Project Synopsis

CUSTOMERS ATTITUDE TOWARD ON - LINE RETAILING... A Virtual Shopping Experience

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The success of any project study depends upon a number of factors among which the proper guidance from the experts in the industry and a faculty plays an important role. I take this opportunity to convey my sincere thanks and gratitude to all those who have directly or in directly helped and contributed towards the completion of this project. I take here a great opportunity to express my sincere and deep sense of gratitude to Lecturer Dr. Shyam Lal kaushal, for giving me an opportunity to work on this project. The support & guidance from sir, was of great help & it was

extremely valuable. I would like to express my gratitude to sir for his constant support and encouragement.

Ayush Sharma

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Index

Abstract Introduction Chapter 1: Online Retailing for Millennium and Beyond Chapter 2: Retail Market Evolution in India Chapter 3: Evolution of E-Retailing in India Chapter 4: Analyzing E-Retail Opportunities Chapter 5: On line Process-Merchandising & Criterias Chapter 6: Consumer attitudes towards Internet shopping Chapter 7: Pricing Strategies Chapter 8: Success factors in E-Retail Chapter 9: Major Players in Indian Online retail Industry. Introduction of FlipKart an emerging online shopping avenue Chapter 10: Multi Channel Integration & its implication for Retail Web sites Chapter 11: Challenges for automatic home supply replenishment in ERetailing Chapter 12: Return Policy A Vital Process for E-Retailers Conclusion Bibliography

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Introduction
With rapid growth of the Internet and globalization of market, the retail sector has become an increasingly competitive and dynamic business environment. Business and marketing activities are affected by the invent of Internet technologies and the Internet is revolutionizing commerce, marketing, retailing, shopping and advertising activities of products and services. There are several attractive attributes of Internet to not only ecustomers but also companies on time and money saving, communicate, convenience, easy accessibility, selection from a wide range of alternatives, and the availability of information for making decisions and all marketing activities can be performed via the Internet efficiently. In the era of globalization, companies are using the Internet technologies to reach out to valued customers and to provide a point of contact 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. E-commerce and e-marketing are the two important terms in the new Internet-based business domain. E-commerce can be defined as a way of conducting business by companies and customers performing electronic transactions through the Internet. E-marketing, (also known as Internet Marketing, Web Marketing, and Online Marketing etc.) can be defined as the promotion of products or services through the Internet whereas; e-tailing can be defined as selling products and services by using the Internet. Wang (2002) has provided a broad definition of e-tailing by defining it as the selling of goods and services to the consumer market via the internet. According to Turban et al. (2006), e-tailing is defined as retailing conducted online, over the internet. In general, the activities of e-tailing encompass three main activities. They are: (i) a product search facility (often referred as a product evaluation or information gathering facility), (ii) an on-line purchase function and (iii) a product delivery capability (Kolesar and Galbraith, 2000). Like general marketing activities of an organization,
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E-tailers have also stick to the same 4Ps of marketing activities. They are: Product, Price, Promotion and Place. With regard to the right products, e-stores can offer a larger spectrum of product offering like traditional retailers in categories ranging from electronics to shoes. E-store is the Internet version of stores that set up electronic storefronts on the Internet. It provides all kinds of products and renders service to the ecustomer at the click of a mouse button and makes money by selling products directly to e-customers. When it comes to the right price, e-stores can be operated with low profit margin because of the lower cost and higher sales volume. As for the right promotion, e-stores have unlimited direct marketing, advertising and selling opportunities. Finally, with regard to the right place; the location of e-stores is not important in the Internet and ecustomer can connect and purchase products and services from the Internet at any time and place. According to Lim and Dubinsky (2004), estore is defined as a commercial web site on which e-customers can shop and make purchases. According to Rao (1999), e-commerce offers increased market activity for retailers in the form of growing market access and information and decreased operating and procurement costs. The consumers can gain better prices due to the competition and also can enrich their knowledge on goods and services. According to a survey conducted by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB), the e-commerce market in India has garnered Rs. 9210 crore in 2007-08, whereas e-tailing market was only about Rs. 1150 crore). In general, etailing industry, from a business perspective offers an opportunity to cater to consumers across geographies, no operational timings, unlimited shelf space and all this with miniscule quantity of infrastructure. For a country like India, the growth in the e-tailing market is driven by the need to save time by urban India. Besides with over 2.5 billion internet users, access to

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internet has also played an important role in growing the markets. Consumers decision-making process has considerably changed with the introduction of the Internet as an alternative channel for shopping. The new wave of consumerism coupled with increasing urbanization and burgeoning middle class with paradigm shifts in their demographic and psychographic dynamics have driven consumers frequently to use retail websites to search for product information and/or make a purchase of products. In India, the shift from physical stores to e-store takes place due to the in-adequacy of time of consumers and the relatively high disposable incomes as well as due to a high need for labor-saving goods and services (Gehrt, Yale and Lawson 1996). Again on the recent report of Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the Indian e-commerce market will gallop at an impressive growth rate of 47 per cent to over Rs 46,000 crore in the year 2011. Comprising about 81 per cent of the total e-commerce in the country, the online travel market, which includes booking rail and air tickets, hotel accommodations and tour packages, is estimated to grow by 50 per cent and touch Rs 37,890 crore by December, 2011. E-tailing sector in India is expected to grow by 34 per cent and touch Rs 2,650 crore in the year 2011. (http://www.deccanherald.com/content/147517/india-ecommerce-market-cross.html). Bullish on the growth prospects of the online market, the Indian retail market has observed that online spending has been skewed toward certain products in e-tailing. E-tailing, which includes purchases of durable products such as electronic items, home and kitchen appliances, as well as personal items like apparels and jewellery, constitutes 8 per cent of the overall ecommerce market in India. The top E-tailers in India are indiatimes.com, fabmart.com, rediffshopping.com. They have managed to retain their lead due to innovative business strategies, supply chain model and changing urban lifestyles.

