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The popularity of Internet and e-commerce has become one of the most important social and business developments of the last decade. Due to rapid growth of e-commerce, consumer buying decisions are increasingly being made in network-mediated environments. It is observed (Zeng & Reinartz, 2003) that “Internet has very differentiated impact along the various stages of the consumer decision-making process and the true value-added of the Internet to consumers materializes at very specific points in the purchase process. The empirical evidence shows that the ecommerce initiatives so far have been focusing mostly on increasing the effectiveness of online search, paying much less attention to facilitating online transactions, and almost completely ignoring the importance of helping consumers make better decisions.”
Earlier studies explain the different approaches of defining e-commerce by researchers. In general e-commerce means the use of the global Internet for purchase and sale of goods and services, including services and support after the sale (Treese and Stewart, 2003). Ghosh (1997) states that e-commerce provides consumers the ability to bank, invest, purchase, distribute, communicate, explore, and research from virtually anywhere an Internet connection can be obtained. It also helps in sharing business information, maintaining business relationships, and conducting business transactions by means of telecommunications networks (Zwass, 1996). The electronic networks are used with the objective to simplify and fasten all phases of business processes from production of goods to their sale and delivery (Barsauskas et al., 2008). Laudon and Laudon (2009) define e-commerce as, “a process of buying and selling goods electronically with computerized business transactions using the Internet, networks, and other digital technologies. It also encompasses activities supporting those market transactions, such as advertising, marketing, customer support, deliver, and payment”.
Online shopping attitudes refer to consumers’ psychological state in terms of making purchase in the internet (Li and Zang, 2002). In the existing situation, many companies have started using internet with the aim of cutting marketing costs, thus, reducing the price of their products and services in order to hang about further on highly competitive markets. Companies also use internet to convey, communicate and disseminate the information, to sell product, to take feedback, to compare prices, product features and after sale service facilities they will receive if they purchase the product from a particular store (Shergill and Chen, 2005). Everything that the consumers want and need to buy presents a potential for e-business. Most of the physical retail stores have expanded their market by using the internet to get the best of both worlds. Stores that are marketing their products in both areas can take advantage of the high demand for e-shopping availability.
A company that wants to market their items online can establish an e-store by developing a website. In general, these e-stores consist of several branches with the merchandize structured accordingly. The consumer can view the products image, description, materials, sizing, warranty, etc., and select to add the item to his or her virtual shopping cart, they are usually given the option to continue shopping or proceed to checkout. Once the consumer proceeds to checkout, the money transaction either by net banking, debit or credit card, etc., is done and the item is shipped from the e-retailer to the consumer. In the recent days, the payment systems such as PayPal have made e-buying much easier and more consumers are gaining access to this system. The customers with a virtual wallet for online global shopping, empowering a new segment of consumers to buy products and services on the web without the use of a credit cards. This payment option allows for safe transactions between two private parties.