Indian Journal of Economics and Development

Volume 12 (1a): 37-41

April, 2016
DOI: 10.5958/2322-0430.2016.00032.9
www.soed.in

Demographic Profile of Online Shoppers: An Overview

Prateek Kalia*

Department of Research Innovation and Consultancy, I.K Gujral Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar-Kapurthala
Highway, Near Pushpa Gujral Science City, Kapurthala-144601

*
Corresponding author: rs.pkalia@ptu.ac.in

Received: February 22, 2016 Accepted: March 10, 2016

ABSTRACT
This review starts with a premise that numerous previous studies have used demographic profile of the online shopper to
comprehend difference in their online buying behavior. Taking above reason in account an exhaustive literature review
of the relevant studies has been undertaken to understand the effect of demographic variables on online buying behavior.
It was observed that online shoppers are mostly male, well educated, young, professionals and have an above average
disposable household income. However, marital status had no significant effect, except in categories like hardware and
technology. The results from this study will be useful for researchers and marketers to appropriately segment, target and
position their business for maximum output.

Keywords
Online shopping, demographics

JEL Codes
M15, M31, M37, O33

INTRODUCTION market, where price, cost, and quality information is

In the era of e-commerce businesses should identify
and understand customers’ motivation to leverage the
prospects of being on web (Heijden et al., 2003).
Shoppers are driven by different motivations and respond
differentially to various marketing messages (Moe, 2003).
For example, some customers may actively or
purposefully hunt for product information while visiting
a webstore or may casually browse for enjoyment. This
difference can be attributed in a way to customer’s
demographics and these variables offer valuable insights
into ‘who consumers are’ and ‘what they need’ (Phang
et al., 2010). There have been studies which established
how consumer demographics can influence use of
internet, information search and purchase decisions Ahuja
et al., 2003), adoption of online shopping (Li et al., 1999)
and consumers’ needs and preferences Joines et al.,
2003; Rohm and Swaminathan, 2004).
During initial years of e-commerce, marketers and
economist expected that it will create a perfect Bertrand
equally distributed, with vast numbers of potential buyers
and sellers. Initial phase of this era was mixed business
success with significant revenue growth and customer
usage, but low profit margins. However the initial e-
commerce era failed to fulfill economists’ visions of the
perfect Bertrand market and friction-free commerce
(Cambini et al., 201 and Laudon and Traver, 2002).
Therefore, it is important for this booming market to
segment, target and position before further expansion,
and it calls for mapping the potential customers in order
to bridge the gap of market imperfection (Jaman, 2012).
There have been shortage of generalization, which
limits the utility of demographic variables to online
merchants for customer segmentation and personalization
purposes. Therefore exhaustive literature review of the
relevant studies has been undertaken to understand the
effect of demographic variables on online buying behavior.
LITERATURE REVIEW
White and Manning (1998) reported relationship

