This article examines consumers’ intention to shop online during the information acquisition stage. Specifically, the study incorporates 3 essential variables, which are likely to influence consumer intentions: (a) convenience characteristic of shopping channels, (b) product type characteristics, and (c) perceived price of the product. Results indicate that convenience and product type influence consumer intention to engage in online shopping. When consumers perceive offline shopping as inconvenient, their intention to shop online is greater. Also, online shopping intention is higher when consumers perceive the product to be search goods than experience goods.

This article examines consumers' intention to shop online during the information acquisition stage. Specifically, the study incorporates 3 essential variables, which are likely to influence consumer intentions: (a) convenience characteristic of shopping channels, (b) product type characteristics, and (c) perceived price of the product. Results indicate that convenience and product type influence consumer intention to engage in online shopping. When consumers perceive offline shopping as inconvenient, their intention to shop online is greater. Also, online shopping intention is higher when consumers perceive the product to be search goods than experience goods.

No abstract

Requests for reprints should be addressed to ~~b~ Dholakia, nology but have not yet settled into domestic roles, to see if College of Business Administration, University of Rhode Island, 7 Lippitt such Stereotypes exist. First the literature on gender, shop-Road, Kingston, RI 022814802, E-mail: mby @uri.edu ping, and technology is reviewed. Then an empirical study to Accepted by Dawn Iacobucci

n theory the Web provides vast possibilities for I information search and comparisons unconstrained by time and place, which have traditionally restricted consumer search behavior in the physical marketplace. Because of this reduction of search costs, studies have taken the economic perspective in analyzing the efficiency of the electronic market (for example, Brynjolfsson & Smith, 2000) and implications for consumers searching for information online (for example, Hoque & Lohse, 1999; Wu, Ray, Geng & Whinston, 2004). Although none have yet focused strictly on paid search, the implications are probably transferable.This article looks at surveys that compare search cost between online and physical environments. In addition, using search pages resembling Yahoo! paid search result pages in online experiments, we studied the effects of personal and system factors on the number of websites visited and time spent per site.Several reasons suggest that conventional economic theories do not adequately explain consumer online search behavior. First, the fundamental premise of economic theory is that the amount of information search will increase when search costs are reduced. Empirical evidence, however, has not shown such behavior with online shopping. For example, by examining the shopping patterns of online users over time, Johnson et al. (2004) found that the amount of online search is actually quite limited. On average, households visit only 1.2 book sites, 1.3 CD sites and 1.8 travel sites during a month in each product category. Another study by Jansen et a]. (2000) Second, it is cognitive, not physical effort that affects consumers searching for information online. Although physical efforts such as going to stores have been reduced to finger clicks, it is possible that cognitive challenges of interacting with computers and online information exist that potentially limit consumer information search in the electronic marketplace.In addition, the Internet has transformed consumer behavior in two ways: (1) by transforming consumers into online shoppers requiring the use of computers and (2) by transforming physical stores into an online market space that is information technology intensive. In order to understand consumer online search behavior, it is necessary to include the interaction between the combined roles of consumerkomputer user and the information technology provided by the online stores. These factors impose certain search costs on consumers and influence their online search behavior.