Factors Affecting Consumer Decisions about Purchases at Online Shops and Stores

Among people who often use the Internet, some make purchases at online shops and others do not. What decision-making factors affect their behavior? The authors conducted a questionnaire survey regarding the purchase of a digital camera and a notebook personal computer and analyzed the survey responses. As a result of a principal component analysis on 32 items from the questionnaire, 10 factors were extracted. Furthermore, a discriminant analysis showed that the factors strengthening the trend of making purchases at an actual store were "switching costs", "real information", "first-hand examination ", trust (in actual stores) and "distrust of online shops", and that those strengthening the trend of making purchases at online shops were "net information", "time saving" and "price". These results suggest that online shops can attract consumers by expanding the features of the online shops, but this in contrast may encourage consumers to visit actual stores by highlighting the merits of physical locations.