E-Marketing and Online Consumer Behavior

Introduction

The Internet offers many innovative advantages to businesses, such as the ability to reach new segments, since products can be sold globally rather than locally or regionally, and the potential to reduce cost through streamlining of the supply chain (Thompson & Yeong et al., 2003). In the 21^ST century, e-commerce and online shopping have reached a stage of steady growth. To encourage consumers to shop online, internet advertising has become one of the most important marketing strategies (Wu, Sheng et al., 2011). The dimensions of the pre-sale phase have a significant impact on the dimensions of the post-sale phase of B2C Electronic Commerce (Alzola et al., 2010). Organizations today are re-tooling for the future of the web-devising strategies for new and multiple screens (television, mobile, tablet/ PC) and applications stores as these signify relatively new and massive opportunities. Significant technology shifts, for example, the move towards mobile and multiple screens, the era of social media and the trend of the cloud, whereby everybody expects access to data anytime, anywhere, enabled via the cloud, has changed the way business is conducted today.

In this context we propose a framework for studying the impact of the Internet on the Consumer purchase decision, taking into account Internet usage Demographics, Internet usage parameters, Pre purchase Behavior & Decision Process, E-commerce and Post purchase behavior.

This chapter proposes the following:

• 1.

  A research framework for studying the role of the internet in the consumer decision making process (Figure 1).

• 2.

  Proposes a summary of constructs (Table 1) for formulation of a research instrument.

• 3.

  Creates a summary of proposed research models (Table 2) that will be developed to address the proposed intent.

Figure 1.

The Online Consumer Experience