exploring the difficulties of internet shopping behavior between the elderly and young consumers

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Exploring the difficulties of Internet shoppingbehavior between the elderly and young consumersHui-Ming Kuo a , Hwai-Hui Fu b & Chih-Hung Hsu ca Department of Logistics Management , Shu-Te University , 59, Hun Shan Road, YenChau, Kaohsiung Country , 82445 , Taiwan R.O.C.b Department of Business Administration , Shu-Te University , 59, Hun Shan Road, YenChau, Kaohsiung Country , 82445 , Taiwan R.O.C.c Department of Industrial Engineering and Management , Hsiuping Institute ofTechnology , 11, Gungye Rd, Dali , Taichung County , 41249 , Taiwan R.O.C.Published online: 18 Jun 2013.

To cite this article: Hui-Ming Kuo , Hwai-Hui Fu & Chih-Hung Hsu (2009) Exploring the difficulties of Internet shoppingbehavior between the elderly and young consumers, Journal of Information and Optimization Sciences, 30:3, 447-462,DOI: 10.1080/02522667.2009.10699889

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Exploring the difficulties of Internet shopping behavior betweenthe elderly and young consumers2

Hui-Ming Kuo ∗

Department of Logistics Management4

Shu-Te University59, Hun Shan Road, Yen Chau6

Kaohsiung Country, 82445Taiwan, R.O.C.8

Hwai-Hui FuDepartment of Business Administration10

Shu-Te University59, Hun Shan Road, Yen Chau12

Kaohsiung Country, 82445Taiwan, R.O.C.14

Chih-Hung HsuDepartment of Industrial Engineering and Management16

Hsiuping Institute of Technology11, Gungye Rd., Dali18

Taichung County, 41249Taiwan, R.O.C.20

Abstract

With the rapid development and convenience of the Internet, the Internet shopping22

now is an important purchasing way for young customers as well as the elderly. Thisinvestigation proposes a conceptual framework “Internet consumer behavior evaluating (ICBE)24

procedure” using online observation and structured interview technology. These shoppingdifficulties were identified in correspondence to the steps of ICBE procedure. The results26

of this study can provide some suggestions for website designers and Internet stores toovercome the consumer’s Internet shopping barrier apd to attract, to retain more elderly28

and young customers enjoying Internet shopping. Understanding these differences betweenthem is important for the Internet stores to attract the elderly and young customers by using30

different marketing strategy and to increase the probability of Internet shopping success.

Keywords and phrases : Internet shopping, consumer behavior, shopping difficulties.32

∗E-mail: [email protected]——————————–Journal of Information & Optimization SciencesVol. 30 (2009), No. 3, pp. 447–462c© Taru Publications

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448 H. M. KUO, H. H. FU AND C. H. HSU

1. Introduction

The Internet has rapidly become an important and indispensable2

tool in our society. Nowadays, many people use the Internet daily forwork, study or private purposes [11]. Searching for product information or4

buying goods online have also become popular activities [9, 11]. With therapid development and convenience of the Internet, the Internet shopping6

aspects of the Internet remain important to business practitioners [7].Internet retail sales have continued to show strong growth and are8

becoming a significant factors in the overall retail market. In 2005, Internetshopping accounted for approximately 3.8% of the total retail expenditure10

in Germany, 3.1% in the UK, 2.8% in the Netherlands, and 2.3% in the US.Compared with 2004, Internet shopping increased by 12% in Germany,12

29% in the UK, 32% in the Netherlands, and 25% in the US [3]. There alsohas been a rapid growth in Taiwan. Compared from 2000 to 2004, Internet14

shopping increased by 76% in Taiwan [5].With the help of medicine, people can live longer. These make the16

ratio of elder people increasingly. Internet shopping may become animportant purchasing way for the elderly customers especially for the18

people with disabilities. Investigation is a good illustration of the clue.A survey conducted by the website of Yam.com in Taiwan showed that,20

compared with 2002, the ratio of elderly consumers increased 5% in2003. Compared with 2003, the Internet consumers that age more than 5022

increased by 150% [13]. For the reason of convenience, the advantages andpotential of Internet shopping for the elderly should be doubtless.24

However, many elderly and young consumers haven’t yet tried ordo not enjoy shopping on the web, which may be caused by the very26

different and complicated shopping processes and the inappropriate userinterface designs that confusing, frustrating and discouraging them. It was28

also found that elderly and young consumers encounter many differentdifficulties due to most of the websites are designed from the seller’s30

viewpoint, not from the buyer’s viewpoint [5]. Understanding thesedifferences between them is important for the Internet stores to attract the32

elderly and young customers by using different marketing strategy and toincrease the probability of Internet shopping success.34

