national probability sample of online heads-of-households, this descriptive research provides a lifestyle perspective of who is using the Internet to shop, who does not shop, and why. It is hypothesized and shown that, compared with online non-shoppers, online shoppers are younger, wealthier, have higher computer literacy, spend more time on their computer, spend more time on the Internet, and find online shopping to be easier and more entertaining. 

It is further reported that shoppers and non-shoppers are involved in different online activities, and have different attitudes and opinions toward the Internet and online use.  Each group is profiled and marketing implications are discussed.