Investigating the Shopping Orientations on Online Purchase Intention in the e-Commerce Environment: A Malaysian Study

Choon Ling Kwek; Hoi Piew Tan; Teck-Chai Lau

Investigating the Shopping Orientations on Online Purchase Intention in the e-Commerce Environment: A Malaysian Study

Choon Ling Kwek1,Hoi Piew Tan2 and Teck-Chai Lau3

Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Management and Information Technology, UCSI University, Malaysia
Postal Address: 1, Jalan Menara Gading, UCSI Heights, 56000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Author's Personal/Organizational Website: www.ucsi.edu.my , Email: ckwek45@yahoo.com
Dr. Choon Ling Kwek is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Management and Information Technology, UCSI University, Malaysia. His areas of interest are Consumer Behaviour, Internet Marketing and Retailing.
Associate Professor, Faculty of Accountancy and Management, Universiti Tunku, Abdul Rahman, Malaysia
Postal Address: Lot PT 21144, Jalan Sungai Long, Bandar Sungai Long, Cheras, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia
Author's Personal/Organizational Website: www.utar.edu.my, Email: hptan@utar.edu.my
Dr. Hoi Piew Tan is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Accountancy and Management, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia. His areas of interest are entrepreneurship, small medium enterprises and consumer behaviour
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Accountancy and Management, Universiti Tunku, Abdul Rahman
Postal Address: Lot PT 21144, Jalan Sungai Long, Bandar Sungai Long, Cheras, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia
Author's Personal/Organizational Website: www.utar.edu.my, Email: lautc@utar.edu.my
Mr. Teck-Chai Lau is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Accountancy and Management, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman. His areas of interest are
business/consumer ethics, green purchase behavior and sustainable consumption

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Abstract

The rapid growth of Internet technology development has enabled Malaysian consumers to purchase products or services from web-retailers and to search for product information over the Internet. As such, it is vital to identify the determinants of the customer online purchase intention. The first objective of this research is to evaluate the impact of shopping orientations on customer online purchase intention. The second objective is to identify which construct has the greatest impact on purchase intention. The findings revealed that impulse purchase intention, quality orientation, brand orientation and convenience orientation are positively related to the customer online purchase intention. It is also discovered that convenience orientation is the most important contributor to the online purchase intention.

Key words

Shopping orientations, online purchase intention, e-commerce, Malaysia

Introduction

The advancement of the World Wide Web has resulted in the creation of a new form of retail format- electronic retailing (e-tailing) or web-shopping. The rapid growth of Internet technology development has enabled Malaysian consumers to purchase products or services from the web-retailers and search product information over the Internet. However, web-retailers can only offer certain ranges of products and services to the web-shoppers. This includes e-banking services, technology gadgets, cosmetics, clothing and airlines e-ticketing services. Wolfinbarger and Gilly (2001) assert that webshopping presents different shopping experiences even when the same products are purchased. Through web shopping, consumers interact in a virtual environment via the website interface (Alba, Lynch, Weitz and Janiszewski, 1997; Hoffman and Novak, 1996). Hence, web shopping is perceived to be more risky and therefore trust and risk play a prominent role in online transaction (Forsythe and Shi, 2003; Pavlou, 2003).

Web-shopping behaviour does not necessarily follow traditional consumer behaviour in the bricks-and-mortar retailing environment. Thus, Internet marketers are urged to explore the determinants of customer online purchasing intention among web shoppers. Table 1 provides a comparison between online shopping and the traditional shopping (Lohse and Spiller, 1999). Some of the identified determinants of the customer online purchase intention include impulse purchase orientation (Zhang, Prybutok and Strutton, 2007), quality orientation (Gehrt, Onzo, Fujita and Rajan, 2007), brand orientation (Moye, 1998), shopping enjoyment orientation (Vijayasarathy and Jones, 2000) and convenience orientation (Shim and Kotsiopulos, 1993). These constructs will be tested in this research. With a good understanding of the web shopper’s online purchase intention, web-retailers will be able to develop effective and efficient web-shopping operations to attract new and potential customers.

