The ever increasing use of the internet and progress made on information technology have altered the ways goods are bought and trade on the internet, this leads to a high numbers of people shopping on line. Nevertheless, there have been different issues as to how purchased have been made for online shoppers. This is because of different customer characteristics which influenced their decisions and also the products available for purchase.
As a result we need to understand who the consumers are the motivation for shopping online and their reason for using and avoiding the internet as a distribution outlet is a major issue for electronic commerce watchers and consumer truth-seeker. Also to be considered is how firms branding strategy influenced the consumers’ behaviour.
Information technology plays a leading role in various business organisations and on daily basis activities of individual. The internet has altered the way people correspond, labour and carry out commercial activities. It has also affected the way we communicate and do things that are traditional done in a manual way. As Noor and Hamid (2008) argued the appearance of internet expertise especially the World Wide Web, as a means of exchange in commerce provides new opportunities for organisation to accept the internet as their marketing outlet (International Journal of Communications).
Services on the internet continue to grow especially in business to end user and from business to industry environments. For organisation, the most important aspect of the internet is the contribution in the area of broadcasting information, promoting customer value, the improvement of customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty which at the end of the day leads to organisation benefit and profitability. From the customer standpoint internet shopping has reduce the cost of searching, expand the choice of vendors, reduce the cost of product/service rendered and increased convenience thus allowing control over products and services offered.
(International Journal of Communication). In a recent literature about the altitude of students from the University of Greek (2010) Magee (2003) argued that the increase in the numbers of people that shop online has outgrown the numbers of internet users. These indicate people are getting more comfortable shopping online than going to the shopping mall or market places. She further argued that, not only do the numbers of people shopping online grow but the volume of purchases has increase tremendously. However, it is not only the numbers of shoppers that have grown but also is the number of purchases made.
(Monsuwe et al, 2004). The number of people that have access to the internet is one of the most important factors that determine the usage of online shoppers. (Jayewardene & Foley, 2000). As cited in Bagdoniene and Zemblyte (2009) about a quarter of the world uses the internet. The number is suggested would exceed 1. 9billion users in 2012 which would be about 30% of the world population. (Economics and Management: 2009. 14). According to the office of national statistics in the UK (2009) 51. 9 % of orders were placed on the internet at a value of ? 466. 3bn, which was an increase compared to the value in 2008 which stood at 348. 9bn.
In 2009 the numbers of businesses having internet was 91. 1% while the usage to interact with the public grow also at 66. 7%. ONS figures also showed that the value of internet retail sales in Great Britain rose from an average weekly value of ? 169. 3m in November 2006 to ? 446. 1m in July 2010. By July 2010, internet sales made up 8% of the country’s total retail sales. Between 2006 and 2009, the proportion of UK online shoppers grew from 45% to 66% of the adult population. The largest change over the period was in France, where 22% of adults shopped online in 2006 and 45% did so in 2009.
In 2010 in the UK there were 19. 2m household with internet access which is about 73% this was an increased compared with the figures of 2006 where 57% had access. In 2009, 69% of UK households had broadband access. The highest proportion of broadband-connected households in Europe was in Sweden (79%), followed by the Netherlands (77%) and Denmark (76%). In a survey performed by ONS (2009) most of those UK households without access are39% and in their response they believe they do not need access to the internet. While 21% cited that they lack the required skills in the household and 20% said the internet is of no use to them.
And when the consumer where asked what is the purpose of using the internet. In 2009, 30% said each one of their household use the internet for accessing social network site and also for online shopping, and 20% said they had used a mobile phone to access the internet. Some 97% of internet users aged 16-24 had used the internet in the previous three months – and were most likely to use it every day or almost every day (82%). Of those aged 65 and over, 32% used it every day or almost every day, and 59% used it every day or almost every day (ONS website, 2010).
