Is internet acting as a medium for "Window Shopping"?

In the last few years, the belief that building Internet retail sites will automatically trigger customer patronage has been questioned and considered more a myth. This new medium of commerce has its own drawbacks such as reduced opportunities for sensory shopping, social shopping, face-to-face interactions with sales personnel, and the postponement of the consumption or enjoyment of tangible goods. The inherent limitations of the Internet have been compounded by poorly designed online storefronts, limited product selection, poor customer service, tedious checkout procedures, botched orders, tardy deliveries, security lapses, and privacy invasions.

Even though the popularity of broadband Internet connections is on the rise, the majority of Indian households use slower dial-up connections, which could detract from a satisfying online shopping experience. Given these problems, which are not atypical of innovations, it is becoming increasingly clear that online shopping may not hold the same attraction for all consumers, and its diffusion may follow the same bell-shaped curve as that of other innovations rather than the radical adoption rates that were optimistically forecasted in the late 1990s. Consumer demand for the Internet, thus, is a key factor that may ultimately drive widespread adoption of online shopping in India. Provided below are the few notable points of online shopping adoption by the Indian consumers.

• 4 out of 5 online Indians (80%) either search or buy products online, making the base of ‘online shoppers’ in India as large as 28 million. Of these online shoppers only 28% or 8 million are online ‘buyers’ currently. The rest 72% are just online ‘window shoppers’. Effectively, this means that almost 1 in 4 online ‘shopper’ is actually an online ‘buyer. On the overall regular internet user base, the proportion of online buyers and window shoppers work out to be 23% and 57% respectively.
• A substantial 92% of all active online buyers have bought a travel product online (up 8% points over the year 2007) and 51% have bought a non-travel product online (down 5% points over the year 2007).
• Compared to 2007, when the count of then currently ‘active online buyers’ was 6.16 million, the base of active buyers has grown by 1.81 million to reach 7.97 million. This indicates a 29% growth in the base of active online buyers since 2007. As the growth in internet user base during the same period has been 33%, the growth rate of online buyers in the year 2007-2008 can only be described as ‘average’. This ‘average’ growth in the online buyer base is also indicated by the fact that the base of online buyers among the regular internet users who have bought online ‘ever’ has just grown from 10.78 million in 2007 to 11.23 million in 2008 (a meager addition of 0.45 million ‘new’ online buyers during the year 2008).
• Long-term experience with Internet surfing is significantly associated with Internet shopping. Long-term Internet users are also the ones who have actually experienced Internet shopping.
• Internet usage is significantly associated with Internet shopping trial. Internet surfers with high usage of Internet in terms of number of hours surfed in a week, are actual Internet shoppers. Therefore Internet sellers should try to motivate surfers to surf more per sitting. This can be done through competitive pricing for long-hours surfing, bundling surfing with entertainment and recreation, developing real time eye-catching websites, promoting home based, high-speed, affordable Internet schemes, training people in the use of computers and the Internet and by providing further knowledge about the benefits of the Internet to actual and potential surfers and Internet shoppers.
• Intention of internet shopping is also an important criterion. The high intention group had previous experience of Internet shopping, had done significantly more time Internet shopping in the past year and had spent considerably higher amounts on Internet shopping than those who showed low intention of future Internet shopping. In terms of demographic characteristics high intention surfers had higher education, higher income and were unmarried, but the differences were not significant. This indicates that while demographic characteristics would definitely play a role in the future success of Internet shopping their importance will be secondary while actual Internet shopping experience would be pivotal in further acceptance of it. Therefore shoppers should be motivated to experience actual online shopping. If the first experience of Internet shopping creates a positive image in the minds of shoppers, it would result in a repeat of Internet shopping among these initial shoppers who would act as innovators and opinion leaders for the diffusion of Internet shopping.
• Contrary to expectations, a recent study revealed that there were no significant associations between the shopping segments and demographic variables. Therefore, there is a need to profile the online shopper using more sophisticated psychographic measures such as shopping orientations, rather than relying solely on demographics.Thus, if more of people can be motivated to surf the net consistently, it would result in more instances of actual Internet shopping.