Study of internet buying behaviour in Indian online fashion industry

Abstract

E- Retail is an emerging trend in India. Over the years, there have been a lot of online retail sites that sell a variety of products like electronics, books, tickets, accessories, services etc. However, online fashion stores have only recently started as compared to the other ecommerce sites. In India, the traditional way of buying clothes is by visiting physical stores, trying on the clothes, getting a proper look and feel of the clothes and then buying the same. However, online fashion stores have begun to disrupt the traditional clothes shopping experience. It is not just limited to clothes, but these online fashion stores offer a complete fashion solution, consumers can not only buy clothes, but also shoes, footwear, bags, purses, wallets etc. with innumerable other fashion accessories. The savings in cost due to the absence of a physical store and other related savings have given the online fashion stores an edge over the physical stores in terms of offering a better price to the customers. Despite all this, online fashion sites are still finding it hard to match the success of the physical stores in these early years of their existence in the country. The consumers of the online fashion stores differ greatly from that of the traditional brick and mortar stores as the buying experience and the purchase decision forming exercises are very different. This brings us to the question at hand, which is, what is the Internet Buying behaviour of a customer of these online fashion stores?. Through this study, we aim to understand the internet buying behavior in the Indian online fashion industry. We aim to understand the factors that lead to attitude formation towards online purchases from these online fashion stores. We also try to understand the drivers behind the frequency and amount spent on these purchases.