Factors Affecting Online Shopping Intention of Sri Lankan Consumers: with Special Reference to Central Province, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Online shopping is one of most popular features around the world as well as in Sri Lanka. People are tending to do online shopping and most of the business organizations try to use online shopping to sell their products and to increase their market. However, lack of intension towards online shopping further establishes and it is essential to identify the factors affecting for online shopping intension. This study has been focused to identify the impact of factors such as Awareness, Convenience, Variety of Product, Infrastructure and Social Influence impact on customers’ online shopping intension with special reference to Central Province of Sri Lanka. The researcher has taken demographic factors such as gender, age and education level as moderating variables. A quantitative approach was adopted with a sample of 100 internet users by using convenience and purposive sampling methods. The hypotheses were tested using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Results of the study showed that independent variables; Awareness, Convenience, Infrastructure and Social Influence have significant effect on online shopping intension which means that they have considerable impact on customers’ online shopping intension. However, regression analysis results indicated that the variable; variety of product has no significant impact on online shopping intension. Further, it was found that if the infrastructure and awareness regarding online shopping are increased, the customers are likely to show more intension towards online shopping. The study results are helpful to online marketers to design a better marketing strategy to influence customers’ online shopping intention. Furthermore, this study addresses the deficiency of industry-specific studies on the factors influencing customer motivation to accept online shopping in Sri Lanka. Future research may examine shopping intention in different models such as business-to-business (B2B) and consumer- to- consumer (C2C) interaction.