Some models of web-shopper behaviour such as technology acceptance models (TAM) (Davis, Bagozzi and Warshaw, 1989) and online pre-purchase intentions models (Shim, Eastlick, Lotz and Warrington, 2001) have appeared in the extant literature. Consumer behaviour can be cultural-specific, and it is questionable whether the reported findings in the West are directly applicable in a cross-cultural context. Therefore, this study aims to examine the impact of shopping orientations on the customer online purchase intentions in the web-shopping environment in Malaysia. In addition, this study also aims to identify which shopping orientation has the highest impact on customer online purchase intention.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Internet Subscription in Malaysia

Based on the research carried out by Maddox and Gong (2005), the Internet market penetration rate has increased dramatically in the Asian region. According to the Malaysia Internet Usage and Telecommunication report (retrieved from http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia/my.htm), the number of Internet subscribers has increased from 2.9 million in year 2004 to close to 5 million in year 2006. Thus, there is a positive growth in Internet subscription and purchase in Malaysia. Considering that web shopping is still at the development stage in Malaysia, not much information is known about consumer attitude toward web shopping and the factors that affect customer online purchase intention in the web-shopping environment. This is especially true in the context of Malaysia where web shopping is still new and consumers are less familiar with the concept of online shopping. Therefore, it is crucial to identify the antecedent relationship between shopping orientations and consumer online purchase intention in the web-shopping environment in the Malaysian context.

Web-Shopping

Advancement in Internet technology has facilitated the growth of in-home shopping (Lumpkin & Hawes, 1985). Shim, Quereshi and Siegel (2000) define web-shopping as the process that consumers go through to purchase products or services over the Internet. The terms online shop, Internet shop, web-shop and online store are used interchanged in the extant literature. Web-shopping is an e-commerce application used for business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B).

From the consumer’s viewpoint, web shopping allows the web shopper to search and compare various product or service alternatives from different online stores that are located in different parts of the world. The interactive nature of the Internet offers opportunities for consumers to use the web shopping facilities effectively by improving the availability of product information thus enabling direct multi attribute comparisons and subsequently reduce prospective buyers’ information search costs (Alba et al., 1997).

The Internet also provides benefits to companies. As consumers are increasingly using the Internet as a shopping approach in performing their purchasing activities, companies can take this opportunity to use the Internet as a medium to attract and maintain current and potential customers. In this regard, online retailers must understand consumers’ perceptions of website characteristics and their online shopping behaviour. Thus, the research will try to explore the concept of online purchase intention and the antecedent relationship between shopping orientations and customer online purchase intention.

Online Purchase Intention

Customer online purchase intention is among the intensive research areas in the extant literature. Customer online purchase intention in the web-shopping environment will determine the strength of a consumer’s intention to carry out a specified purchasing behaviour via the Internet (Salisbury, Pearson, Pearson and Miller, 2001). Furthermore, the theory of reasoned action suggested that consumer behaviour can be predicted from intentions that correspond directly in terms of action, target and context (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980). According to Day (1969), the intentional measures can be more effective than behavioural measures to capture customer’s mind as customer may make purchases due to constraints instead of real preference when purchase is considered.

Purchase intention can be classified as one of the components of consumer cognitive behaviour on how an individual intends to buy a specific brand. Laroche, Kim and Zhou (1996) suggest that variables such as customers’ consideration in buying a brand and expectation to buy a brand can be used to measure consumer purchase intention. Based on the argument of Pavlou (2003), online purchase intention is the situation when a customer is willing and intends to become involved in online transaction. Online transactions can be considered as an activity in which the process of information retrieval, information transfer, and product purchase are taken place (Pavlou, 2003). The steps of information retrieval and exchange may be considered as intentions to use a web site; however, product purchase is more applicable to an intention to handle a website (Pavlou, 2003). Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate the concept of online purchase intention in this study. In order to trigger customer online purchase intention, web retailers have to explore the impact of shopping orientations on customer online purchase intention.

Shopping Orientations

Brown, Pope and Voges (2001) define shopping orientations as the general predisposition toward the acts of shopping. This predisposition may be demonstrated in different forms such as information search, alternative evaluation, and product selection. Li, Kuo and Russell (1999) conceptualize the concept of shopping orientation as a specific portion of lifestyle and operationalised by a range of activities, interests and opinion statements that are relevant to the acts of shopping.