A key issue is how to attract more potential customers to purchaseand retain them again in an Internet store? A good beginning will be36

to identify the consumer behavioral model and the difficulties they may

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INTERNET SHOPPING BEHAVIOR 449

face during Internet shopping [1, 12]. After that, providing a good webinterface design and improving the procedure of Internet shopping in2

order to attract Internet consumers who enjoy Internet shopping and arewilling to buy again. Based on the consumer Internet shopping behavioral4

model we build early, the purpose of this study was to identify thedifficulties that elderly and young consumers may face during Internet6

shopping and make a detail comparison of these difficulties between theelderly and young consumers.8

2. Literature review

Understanding the Internet consumer’s behavioral process or model10

is one of the fundamental and important issues in the highly competitiveInternet marketplace [2]. Having reviewed the models proposed by earlier12

researchers, it was found that most of those models lack of empiricalstudy and were based on or elaborated from the traditional consumer14

behavior models [12]. In our early study, a preliminary Internet consumerbehavior model was formulated based on empirical outcomes collected by16

brainstorming and structured interview [6]. Later, this model was servedas a seed in the on-line observation experiment and was modified to the18

Ten-Step Model and was verified eventually [4, 12]. Figure 1 shows theInternet consumer behavior model (the Ten-Step Model). These steps in the20

Ten-Step model will become the basis for the category of difficulties laterin this study.22

The model contains ten steps: motivation, searching for web sites,browsing web sites, searching for products, examining products, evaluat-24

ing and comparing products, temporary purchase, payment process,receiving and checking, products accepted or returned. A consumer’s26

motivation for Internet shopping may be initiated by the need for a specificproduct or even by “innocent browsing”. When browsing on the web,28

consumers typically go to web sites or use search engines with whichthey are already familiar. After finding the appropriate web site, they will30

browse the web site, search, examine, evaluate, and compare products oftheir interests. If consumers encounter difficulties, such as poorly designed32

web page interfaces, or lack of suitable products, they leave the website for the time being. The consumers will probably search for another34

web site and continue the shopping processes until they find the requiredproducts. Once a suitable product within budget is selected, consumers36

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Figure 1The online consumer behavior model

2

will put it into the shopping cart. This step is called “temporary purchase”.The consumer can return to do shopping and choose another product4

again or proceed to the next step. The payment comes after the temporarypurchase is finalized. Once the consumer registered delivery address and6

made the payment, then all procedures involving Internet interactionwill be completed. The next steps are to wait for delivery and check8

the products out before acceptance. However, the consumers may leavethe shopping site just because the complicated payment procedures10

or membership limitations regardless the efforts already put. In this

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circumstance, some consumers may choose another web site for shopping,but many others may give up.2

Either the young or elder consumers obey the Ten-Step Model. Itwas found that the complexity (such as repeated times, and time spend4

on each step) of the behavior model depends on the characteristicsof the products and the age of the consumers (young or older). It6

was simpler and quicker in the steps of examining, evaluating andcomparing the products than in other steps when purchasing books8

for the young consumers. While purchasing expensive items such ascomputers, young consumers were repeating the steps of searching,10

evaluating, and comparing products. They tried using multiple searchengines to evaluate and compare products until they found the most12

satisfied one. Because computers are more expensive and complex to selectthan books, young subjects would repeat more times on those stages such14

as searching for products, examining products, evaluating and comparingbefore “temporary purchase”. While buying books, young subjects always16

repeat rapidly and frequently on the steps such as searching for website,browsing website, searching for products, and examining products, in18

order to find the lowest price. For the elder consumers, they repeated moretimes on steps of searching for products and examining products when20

buying computers. While buying books, the elder consumers repeatedmore times on steps of searching for website, browsing website, and22

searching for products.Besides the repeated times, it was found that the time spent in each24

step is different between the elderly and young consumers when buyingdifferent products. When buying books, young subjects spent longer26

time on the steps of payment process and browsing websites. The elderconsumers spend more times on the steps of payment process, searching28

for websites, and searching for products. While buying computers, youngsubjects spent quite long time on the steps of examining products and30

evaluating and comparing products. The elder subjects spend more timeson the steps of searching for products, and examining for products.32