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 Indian J Econ Dev 12 (1a): April 2016
between consumer attitudes toward a commercial WWW
site and likelihood of purchase as well as demographic
factors which are related to online purchasing behavior
of food and drink products.
Pereira (1998) noticed that moderate education will
serve to reinforce status quo and increase resistance to
change whereas an individual with advance education will
challenge existing norms and show less resistance to
change. Therefore more education will lead to greater
acceptance of shopping at the electronic malls. Similarly
a person who is more open-minded, venturesome,
cosmopolitan in outlook, socially mobile, self-confident,
mature the consumer, he will show greater tendency to
shop at electronic malls.
Bellman et al. (1999) concluded that demographics
have slight influence that is, a person with higher income,
education, and age is more likely to buy online or more
online transactions. Similarly, Chen et al. 2002) observed
that most of the early adopters of online shopping are
more likely to be well educated with higher household
incomes.
Li et al. (1999) proposed and tested a model of
consumer online buying behavior which posits that
consumer online buying behavior is affected by
demographics, channel knowledge, perceived channel
utilities, and shopping orientations. Findings 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.
Bhatnagar et al. (2000) ascertained the influence of
demographics on risk aversion and found those older
consumers were more open to purchasing on the Internet,
whereas the effect of gender was mixed. Male have
increased probability of purchase in the product categories
like hardware software, and electronics etc, where men
have greater experience. But in categories such as food,
beverages and clothing the effect of being male was
significantly negative. Marital status had no significant
effect, except hardware category where marital status
did have a significant effect. They suggested segmentation
on the basis of gender, marital status, and age. However,
such segmentation needs to be tailored for each product
category.
Raijas and Tuunainen (2001) observed that typical
customers patronizing electronic grocery store EGS) in
Finland were wealthy dual-career families with small
children, who live around large cities and size of the
household is an important factor.
Case et al. (2001) conducted online survey on 425
undergraduate and MBA students and found that Internet
38
knowledge, income, and education level are powerful
predictors of Internet purchases among university
students. From CRM perspective they suggested that e-
tailers are likely to achieve the greatest payoff from
building relationships with upper division and graduate
students with above average levels of disposable income
and Internet knowledge.
Kim and Lim (2001) surveyed on Korean consumers
with respect to perceived importance of and satisfaction
with Internet shopping. Their sample was highly skewed
toward the highly educated. Segment of individuals with
a higher level of education often shows strong purchase
intention due to their higher income.
Vrechopoulos et al. ( 2001) developed profiles of
consumers who have already conducted shopping through
the Internet and of those who are interested to adopt
Internet shopping as an innovation and found that internet
shoppers are mostly male, fall in 25-44 age group,
educated graduation and post-graduation. single and
professionals with high monthly income. They shop online
to save time and to get wide product variety at
comparative low price.
Sin and Tse (2002) proposed a model of Internet
shopping behavior and postulated that consumer Internet
Table 1: Studies related to online buying behavior and
demographics
Demographics Related studies
variables
Education Basahih, 2013; Bellman et al., 1999; Case
et al., 2001; Chen et al., 2002; Kim and
Lim, 2001; Li et al., 1999; Pereira, 1998;
Sin and Tse, 2002; Vrechopoulos et al.,
2001.
Age  Bellman et al., 1999; Bhatnagar et al.,
2000; C ase et al., 2001; Raijas and
Tuunainen, 2001; Sin and Tse, 2002;
Vrechopoulos et al., 2001; White and
Manning, 1998.
Gender Bae and Lee, 2011; Bhatnagar et al., 2000;
Cha, 2011; Davis et al., 2009, 2014, 2016;
Garbarino and Strahilevitz, 2004; Hasan,
2010; Hsu, 2013; Park et al., 2009;
Richard et al., 2010; Sin and Tse, 2002;
Swilley and Goldsmith, 2013; Zhang and
Prybutok, 2003.
Family income Bellman et al., 1999; Case et al., 2001;
Chen et al., 2002; Kim et al., 2000; Kim
and Lim, 2001; Koivumäki, 2001; Li et al.,
1999; Lohse et al., 2000; Raijas and
Tuunainen, 2001; Ramaswami and Strader,
2000; Sin and Tse, 2002; Vrechopoulos et
al., 2001.
Occupation
Kim and Lim, 2001; Raijas and Tuunainen,
2001; Vrechopoulos et al., 2001.
Marital status Bhatnagar et al., 2000; Kim and Lim, 2001;
Vrechopoulos et al., 2001.
 Kalia: Demographic profile of online shoppers: An overview
shopping behavior is affected by consumers’
demographic, psychographic, attitudinal and experiential
factors. They found that Internet buyers tend to be male,
well educated, with a higher income and mainly in the
