Examining Resistance to Online Buying- Empirical Study of University Students in India

Abstract

Purpose: Online buying behavior studies mainly concentrated on exploring
drivers and reasons for adoption of online buying of various products by different
customer segments, in order to encourage and fasten the adoption rate. However,
understanding resistance and major objections, against online buying are equally
crucial for the success of online buying. Therefore, the key objective of this paper
is to uncover different objections that university students, who are accepted as the
main drivers of adopting online buying.
Design/ Methodology/ Approach: A sample of 1200 university students has
been drawn from northern India and responses have been collected through selfadministered structured instrument in the class rooms and through online Google
form.
Findings: Only 0.0675 percentages of the respondents were found to be nonbuyers. Results showed that the main barriers in the online buying encountered
by university students, in a developing country like India, are product related.
They, importantly, are concerned about delivery gap and risk associated with.
Interestingly, other major cited reason by students was ‘not-interested’, which is
surprising given the tremendous growth of mobile and specifically smart phone
usage by university students and improvement in the infrastructure e.g. easy,
improved connectivity as well cheap access to internet for buying.
Originality/ Value: Furthermore, to complement the perspective of this study,
an inductive analysis was also conducted to identify other types of reasons and
obstacles, hindering usage of internet for buying by the university students.
Other than personal interviews, they were asked open ended question to avoid
any directional responses. Implications and suggestions, for practice, are also
discussed. In the context of university students the paper provides practical
insights to convert non- adopters to adopters.
Paper Type: Empirical Research Paper.