E-commerce - Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Chapter 2: Literature review Page 36
such as efficiency, personalization, socialization, the look and the feel of the
website, offering incentives such as coupons, discounts, special offers,
vouchers and gift certificates to purchase and security (Agrawal et al., 2002).
This actually remains to be demonstrated in Chapter 4.
It has been over ten years since B2C e-commerce first evolved. Experts in e­
commerce constantly strive to gain an improved insight into customers'
behaviour when using the Internet. Along with the development of e-retailing,
researchers continue to explain e-customers' behaviour from different
perspectives. According to Shergill and Chen (2003), there are general
models of buying behaviour that depict the process which customers use in
making a purchase decision. These models are very important to e-retailers
because they have the ability to explain and predict e-customers' purchase
behaviour.
According to Shergill and Chen (2003), the antecedents of Internet purchase
include many attitudinal components, e.g., attitude towards an e-retail
website, and perceived risk of Internet purchase. E-customers Intemet
shopping experience, website design and fulfilment quality are deemed by
these authors to be the major contributions of successful Internet
transactions.
Kleijnen, Ruyter and Wetzels (2001) in their pre-Internet study, investigated
why people shop, why they go to the traditional shops, and why they browse
but do not buy. This survey went beyond retail patronage and demonstrated
that people have numerous motives for shopping that are unrelated to the
actual purchasing of products. The e-customers in these authors' sample
reported that their shopping motives included:
• Carrying out expected roles
• Diversion from daily routine
• Self-gratification and response to moods