age bracket between 21 and 30 years.
Garbarino and Strahilevitz (2004) established that
women perceive a higher level of risk in online purchasing
than men. However a site recommendation by a friend
can reduce perceived risk and increase willingness to buy
online among women than men.
Davis et al. (2009) found significant relationship
between online retail shopping attitudes, online gender
and purchase intention for males. Females prefer offline
shopping whereas online shopping is oriented towards
males.
The results of study conducted by Park et al. (2009)
show that, compared to males, females search more
product information including customer reviews and
prefer using an assistant agent more while shopping
online. Zhang and Prybutok 2003) applied Technology
Acceptance Model TAM) to address consumers’ online
purchasing intentions to study the effect of gender as a
moderating variable on purchase intention.
Hasan (2010) discovered significant gender
differences in three attitudinal components cognitive,
affective and behavioral. He found that largest gender
difference is in the cognitive attitude, indicating that
females value the utility of online shopping less than their
male counterparts.
Richard et al. 2010) probed the influence of internet
experience and web atmospherics on consumer online
behavior and deciphered that men and women differ in
web navigation behavior, with men engaging in less
exploratory behavior and developing less website
involvement than women. They also observed that
entertainment, challenge, and effectiveness of information
content were the key drivers of website attitudes across
the two sexes.
The results of Bae and Lee (2011) show that the
effect of online consumer reviews on purchase intention
is stronger for females than males. (Cha, 2011) also found
social norm and gender are the two significant factors
that affect intention to purchase virtual items.
Koivumäki (2001) constructed an income variable
based on a question about the respondents’ occupations.
Occupation was measured using several categories, which
were further transformed into ‘income categories’ based
on the monthly occupational average salaries. Strong
statistically significant positive relationship of income and
customer satisfaction to the value of the purchases made
was observed.
Hsu (2013) observed that female college students
scored significantly higher on aesthetic and social clothing
39
values than male college students, when they purchased
casual clothing by Internet shopping in Taiwan. Few
research studies discovered that online gender for females
has a strong mediating effect across all product categories
on online utilitarian shopping motivation and purchase
intentions. For males it is their offline gender that has a
strong mediating effect (Davis et al., 2016). However
some researchers concluded that there is no online-gender
effect on hedonic shopping motivation and purchase
intentions Davis et al., 2014).
Swilley and Goldsmith (2013) found that there is
no difference between the sexes in terms of shopping
online for the holidays. Both genders were likely to shop
online on Cyber Monday. However, women were almost
twice more likely to shop at the mall on Black Friday
than men.
Basahih (2013) revealed that males find online
shopping more pleasing than females. He also found that
respondents who dislike physical shopping and have
proficiency in English language favored e-shopping. He
also discovered that education is correlated with likeliness
to shop online.
CONCLUSIONS
Comprehensive literature review has been undertaken
in this paper to profile online shoppers on the basis of
demographic variables. Observations are summarized
below.
1. Education Online shoppers are well educated and less
resistant to change. They are more open-minded,
venturesome, cosmopolitan in outlook, socially
mobile, self-confident and mature.
2. Age Majority of studies suggested that online shoppers
are young and fall within the age bracket of 21-30
(Sin and Tse, 2002) or 25-44 (Vrechopoulos et al.,
2001). However there have been studies with contrary
findings, suggesting that older consumers are more
open to purchasing on the Internet Bellman et al.,
1999; Bhatnagar et al., 2000).
3. Gender Internet buyers tend to be male than females,
this can be attributed to the fact that women perceive
a higher level of risk and engage in high exploratory
behavior while buying online than men (Park et al.,
2009 and Richard et al., 2010). Women are directed
more towards offline shopping and have utilitarian
shopping motivation (Hsu, 2013). Effect of being
male is significantly positive in categories like
hardware software, and electronics but negative in
categories such as food, beverages and clothing
Bhatnagar et al., 2000).
4. Family income Online shoppers have higher or above
average household/disposable income incomes. While
profiling internet shoppers (Vrechopoulos et al.,
2001) found that average monthly income of online
 Indian J Econ Dev 12 (1a): April 2016

shoppers was GRD300,000-GRD2,000,000. Garbarino, E. and Strahilevitz, M. 2004. Gender differences

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