Many researchers conclude that shopping orientations reflect a customer’s view of shopping as a social, recreational or economic phenomenon, as well as an individual’s motivations for shopping (Hawkins, Best, & Coney, 1989; Howell, 1979; Lumpkin, Hawes, & Darden, 1986; Shim & Mahoney, 1992). Therefore, customers’ shopping orientations may alter with changes in social, cultural and economic values and the environment in the society. Customers with different shopping orientations have shown different shopping behaviour, such as preferences for store choice (Gutman & Mills, 1982; Hawkins et al. 1989), perceived importance of store attributes (Lumpkin, 1985; Shim & Kotsiopulos, 1992), and the use of information sources (Hawkins et al., 1989; Lumpkin, 1985; Moschis, 1976).

Stone (1954) pioneers the research on the shopping orientations concept and classifies shoppers into four categories which are economic, personalizing, ethical, and apathetic. Economic shoppers are described as having a major concern for the prices of products so they would shop for the best choice of quality and price. Personalizing shoppers enjoy developing a close relationship with store personnel and tend to shop close to home. Ethical shoppers feel a duty to shop at specific local or neighbourhood stores rather than chain stores so as to give smaller merchants a chance for success. Apathetic shoppers have little or no interest in shopping or in store type and try to minimize buying effort. The advocacy of Stone (1954) were tested and reconfirmed by various researchers in the respective studies (Darden & Raynolds, 1971; Lumpkin et al., 1986).

With the emergence of online shopping activities, customers’ online shopping behaviour may be different in terms of their shopping orientation. Swaminathan, Lepkowska-White and Rao (1999) suggest that shopping orientations is one of the important indicators of making online purchase. Based on the relationship study between shopping orientations and online shopping orientation, Vijayasarathy and Jones (2000) identify seven types of shopping orientations, such as in-home shoppers who liked to shop from home; economic shoppers who shopped around before making purchase decisions; mall shoppers who preferred to shop at malls; personalized shoppers who liked to shop where they knew the salespeople; ethical shoppers who liked to shop in local stores to promote the community; convenience shoppers who placed a premium on convenience when shopping; and enthusiastic shoppers who enjoyed shopping. The result of the study found that customers who prefer traditional in-home shopping, such as by mail order via catalogs, tend to show high intentions toward online shopping, whereas individuals with a preference for mall shopping tended to have low online shopping intentions.

In the emergence of diverse retail outlets and increasing competition in the marketplace, online retailers must understand customers’ shopping orientations in order to maximize customers’ online purchase intention that leads to the increase in online sales. Several researchers have demonstrated that shopping orientations significantly impact the customer online purchase intention (Vijayasarathy & Jones, 2000; Park, 2002; Brown et al., 2001; Seock, 2003; Gehrt et al., 2007). Shopping orientations is regarded as a multidimensional construct. According to Gehrt, et. al. (2007), there are seven types of shopping orientations which include recreation, novelty, impulse purchase, quality, brand, price, and convenience. However, the present research will only investigate five types of shopping orientation such as impulse purchase orientation, quality orientation, brand orientation, shopping enjoyment orientation, and convenience orientation. Thus, these constructs will be tested as the independent variables under the grouping of shopping orientations.

Impulse Purchase Orientation

Piron (1991) defines impulse purchase as an unplanned action that results from a specific stimulus. Rook (1987) argues that the impulse purchase takes place whenever customers experience a sudden urge to purchase something immediately, lack substantive additional evaluation, and act based on the urge. Several researchers have concluded that customers do not view impulse purchase as wrong; rather, customers retrospectively convey a favourable evaluation of their behaviour (Dittmar, Beattie, and Friese, 1996; Hausman, 2000; Rook, 1987). Therefore, Ko (1993) reports that impulse purchase behaviour is a reasonable unplanned behaviour when it is related to objective evaluation and emotional preferences in shopping.

Wolman (1973) frames impulsiveness as a psychological trait that result in response to a stimulus. Weinberg and Gottwald (1982) state that impulse purchase is generally emanated from purchase scenarios that feature higher emotional activation, less cognitive control, and largely reactive behaviour. Impulse purchasers also tend to be more emotional than non-purchasers. Consequently, some researchers have treated impulse purchase as an individual difference variable with the anticipation that it is likely to affect decision making across situations (Beatty and Ferrell, 1998; Rook and Fisher, 1995).

