Factors Influencing Online Shopping behavior of Online Fashion Retailers

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed online shopping behaviors, according to a survey of about 3,700 consumers in nine emerging and developed economies. As people embraced social distancing, they turned to online shopping more than ever before. The fluctuation of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ways it influences and modifies our shopping habits will likely continue into the foreseeable future. Without a doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone to change the way they shop. Whether you were a fan of online shopping or in-store browsing, the pandemic altered routines in many obvious, and some not so obvious. Therefore to understand what now actually affects consumer purchase behavior when it comes to online shopping is key to success for many e-tailers especially for those online fashion retailers which is the main focus of this study.The purpose of this research is to study factors influencing online shopping behavior of online fashion retailers (apparel, fashion accessories, shoes). These factors include eight independent variables: Web design(WD), Reputation(RP), Web contend(WC), Brand effect(BR), Product(PD), Service(SV), Price(PR), and Promotion (PM), and one dependent variable: Online shopping behavior (OB). 437 sample were collected using electronic questionnaire through social media. We used Structural Equation Models (SEM) for data analysis. The result shows that the RMSEA, which is an absolute fit index that assesses how far our hypothesized model is from a perfect model, for this model is .027(.90), the model seems to fit well according to the descriptive measures of fit. On the contrary, CFI and TLI, which are incremental fit indices that compare the fit of our hypothesized model with that of a baseline model (i.e., a model with the worst fit), whose values are both greater than .90 (CFI = .981, TLI = .977) indicating an acceptable fit. More importantly almost all factors included in the model except Web contend (WC) i.e. Reputation(RP), Web design(WD), Brand effect(BR), Product(PD), Service(SV), Price(PR), and Promotion(PM) seem to significantly affect online shopping behavior of online fashion retailers due to their p-values are all less than .05.