86 Volume 10, Number 1, 2007
© Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI: 10.1089/cpb.2006.9988
Gender and Internet Consumers’ Decision-Making
CHYAN YANG, Ph.D. and CHIA-CHUN WU, Ph.D.ABSTRACT
The purpose of this research is to provide managers of shopping websites information regarding consumer purchasing decisions based on the Consumer Styles Inventory (CSI). According to the CSI, one can capture what decision-making styles online shoppers use. Fur-thermore, this research also discusses the gender differences among online shoppers. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to understand the decision-making styles and dis-criminant analysis was used to distinguish the differences between female and male shop-pers. The result shows that there are differences in purchasing decisions between online female and male Internet users.
INTRODUCTION
A
CCORDING TO A SURVEYconducted by a Taiwanese government agency, Institute for Information Industry (III), there were 9.05 millions Internet users with active access accounts in Taiwan in September 2004.1Another investigation conductedby the Taiwan Network Information Centre (TWNIC) found that Taiwan’s Internet users above 12 years old had reached 12.74 millions (more than 60% of the age group) in July 2004.2Although the
population of Taiwan’s Internet users are 4.3% of the Asia region (the Asia region Internet users are 32.6% of the whole world), the Internet penetration of Taiwan is 50.9%, which ranks fifth.3The
impor-tance of the Taiwan’s Internet users should not be ignored.
Increased time pressure on both genders, espe-cially on women, has been cited as one of the prin-cipal advantages of catalog and online shopping. The stereotype of an Internet shopper as a youngish, well-educated man4 has been broken
gradually. Women were significantly less likely than men to use the Internet at all in the mid-1990s, but that gap had disappeared by 2000. Female In-ternet users were significantly increased since 1992.5–7
As reported by Nielsen/NetRatings, there are 35 millions of female Internet users in Europe, which is almost 42% of European Internet users. Likewise, other Western countries exhibit about the same level of female users.8The same phenomenon
of female users being significantly increased can also be found in Asia-Pacific region.9Therefore, this
study pays more attention to the gender differences. Researchers of online consumer behavior are in-terested in knowing the motivation of consumers. Therefore, this research employs exploratory factor analysis to find consumers’ decision-making styles using the Consumer Style Inventory (CSI) proposed by Sproles10and Sproles and Kendall.11
Literature review
Decision-making styles. Decision-making style of a consumer is defined as a mental orientation characterizing a consumer’s approach to making choices. It has cognitive and affective characteris-tics.11 Extant research in this field has identified
three approaches to characterizing consumer styles: (1) the Consumer Typology Approach; (2) the Psychographics/Lifestyles Approach; and (3) the Consumer Characteristics Approach. The Con-sumer Characteristics Approach is one of the most Institute of Business and Management, National Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan.
promising as it deals with the mental orientation of consumers in making decisions.12 This approach
is based on Sproles’s study, which identified 50 items related to this mental orientation.10
After-ward, Sproles and Kendall reworked this inven-tory and developed a more parsimonious scale with 40 items; these items were named the “Consumer Style Inventory” (CSI). Many researchers cited this research when discussing consumers’ decision-making styles.13–20 Several of these studies found
that female and male have different decision-making styles.17–19
Gender differences in the Internet. Gender
differ-ences in adopting the Internet may exist because of the characters of women and men such as socioeco-nomic status, which effects computer and Internet access and use.5,21–24In the past, women resisted the
Internet perhaps because much of its content was directed at attracting and entertaining men. More men than women had web pages, and read and posted to newsgroups more frequently.25A growing
number of women are getting online and are at-tracted to online books, medical information, cook-ing ideas, chattcook-ing, and somethcook-ing interestcook-ing.26A
typical website for women is iVillage whereas a typical one for men is AskMen.27 Therefore, there
must be some differences while male and female online shoppers make decisions.
METHODS
Instrument and data collection
Translation and slight changes such as adding the phrase “online shopping” are used to prepare the 40-item CSI scale for the investigation. The 40-item CSI is a five-point scale from strongly dis-agree to strongly dis-agree are shown as Table 1. This study uses the Internet questionnaire and the ad-dress of the questionnaire is posted on BBS and search engine such as Yahoo. Javascript program-ming was applied to it to check for missing re-sponses. Moreover, letters of invitation were also sent by e-mail to ask for participation. All the par-ticipants were required to have experiences of shopping online. The total sample was 472, which consisted of 240 females and 232 males. The age of samples is about 20–30 years old, and education of them is almost above college. Demographics of online consumers are similar to the innovator and/or early adopter in product diffusion theory. They tend to be younger and with above average education.28
Statistical analysis
For the sake of capturing online shoppers’ decision-making styles, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is employed. Exploratory factor analysis is used because results of past research showed that serious cross-loading existed.16Additionally, we have doubts
whether the gender differences cause different decision-making styles.