Given the ongoing development of the digital economy and the shopping convenience being delivered through digitalised exchanges, one might reason that impulse individuals may be more prone to online shopping. Donthu and Garcia (1999) assert that online shoppers were more likely to be impulse oriented. The study from Zhang et al. (2007) conclude that impulse purchase is positively related to the customer online purchase intention.

Quality Orientation

Quality is regarded as a key strategic component of competitive advantage and therefore the enhancement of product or service quality has been a matter of main concern to firms (Daniel, Reitsperger, and Gregson, 1995; Foster and Sjoblom, 1996). Garvin (1987) identifies five approaches to quality: transcendent, product-based, userbased, manufacturing-based, and value-based. Transcendent definition of quality is synonymous with innate excellence. The assumption of transcendent approach is that quality is both absolute and universally recognizable. The product-based approach has its roots in economics. Garvin (1984) argues that differences in the quantity of some ingredient or attribute possessed by the product are considered to reflect differences in quality. Whereas in the user-based definition, quality is the extent to which a product or service meets or exceeds customers’ expectations. The manufacturing-based approach has its roots in operation and production management. Its quality is defined as conformance to specifications (Crosby, 1979). Quality of conformance relates to the degree to which a product meets certain design standards. Besides, the value-based definition equates quality with performance at an acceptable price, or alternatively conformance at an acceptable cost.

The impact of quality orientation on online purchase intention is well documented in the extant literature. Bellenger and Korgaonkar (1980) state that recreational shoppers tended to consider quality, variety of product types and pleasant store atmosphere as important factors when choosing stores. In the context of web-shopping environment, Gehrt et al. (2007) discover that customers from the shopping enjoyment segment are positively inclined toward recreation, quality, and impulse orientations when making online purchase.

Brand Orientation

A brand is defined as a name or symbol, trademark and package design that uniquely identifies the products or services of a retailer, and differentiates them from those of its competitors (Aaker, 1991). In the cyber marketplace, a corporate brand identity is a cognitive anchor and a point of recognition where customers perceive a great deal of uncertainty (Rajshekhar, Radulovich, Pendleton and Scherer, 2005). For many online retailers, the brand name is the company’s name. In the e-commerce environment, trusted corporate and brand names are used by customers as substitutes for product information when they intent to make online purchase (Ward and Lee, 2000).

Several studies have found that brand loyalty exhibits strong impacts on purchase intention in the traditional offline retailing world (Hawes and Lumpkin, 1984; Sproles and Kendall, 1986). A strong brand name not only attracts new customers, but also has the lock-in ability to make customers feel comfortable with their purchase decisions. A study carried out by Jayawardhena, Wright and Dennis (2007) conclude that brand orientation is positively related to the customer online purchase intention.

Shopping Enjoyment Orientation

Beatty and Ferrell (1998) define shopping enjoyment as the pleasure obtained from the shopping process. The concept of shopping enjoyment is connected to the difference between hedonic and utilitarian shoppers. While utilitarian shoppers treat shopping as work, hedonic shoppers strive for fun and entertainment in shopping (Babin, Darden, and Griffin, 1994). Arnold and Reynolds (2003) identify several types of hedonic shopping motivations, including adventure shopping, gratification shopping, idea shopping, role shopping, social shopping, and value shopping.

Menon and Kahn (2002) also identify three types of shopping enjoyment construct which include escapism, pleasure, and arousal. Escapism is reflected in the enjoyment that comes from engaging in activities that are attractive, to the point of offering an escape from the demands of the day-to-day world. Pleasure is the extent to which a person feels joyful, happy, or satisfied in online shopping, whereas arousal is the extent to which a person feels stimulated, active or vigilant during the online shopping experience. According to Menon and Kahn (2002), pleasant or arousing experience will have carryover impact on the next experience encountered. If customers are exposed to the initial pleasing and arousing stimuli during their online shopping experience, they are more likely to engage in subsequent shopping behaviour.

Shopping enjoyment is created from the fun and playfulness of the online shopping experience, rather than from the completion of shopping activity. Purchasing of product may be incidental to the experience of online shopping. Thus, shopping enjoyment reflects customers’ perceptions regarding the entertainment of online shopping. Seock and Bailey (2008) argue that there is a positive relationship between shopping enjoyment orientation and customer online purchase intention.

