Online Consumer Behaviour of Household Products with Special Reference to Thanjavur District

Abstract

The main objectives of this research paper included exploring the factors contributing to buying intention and consumer behavior within the domain of e-commerce. Particularly, this paper sought to investigate how factors such as extensive information, online reviews/electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), customer satisfaction, trust in e-commerce, perceived risk, and behavior-intention reciprocity affect consumers' buying intentions. In order to answer these questions, ten hypotheses were tested using the SEM approach based on a data collection instrument employed for this study. The findings of the current research demonstrate that satisfaction (β = .304, p < .001) and trust in e-commerce (β = .265, p = .002) have the highest coefficients of impact on the dependent variable of interest, followed by extensive information search (β = .232, p = .001). Conversely, neither online reviews/eWOM (β = .110, p = .156) nor perceived risk (β = -.119, p = .109) significantly contributed to consumer intention to buy. For managers in e-commerce, these findings indicate the need to focus on building customer satisfaction and trust in order to build buying intentions; however, the use of eWOM could serve to directly affect behavior.