The method we adopt to recognize gender differ-ences is discriminant analysis. EFA and discrimi-nant analysis are executed by SAS 8.2.
RESULTS
Reliability and validity
In social science research, one of the most widely-used indices of internal consistent reliabil-ity is Cronbach .29 Reliability coefficient of the
constructs in this research are all more than 0.730
(Table 2), so the questionnaire we use has internal consistent reliability. Besides internal consistent re-liability, we should consider the validity of the questionnaire. The questionnaire has content valid-ity because we adopt from CSI which was sug-gested by Sproles and Sproles and Kendall.10,11
Results of exploratory factor analysis
EFA is performed to categorize online shoppers’ decision-making styles. Consistent with Sproles and Kendall, principal components analysis with varimax rotation is used. Because principal compo-nents analysis does not produce a single solution but leaves the decision about the right number of factors largely to researchers, we choose eigen-value-one as criterion to decide the number of fac-tors.31Finally, six factors were classified. The results
of EFA and the characteristics of each decision-making style are shown in Table 2.
• Factor 1: Perfectionism consciousness. Internet shoppers value the quality of products. When it comes to purchasing products, they try to get the very best or perfect choice. In general, they usu-ally try to buy the best overall quality.
• Factor 2: Brand consciousness. Internet shoppers value the brand of products. The well-known na-tional brands are best for them to choose, and they usually think the more expensive brands are their best choice.
• Factor 3: Novel-fashion consciousness. Internet shoppers who are early adopters like to buy the fashionable and novel goods. They keep their
TABLE1. FORTY-ITEMCONSUMERSTYLESINVENTORYSCALE(MODIFIED) 1. Getting very good quality is very important to me.
2. When it comes to purchasing products, I try to get the very best or perfect choice. 3. In general, I usually try to buy the best overall quality.
4. I make special effort to choose the best quality products. 5. I really don’t give my purchases much thought or care.
6. My standards and expectations for products I buy are very high.
7. I shop quickly, buying the first product or brand I find that seems good enough. 8. A product doesn’t have to be perfect, or the best, to satisfy me.
9. The well-known national brands are best for me. 10. The more expensive brands are usually my choices. 11. The higher the price of a product, the better its quality. 12. Nice online stores offer me the best products.
13. I prefer buying the best-selling brands.
14. The most advertised brands are usually very good choices. 15. I usually have one or more outfits of the very newest style. 16. I keep my wardrobe up-to-date with the changing fashions. 17. Fashionable, attractive styling is very important to me.
18. To get variety, I shop different stores and choose different brands. 19. It’s fun to buy something new and exciting.
20. Online shopping is not a pleasant activity to me.
21. Going online shopping is one of the enjoyable activities of my lifestyle. 22. Shopping the online stores wastes my time.
23. I enjoy online shopping just for the fun of it. 24. I make my online shopping trips fast. 25. I buy as much as possible at sale prices.
26. The lower price products are usually my choice. 27. I look carefully to find the best value for the money. 28. I should plan my shopping more carefully than I do. 29. I am impulsive when shopping.
30. Often I make careless purchases I later wish I had not. 31. I take the time to shop carefully for best buys.
32. I carefully watch how much I spend.
33. There are so many brands to choose from that I feel confused. 34. Sometimes it’s hard to choose which online stores to shop.
35. The more I learn about products, the harder it seems to choose the best. 36. All the information I get on different products confuses me.
37. I have favorite brands I buy over and over.
38. Once I find a product or brands I like, I stick with it. 39. I go on the same online stores each time I shop. 40. I change brands I buy regularly.
wardrobe up-to-date with the changing fashions. Fashionable and attractive styling is very impor-tant to them.
• Factor 4: Confused by overchoice. Internet shoppers are worry about much information about prod-ucts. It means that all the information they get on different products confuses them. Too much in-formation will distract them from right purchase decisions. The more they learn about products, the harder it seems to choose the best.
• Factor 5: Brand-loyal consciousness. Internet shop-pers are brand loyal, and once they have favorite
brands they will buy over and over and stick with it.
• Factor 6: Impulsiveness. Internet shoppers are im-pulsive when buying, regret this imim-pulsive shopping behavior, and feel they should plan more carefully before purchasing online than ac-tually they do.
