Factors Affecting Customers’ Purchasing Behavior in Online Shopping

Online shopping is a relatively new type of retail shopping. It has now been adopted all over the world including Turkey. Nowadays, online shopping is still not as well known or accepted as in many other developed countries, and though the knowledge of online shopping in most of the countries are now beginning to increase rapidly. There are many factors which effect on the intention of online customers’ behavior while performing online shopping. In this study, the effect and relationship of five important factors; web environment, product characteristics, security and confidence to internet, promotion offers and the price of product to customers purchasing behavior was tested and formed the basis of this research. The study was conducted from the international students of Istanbul Universities. The data was collected from 215 respondents who provided the data through closed ended questionnaires. The study analysis was done based on descriptive statistics and SEM analysis intended to determine the relationship between the factors and online purchasing behaviors. The study findings indicate that web environment, product characteristics and promotional offers had a significant relationship with the customers’ purchasing behavior in online shopping. However, security and confidence to internet and price of product had no significant relationship with customers’ purchasing behaviors in online shopping, though the existing effect between the variables were positive, but they were not significant. The study recommends for adoption of policy, managerial and regulative measures especially intended to enhance the management for supporting online purchasing as means to enhancing the mode of online purchasing for the growth of online trade.