Shopping Motivation and the Influence of Perceived Product Quality and Relative Price in E-commerce

Understanding a consumer's motivation to shop online with a vendor can help an e-business better understand the attitude of customers and what they look out for in their shopping decision-making process. Equally important in the shopping decision making process is the influence of the perceived quality of products and their price. Understanding how consumers are influenced by the perceived quality and price of products can help e-businesses to improve their customers' shopping experience. To contribute to ongoing research in this area, we investigate the influence of perceived product quality and price on the motivation of e-shoppers to shop online. In particular, we investigate which of perceived quality and price have a greater influence on the consumer's motivation to shop online. We also investigate the moderating effect of income and gender. Using a sample size of 241 e-commerce shoppers, we develop and test a global research model using Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Our results suggest that balanced buyers (shoppers who are moderately motivated by convenience and variety seeking but do not plan ahead and are impulse buyers) are more influenced by the relative price of products compared to their quality. In addition, balanced buyers who earn over $30,000 are influenced by the quality of the product compared to those who earn less than $30,000. Furthermore, male shoppers who are motivated by the convenience of online shopping (convenience shoppers) are also influenced by the perceived quality of products compared to female shoppers who are not.