The Impact of Perceived Channel Utilities, Shopping Orientations, and Demographics on the Consumer's Online Buying Behavior

This study proposed and tested a model of consumer online buying behavior. The model posits that consumer online buying behavior is affected by demographics, channel knowledge, perceived channel utilities, and shopping orientations. Data were collected by a research company using an online survey of 999 U.S. Internet users, and were cross-validated with other similar national surveys before being used to test the model. Findings of the study indicated that education, convenience orientation, experience orientation, channel knowledge, perceived distribution utility, and perceived accessibility are robust predictors of online buying status (frequent online buyer, occasional online buyer, or non-online buyer) of Internet users. Implications of the findings and directions for future research were discussed.