Results of discriminant analysis
Before discriminant analysis, we should test if the means have significant differences between the two
TABLE2. TAIWANONLINESHOPPERS’ STYLECHARACTERISTICS: SIX-FACTORMODEL
Factor
Factor Items loadings Cronbach
Factor 1 1. Getting very good quality is 0.64 0.83
(perfectionism ) very important to me.
2. When it comes to purchasing 0.77 products, I try to get the very
best or perfect choice.
3. In general, I usually try to buy 0.80 the best overall quality.
4. I make special effort to choose 0.75 the very best quality products.
6. My standards and expectations 0.50 for products I buy are very high.
Factor 2 9. The well-known national brands 0.63 0.74
(brand) are best for me.
10. The more expensive brands are 0.70 usually my choice.
11. The higher the price of a product, 0.56 the better its quality.
13. I prefer buying the best-selling 0.40 brands.
15. I usually have one or more 0.46 outfits of the very newest style.
Factor 3 16. I keep my wardrobe up-to-date 0.70 0.79
(novel-fashion) with the changing fashions.
17. Fashionable, attractive styling is 0.72 very important to me.
18. To get variety, I shop different 0.61 stores and choose different
brands.
19. It’s fun to buy something new 0.47 and exciting.
Factor 4 33. There are so many brands to 0.54 0.71
(confused) choose from that I feel confused.
34. Sometimes it’s hard to choose 0.48 which stores to shop.
35. The more I learn about products, 0.70 the harder it seems to choose
to best.
36. All the information I get on 0.67 different products confuses me.
Factor 5 37. I have favourite brands I buy 0.67 0.76
(brand-loyal) over and over.
38. Once I find a product or 0.69 brands I like, I stick with it.
Factor 6 29. I am impulsive when shopping. 0.52 0.74
(impulsiveness) 30. Often I make careless purchases 0.52 I later wish I had not.
populations (females and males) on six factors by one-way MANOVA firstly. The results show that six factors’ mean have significant differences between two populations (Wilks’ 0.92, F 6.38, p 0.0001). Secondly, we choose the factors by stepwise discriminant analysis that could obviously discrimi-nate difference between females and males. The re-sults indicate that only two factors, Factor 2 and Factor 3, could differentiate females from males sig-nificantly. Finally, we use Factor 2 (Brand conscious-ness) and Factor 3 (Novel-fashion consciousconscious-ness) to implement discriminant analysis. Because of two populations, there is only one discriminate function (L 0.29F2 0.33F3), and this function can be employed to classify an unknown observation by discriminate score. The total classification error rate is 0.38. This error rate means that we could classify correctly by this discriminant function with 62% correct rate. Differences between females and males’ decision-making styles indeed exist, especially in Brand and Novel-fashion consciousness decision-making styles. Figure 1 shows the distribution of two populations by box-and-whisker plot.
DISCUSSION
According to the CSI, online shoppers can be cate-gorized into six main decision-making styles: perfec-tionism consciousness, novel-fashion consciousness, confused by overchoice, brand consciousness, brand-loyal consciousness, and impulsiveness. Two categories in the work of Sproles and Kendal disappeared in our study: recreational and price-conscious consumers. This is because online shop-pers tend to be programmed problem-solvers while making purchase decisions. When people adopt on-line shopping, they may have already thought it through carefully and get used to shopping through Internet. Shopping online is not thought of as a recreational activity. Besides, consumers may be willing to pay more for online shopping because of the convenience and timelessness of the Internet. Convenience thus offsets the price consciousness. When we compare the findings of this research with two non-online investigations on Chinese con-sumers,14,16we found significant differences.
Conse-quently, consumers in cyberspace and non-online environment act differently to some degrees. Further researchers can use the six online shoppers’ deci-sion-making styles as segmentation variables to cap-ture profiles of online shoppers.
Additionally, the gender differences among on-line shoppers indeed exist. The result shows that the differences rest with brand and novel-fashion consciousness. A female Internet consumer’s decision-making is dominated by novel-fashion and a male Internet shopper’s decision-making is dominated by brand. Managers of Internet shop-ping websites can focus on novel-fashion and brand issues for females and males, which may help managers to design a more suitable homepage and marketing mix.
Furthermore, cross-cultural issues of the Internet need to be mentioned. Because of the boundless-ness of cyberspace, online consumers can order train or fight tickets, and print those “tickets” with-out mailing across two or more countries. If marketers want to be winners in the Internet mar-keting, they must create the marmar-keting, mix that suits online consumer’s values.
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Address reprint requests to:
Dr. Chyan Yang Institute of Business and Management National Chiao Tung University No. 118, Sec. 1, Jhongsiao W. Rd. Taipei City 100, Taiwan (R.O.C.) E-mail:nsc.professor.yang@gmail.com
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