Convenience Orientation

Several studies revealed that convenience was a prime motivator for customers to shop online and interact with online vendors (Meuter, Ostrom, Roundtree and Bitner, 2000; Szymanski and Hise, 2000; Constantinides, 2004). Bhatnagar, Misra, and Rao (2000) suggest that the likelihood of online purchase increase as customer’s perception of online shopping convenience increases.

Convenience is a more complex opinion than simply providing quick checkouts or locations close to home. Convenience concerns psychological cost and other forms of non-monetary costs such as time, effort and stress (Aylott and Mitchell, 1998; Cassill, Thomas, and Bailey, 1997). In fact, shoppers must consider to clearly differentiate among various types of convenience as offered by retailers (Alba et al., 1997). Several types of convenience can be considered throughout the shopping process. For instance, products that are easy to reach possess “access convenience”, while products that are easy to find and to compare exhibit “search convenience” (Seiders, Berry, and Gresham, 2000). “Possession convenience” occurs when products are easy to obtain, while ease of purchase and return enable shoppers to have “transaction convenience”. In addition, shopping that is quick and without delays embodies “time convenience”. Shopping close to home, home delivery, and shopping through non-store methods at home are all ways of gaining “place convenience”.

Gehrt, Yale, and Lawson (1996) argue that convenience has often been conceptualized as a time-oriented notion, though there is evidence that convenience does consist of space and effort dimensions. Individual may be motivated by only one or all of these dimensions. For instance, online shopping eliminated drive time and checkout time, and allowed shoppers access to distant stores. Several studies showed that convenience was an important motivational factor behind online shopping (Meuter et al., 2000; Szymanski and Hise, 2000). Jarvenpaa and Todd (1997) and Burke (1998) conclude that convenience orientation is positively related to the customer online purchase intention.

Hypotheses

Prior discussion has led to a brief examination of the existing literature and the development of the hypotheses in this research. The conceptual framework is provided in Figure 1. The five hypotheses are:

H₁: Impulse purchase orientation is positively related to customer online purchase intention.

H₂: Quality orientation is positively related to customer online purchase intention.

H₃: Brand orientation is positively related to customer online purchase intention.

H₄: Shopping enjoyment orientation is positively related to customer online purchase intention

H₅: Convenience orientation is positively related to customer online purchase intention.

METHODOLOGY

Research Design

Positivism approach was adopted in this research because this approach allowed the researcher to search for truths of the observation by empirical evidence via the hypothetico-deductive method (Jankowicz, 2005). Furthermore, descriptive research design was adopted as the study has clear problem statements, specific hypotheses and detailed body of knowledge (Malhotra, 2004).

Questionnaire Design

The first part (Part A) of the questionnaire provides general information about the online purchasing behaviour of the potential respondents. The second part of the questionnaire elaborates the independent variables and dependent variable that would be tested in the survey. Questions in the form of scaled-response questions were adopted in the second part of the questionnaire because “scaling permits measurement of the intensity of respondents’ answers” (Churchill and Brown, 2004, p.329). The third part of the questionnaire identifies demographic profile of the respondents.

The items of the questionnaire in this research were adopted from different sources of the extant literature. The items for the independent variables “impulse purchase orientation”, “quality orientation”, “brand orientation”, “shopping enjoyment orientation”, and “convenience orientation” are adapted from Gehrt, et. al. (2007) and Seock (2003). The items for the dependent variable “online purchase intention” is adapted from Chen and Barnes (2007). A 5-point Likert scale anchored by “strongly disagree” (1) to “strongly agree” (5) was used as the attitude measurement for independent and dependent variables.

Sampling and Administration of Survey

The survey questionnaires for this study were distributed to undergraduate students in a large private university located in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The university is one of the largest private universities in Malaysia; with an estimated student population of 18,000 pursuing 84 programs in nine faculties spread over four campuses. Students who had actual online purchase experience were targeted. The respondents were selected through the filtering question in the questionnaire. The targeted sample size was 250 and convenience sampling technique was utilized. Respondents were instructed to answer the questions based on their most recent online purchase experience with one of the web-retailer via the Internet.