For the young or elder consumers, encountered difficulties on someshopping steps might be one of the reasons why they spend much time34

and repeated more times on some Internet shopping steps. To identifythese difficulties and understand the differences between the young and36

elder consumers vere important for the Internet stores to attract customers

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by using different marketing strategy and to increase the probability ofInternet shopping success.2

3. Methodology

This study expanded the use of online observation and structured4

interview technology to design a new evaluating procedure for theinternet shopping, called the internet consumer behavior evaluating (ICBE)6

procedure, for attracting and retaining more customers enjoying Internetshopping. Figure 2 shows the flowchart of this study. Nineteen voluntary8

young subjects recruited via Internet and thirty-two elderly subjectsparticipated in this study. Young subjects’ ages were from eighteen to10

thirty-two. Nine of them are males and ten are females. Twenty-three ofthe elderly subjects are males and nine are females. Their ages are from12

forty-eight to sixty. They were asked to perform Internet shopping onreal web sites in an experimental environment and their behaviors were14

videotaped for further analysis. Two products, book and computer, werechosen for buying in the experiment. Except the author and title of the16

book, the budget along with the basic specifications of the computers weregiven, other features were unspecified.18

Figure 2Flowchart of study methods

20

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The apparatuses used in this study include two personal computerswith Internet connection, two digital camcorders for recording the facial2

expression and the hand activities of the subjects. The dynamic screenscapture software that can record the computer’s screen while subjects4

performing Internet shopping experiment. The behavior observationanalysis software “The Observer” that can observed the consumer6

behavior and difficulties in detailed. The experiment was videotaped andcarefully analyzed using “The Observer”. In addition, a digital voice8

recorder was used to record the conversations of the structured interview.Each subject’s general information, e.g., gender, age, Internet shopp-10

ing experience, etc., was collected prior to the experiment. Think aloudprotocol technique was used for the experiment. While a subject was12

performing the assigned task, he/she was required to speak out loudlyabout the difficulties he/she was experiencing, the ideas he/she was14

thinking, and the reasons behind his/her actions or decisions. The subjectswere given a short practice to familiarize with the think aloud protocol and16

the experiment process prior to the experiment. A structured interviewwas carried out after the experiment to clarify the observed questionable18

events, the questions about the interface design and mental workload,collect overall opinions and suggestions about the website designs and20

the Internet shopping in general.The degree of difficulty was recorded with 3-point Likert’s question-22

naire statements presented with some intrinsic order (1 = low degree,2 = medium degree, 3 = high degree of difficulty) if the subject have24

ever encountered the difficulty. If the subject never encountered thedifficulty, the number “0” will be recorded. In general, it is more reliable26

to use numeric codes to represent ordinal data. In statistics, the Mann-Whitney U test is the most popular of the two-independent-samples28

tests for ordinal measurements. Unlike the parametric t -test, this non-parametric test makes no assumptions about the distribution of the data30

(e.g., normality). This test, like many non-parametric tests, uses the ranksof the data rather than their raw values to calculate the statistic. Since this32

test does not make a distribution assumption, it is not as powerful as thet -test. The null hypothesis is the two samples are drawn from identical34

populations. The test statistic for the Mann-Whitney test is U . This valueis compared to a table of critical values for U based on the sample size of36

each group. If U exceeds the critical value for U at some significance level

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(usually 0.05) it means that there is evidence to reject the null hypothesisin favor of the alternative hypothesis.2

4. Data analysis

Having summarized and analyzed the records of the observation4

and the interview, the difficulties that the young and the elderly subjectsencountered during Internet shopping experiments were identified in6

correspondence to the steps of the Ten-Step Model that was mentionedearly (except three steps were unable to observe). Focusing on human8

factors and ergonomics, those difficulties such as human-computer inter-action, interface design, recognition, mental workload, etc., were summa-10

rized in Table 1 in correspondence to the steps of the Ten-Step-Model.The average of difficulty degree (0 = none difficulty, 1 = low degree,12

2 = medium degree, 3 = high degree of difficulty) and the statisticallysignificant (p<0.05) for each difficulty was showed in Table 2.14

