Online shopping has become increasingly popular in the past two decades. Yet, despite its popularity, the use of online stores on the African continent pales in comparison to other parts of the world. Moreover, in many economic contexts in Africa and including Ghana, there has been very limited research on the subject of online adoption and in particular, the fundamental factors that can influence its initial adoption, especially among young and relatively educated consumers who constitute the largest demographic group there. We, therefore, make a determined effort to fill this growing knowledge gap by exploring some fundamental factors associated to shop online by young and educated consumers. This exploratory research draws on the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) framework and focuses on five variables of interest namely perceived ease of use, government support infrastructure, and economic considerations about pricing, perceived convenience and use intentions of online retail stores. Evidence collected from 294 research participants provides support for our research propositions Finally, our research contributions and future study directions are considered in the concluding part of the paper.
The advent of the Internet continues to open new frontiers in digital marketing. One visible impact of the Internet in marketing has been the growing increase in online transactions which profits marketers and seemingly satisfies customers. However, in developing countries, the potential of online shopping has not been fully explored, and in some cases, are just non-existent. Lack of online infrastructure has often been attributed to the slower growth in online transactions in Africa, however, the customers’ preparedness and inclination to use the service is ignored. .Against this backdrop, this study seeks to analyze consumers’ propensity to engage in online transactions with a focus on demographic attributes such as age, gender and education. Using customers in Ghana as a case study, key reasons as well as the demographics that fancy online transactions are revealed. The results indicate that delivery problems, poor internet connection, privacy and security issues are some of the reasons preventing customers to shop online
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