Self-administered survey method in the form of drop-off surveys technique was used to ensure the confidentiality and non-obligation aspects of participating in the survey. The survey was conducted in the lecture hall where respondents could return the questionnaires immediately into the box allocated. The voluntary nature of the participation was explained verbally as well as being indicated in the survey questionnaire. Students were invited to complete an anonymous survey questionnaire that took approximately 15 minutes of their time to complete.

A total of 250 sets of questionnaires were distributed and 248 questionnaires were collected. Out of that, 8 sets of questionnaires were considered unusable because they were incomplete. It was assumed that the respondents were either unwilling to cooperate or not serious with the survey. Therefore, subsequently only 242 usable questionnaires (96.8 percent) were used for data analysis using SPSS software version 14.

RESEARCH RESULTS

Respondents’ Demographic Profile and Online Purchasing Behaviour

Based on the survey, male respondents represented 52.07 percent of the total respondents while female respondents 47.93 percent. In the case of age distribution, the majority of the respondents were between the ages of 21 to 23 (76.86 percent). In terms of ethnic compositions, the respondents were mainly Chinese ethnic group (91.74 percent). Movie tickets (33.34%) and technology gadgets (21.43%) were the two most common items purchased by the respondents. At least half of the respondents (53.72%) use credit card as a mode of payment in the online purchasing process.

Reliability Test

The reliability of a measure indicates the stability and consistency with which the instrument measures the concept and helps to assess the ‘goodness’ of a measure (Cavana, Delahaye and Sekaran, 2001). All the constructs were tested for the consistency reliability of the items within the constructs by using the Cronbach Alpha reliability analysis. In Table 2, the results indicated that the Cronbach alpha for all the constructs were well above 0.7 as recommended by Cavana et al. (2001). Cronbach alpha for the constructs ranged from the lowest of 0.803 (quality orientation) to 0.868 (brand intention). In conclusion, the results showed that the scores of the Cronbach alpha for all the constructs used in this research exceeded the preferable scores of 0.70 and this indicated that the measurement scales of the constructs were stable and consistent.

Validity Test

Construct validity was adopted as validity measurement through the factor analysis (Cavana et al., 2001). The details of the factor analysis were presented in Table 2. Based on the output shown, factor analysis was appropriate because the value of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) was 0.809 (between 0.5 and 1.0) and the statistical test for Bartlett test of sphericity was significant (p = 0.000; d.f. = 190) for all the correlations within a correlation matrix (at least for some of the constructs). Based on the principal components analysis and VARIMAX procedure in orthogonal rotation, the results also showed that the Eigenvalues for all the constructs were greater than 1.0, ranging from the lowest 1.349 (quality orientation) to the highest of 5.484 (shopping enjoyment orientation). In terms of convergent validity, the factor loadings for all items within a construct were more than 0.50. Discriminant validity indicated that all items were allocated according to the different constructs. Therefore, the items were not overlapping and they supported the respective constructs.

Regression Analyses

The result of the multiple regression analysis was presented in Table 3 and Table 4. The p value of the impulse purchase orientation (p = 0.015) is less than the alpha value of 0.05. Therefore, the research concludes that an impulse purchase orientation is positively related to the customer online purchase intention. Hypothesis 1 is supported. This finding confirms the existing literature which states that the shopping orientations in term of impulse purchase will positively affect the online purchase intention (Zhang et al., 2007).

The p value for the quality orientation (p = 0.034) is also less than the alpha value of 0.05. Therefore, it can be suggested that quality orientation is positively related to the consumer online purchase intention. Hypothesis 2 is therefore supported. This finding supports the existing literature that quality orientations will positively influence the customer online purchase intention (Gehrt et al., 2007).

The result from the research also postulated that the brand orientation is positively related to the customer online purchase intention, as the alpha value is less than 0.05 (p value = 0.036). Hypothesis 3 is therefore supported. According to Jayawardhera et al. (2007), brand orientation is positively related to the customer online purchase intention.

However, hypothesis 4 is not supported in this research. The p value of the shopping enjoyment orientation (p = 0.263) is more than the alpha value of 0.05. Therefore the hypothesis that indicates the positive relationship between shopping enjoyment orientation and the customer online purchase intention is rejected. According to Childers, Carr, Peck and Carson (2001), enjoyment is a strong predictor of attitude toward online shopping. If the consumers enjoy their online shopping experience, they will form a positive attitude toward online shopping (Childers et al., 2001). With the formation of positive attitude toward online shopping, the consumers are more likely to engage in online shopping (Childers et al., 2001) and unplanned online purchasing behaviour (Monsuwe, Dellaert and Ruyter, 2004). Based on the conclusion drawn by Childers et al. (2001) and Monsuwe et al. (2004), shopping enjoyment orientation might be positively related to the online purchase intention, mediated by the attitude toward online shopping.

