Future of B2C E-commerce (Buyers Perspective) in India: An Empirical Analysis

摘要

India is one of the hottest destinations for online retailers. It provides the emerging prospect of business because of young generation. The present study is an evaluation of the future of business-to-consumer (B2C) commerce in India with major focus on identifying the satisfactory and dissatisfactory factors for online buyers. The study collects 206 respondents, out of which 161 respondents were used for further analysis. A total of 20 factors were considered, which were thought to make an impact on e-commerce consumer buying behaviour. After applying Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test for sampling adequacy and Bartlett's test for sphericity, the study adopts principal component analysis for extracting relevant factors. The study identifies four core factors, namely, service quality, security and privacy, content and design, and customer delight. The finding of the study depicts that most of the consumers purchasing online are youngsters, educated and financially well off. The study shows that three-fourth buyers visit online shopping once or twice in six months. The top four products purchased online are books (40.99 per cent), electronics (39.75 per cent), apparel and accessories (36.02 per cent) and computer and peripherals (32.92 per cent). The top three attractor for buyers to buy from e-commerce portals are home delivery (70.19 per cent), time saving (61.49 per cent) and 24 × 7 availability (60.25 per cent). Security issues (65.84 per cent) and unclear and complex policies (60.87 per cent) are the major detractors for buyers in B2C e-commerce. The results of our analytical study indicate the relationship between the consumers' perceptions about the factors that influence their intention while buying online, more specifically, consumers' perceptions of the service quality, security and privacy, content and design on website, and customer delight factors.