When using Likert-type scales it is imperative to calculate and reportCronbach’s alpha coefficient for internal consistency reliability. Nunnally16

and Bernstein (1994) suggest 0.70 as an acceptable reliability coefficient;smaller reliability coefficients are seen as inadequate. Crobach’s alpha18

coefficient is 0.7128 for this questionnaire.Through statistical analysis about the difficulties that the elderly and20

young consumers encountered during the study, some differences werefound between them. General speaking, the young consumers browsing22

and buying online more frequently than the elderly, they encounteredmore difficulties and the content of the difficulty was more detail than24

the elderly consumers. For example, the young consumers encountered 5difficulties in step 2 (searching for web sites), but the elderly consumers26

only encountered 2 difficulties in step 2. In step 6 (evaluating andcomparing products), the young consumers encountered 8 difficulties28

but the elderly consumers only encountered 3 difficulties when buyingcomputer. The young consumers encountered more detail difficulties such30

as the format of ID and password (item 7 in step 8), discussion area (item 7in step 6) than the elderly consumers. When buying different product, the32

degree of difficulty and the significant difference were different betweenthe young and the elderly consumers. For example, the elderly consumers34

encountered heavy degree of difficulty in item 1 of step 3 then the youngconsumers when buying books. While buying computers, the young36

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T abl

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The

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nt.

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as“s

hort

age”

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ep5.

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suffi

cien

t,un

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ror

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itab

lein

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.Ex

amin

ing

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ures

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ptab

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able

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inIt

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ard

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teth

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tion

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eat

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ith

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ard

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ptio

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ject

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ions

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tth

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ckof

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her

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omer

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ake

cros

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ller

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ep7.

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pora

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eed

tobe

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rof

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site

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stra

tes

the

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ymen

t pro

cess

2.C

anno

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the

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por

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ent.

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anno

tmod

ify

data

rela

ted

this

purc

hase

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Paym

ent p

roce

ssis

too

com

plic

ated

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Lots

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taar

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n.Le

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ling

mak

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ppy.

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ick

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way

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tafil

ling.

Web

site

can

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rovi

dem

ulti

ple

way

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data

fillin

g.7.

Stri

ctID

and

pass

wor

dfo

rmat

sfo

rce

cust

omer

sus

eun

used

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and

pass

wor

ds.

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not

chan

gem

embe

rshi

pID

and

pass

wor

don

cere

gist

ered

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not

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plet

eth

epa

ymen

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oces

sif

asi

ngle

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ris

unco

rrec

ted

ora

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kun

fille

d.C

usto

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consumers encountered heavy degree of difficulty in item 2 of step 3 thenthe elderly consumers.2

Separating by the different product, the null hypothesis indicatedthat there was no significant difference of difficulty existed among each4

shopping step of online consumer’s behavioral model between the elderlyand young customers. A value of p < 0.05 was considered statistically6

significant. Table 3 indicated there was significant difference of examiningproduct (step 5) between the elderly and young customers when buying8

computers (p -value = 0.000) .Comprehending two different products, the first null hypothesis10

indicated that there was no significant difference of difficulty itemsthat both the elderly and young consumers encountered during Internet12

shopping existed between the elderly and young customers. Table 4clearly illustrates item 1 in step 3, item 3 in step 5, and item 2 in step 614

existed significant differences between the elderly and young customers.The second null hypothesis indicated that there was no significant16

difference of difficulty existed among each shopping step of onlineconsumer’s behavioral model between the elderly and young customers.18

Table 5 showed that step 4 existed significant differences between theelderly and young customers.20

Understanding the consumer behavioral features and identifyingthe difficulties that they may encounter still play in important role of22

Internet shopping success. From the results of analysis, it was found thatthere were many differences of difficulty between the elderly consumers24

and young consumers when buying different products. Web sites shouldconsider these behavioral features and difficulties of different consumers26

and provided a better Internet shopping environment.

5. Conclusions28

Shopping online is a series of complex human-computer interactionand decision-making process. Consumers need to brows lots of infor-30

mation, compare of them, and then make a choice. From this study, itwas found that there were many differences of Internet shopping difficulty32

between the elderly consumers and young consumers when buyingdifferent products. Different age of consumers need various and different34

information and assistance when buying different products online. Websites which sell diverse products should consider the behavioral features36

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0013

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and difficulties of different consumers and provided appropriate suppor-ting interface design to assist customers whenever they need, particularly2

during those steps that they may have many difficulties. The results of thisstudy can provide some suggestions for website designers and Internet4

stores to overcome the consumer’s Internet shopping barrier and to attract,to retain more elderly and young customers enjoying Internet shopping.6

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exploring the difficulties of internet shopping behavior between the elderly and young consumers

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