Finally, the result from the research also indicated that the convenience orientation is positively related to the customer online purchase intention, as the alpha value is less than 0.05 (p value = 0.007). Hypothesis 5 is therefore supported. According to Jarvenppa and Todd (1997) and Burke (1998), convenience orientation is shown to positively relate to the customer online purchase intention and therefore the current study confirm past research.

Based on the SPSS output, the following multiple regression equation was formed:

Customer Online Purchase Intention= 4.330 + 0.112 (Impulse Purchase Orientation) + 0.125 (Quality Orientation) + 0.110 (Brand Orientation) + 0.189 (Convenience Orientation)

The values of the un-standardized Beta coefficient among the independent variables ranges from the weakest relationship of 0.110 (brand orientation) to the strongest relationship of 0.189 (convenience orientation). Therefore “convenience orientation” is the most important antecedent in affecting the customer online purchase intention. “Quality orientation” (0.125) and “impulse purchase orientation” (0.112) are ranked as the second and third most important antecedents affecting the customer online purchase intention. In addition, the customer online purchase intention is explained 18.2 percent by the combination of various independent variables (r square = 0.182), which includes impulse purchase orientation, quality orientation, brand orientation and convenience orientation.

CONCLUSION

Implications of the Research

The research findings and contributions have brought theoretical and managerial implications to the various stakeholders.

From the theoretical perspective, the relationship between shopping enjoyment and customer online purchase intention is inconclusive. Based on the research carried out by Seock and Bailey (2008), there is a positive relationship between shopping enjoyment orientation and customer online purchase orientation. However, both Childers et al. (2001) and Monsuwe et al. (2004) argue that shopping enjoyment orientation is positively related to the online purchase intention, mediated by the attitude toward online shopping. This warrant further research in the future to investigate the mediating effect of attitude towards online shopping.

In terms of managerial implication, the research findings do provide some insights and feedbacks for the e-retailers to formulate and implement various business strategies to increase customer online purchase intention. To increase customer impulse purchase, e-retailers can provide e-mail updates on product development or offer special discounts for a limited time to potential online customers. E-retailers may offer loyalty programme or club memberships for those online customers who exhibit strong brand orientation. In targeting quality orientated customers, e-retailers can provide full online version of product quality information and product search information through the companies’ website. To attract more convenience-oriented customers, e-retailers may need to minimize the process of placing order and allow different modes of product delivery to this group of online purchasers.

Limitations of the Research

Although the research findings provide some new insights to researchers, these findings should be viewed in light of some limitations. The study’s sample is comprised of undergraduate students and majority of whom were Chinese Malaysians. The results from the study therefore could not be used to generalize to represent the Malaysian population. The study also focused on those respondents who have some experiences in engaging in online purchase. Therefore, the scope does not cover those potential customers who do not have experienced in online transaction but have the intention to engage in online purchase activities. In addition, the study does not explore the impact of gender differences in moderating the relationship between shopping orientations and customer online purchase intention. The finding from Jayawardhena et al. (2007) discovers that gender has a significant influence on online purchase intention. By incorporating the gender construct in studying the relationship between shopping orientations and customer online purchase intention may able to enrich the extant literature.

Recommendations for Further Research

Due to the limitations of this research, several recommendations are suggested for further research for the purpose of enhancing the study of the customer online purchase intention. It is proposed to evaluate the impact of shopping orientations on the customer online purchase intention among the potential customers who have strong intention to engage in online purchasing activities. Besides, it is also recommended to evaluate the relationship between shopping orientations and customer online purchase intention based on gender differences as well as the role of gender in mediating the relationship between shopping orientations and customer online purchase intention. In order to generalize the study, future researchers should include a wider representation of the Malaysian population across ethnic groups and ages.

Tables at a glance


Table 1	Table 2	Table 3	Table 4

Figures at a glance

Figure 1

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