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 self-administered structured instrument in the class rooms and through online Google form.

Findings: Only 0.0675 percentages of the respondents were found to be non-buyers. 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.