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Methodology
Different techniques such as Questionnaires, Interviews and Observations, etc. have been used by earlier studies for investigating attitudes in online shopping among different demographic regions, varying age groups, tastes, expectance, interests, etc. For this study, a questionnaire based survey design is chosen as it allows comparatively huge population simply and efficiently. Data has been gathered from the sample population of 100 students, 50 housewives, and 50 persons from general public through questionnaire-based survey. The questionnaire was presented in a straight line to target groups of different programs of the university. This is a survey-based research and is carried out through a questionnaire, which was circulated among 200 students of different programs, 50 housewives, and 50 persons from general public through questionnaire-based survey. The questionnaire was based on 5point likert scale. They asked to point out the degree of their agreement or disagreement on a statement ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree). First part consists of demographic evaluation using Basic Questions about name , Sex, Age, Occupation, Income etc. Second part consists of perceived knowledge about internet. It represents inclination for the usage of Internet for shopping online. Third part of the questionnaire consists of issues involved in uncertainty and objectives to shop online. The physiographic, emotional, social, and demographic risks and experiences affiliated with online shopping. Other questions consist of Internet benefits or damages, which includes personal Internet support, privacy, flow of data and training among securing the personal data. It has to examine four groups of variables (i.e., customer attributes, appropriate factors, perceived uncertainty factors, and medium/control advance factors) that forecast three types of online shopping vacillation (i.e., overall hesitation, shopping cart rejection, and uncertainty at the final payment stage). We found that different sets of interruption causes are related to different phases of online shopping uncertainty. The study concludes with suggestion for various delay-reduction devices to help consumers close their online decision hesitation. The questionnaire is distributed among the people of different demographics. Students of HP universities and housewives from Summerhill. This ensured the validity of the responses and research.

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Literature Review There are a number of research works have been done by researchers but only a few has been given, related to the paper. Brown (1987) has suggested that the costs of a retail format refer to consumers costs. Consumers incur non-monetary costs - time, effort and psychological costs as well as monetary costs. Savings in non-monetary costs are especially emphasized by non-store formats. Their appeal to consumers has been the ease and convenience of shopping, freed from location and other constraints. According to Rao (1999), E-commerce offers increased market activity for retailers in the form of growing market access and information and decreased operating and procurement costs. The consumers can gain better prices due to the competition and also can enrich their knowledge on goods and services. Zhang and von Dran (2000) have found that certain aesthetic elements of a web-site are considered as purchase motivators, while other aesthetic elements serve as hygienic factors (i.e., necessities) in purchase decisions from e-retailers. The colour and background images of web-page are also found to affect consumer choice.Tractinsky and Rao (2001) have argued that computer users, particularly those who seek online substitutes to the physical shopping experience, would value aesthetic designs just like consumers of other commodities. Ratchford et al. (2001) have told that through Internet, consumers can gather information about merchandise and they compare a product across suppliers at a low cost. They also can effectively analyze the offerings and easily locate a low price for a specified product. Eroglu et al. (2001) have advocated that the most important thing in the traditional retailing is physical store setting. According to them, it is largely determined by the cost of real estate and the various physical objects required creating different sounds, aromas, colours and lighting. The electronic retail growth of Indian market as estimated by Euro-monitor report, has already touched Rs. 2700 crores in the year 2010 from Rs. 400 crores in 2005 .in 104 Online constraints tend to be related to the screen resolution and the hardware that exists at the consumer end of the channel. The hedonic factors in designing the web-site interface can be enhanced with symbolic, nonverbal elements, which can be created by images, colours, fonts and videos and music. Zeithaml (2002) has defined that the success of e-tailing depends on the efficient web site design, effective shopping and prompt delivery. The other e-store services are delivery on real time , return and replacement process, period of filling out online orders form, speed of response time to e-customers queries. Kim and Lee (2002) have suggested that the design of e-store influences consumers access to

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e-store. In the e-store, website design, design of product and service comparison and information, time to complete online order form, easy of searching product and service, screen layout, screen complexity, page composition, information retrieval methods, information display, use of colour and background, assistance to the user and speed of accessing the e-store are notable factors attracting e-customers. Doolin (2004) has specifically pointed out that e-tailing is the sale of products and services to individual customers. According to him, the definition of e-tailing encompasses the sales of products or services online. Rabinovich (2004) and Cao and Zhao (2004) have identified the challenges of e-tailing industry. This challenge begins with the response time of the web-server; moves to the amount of time the customer must wait until the order ships, and also includes the time the shipping process takes. Delone and Reif (2004) have found that at present customers are more likely to continue shopping online when they have a greater experience of online shopping. It is also found that young adults have a more positive attitude towards online buying. Lavie and Tractinsky (2004) have expressed the expressive aesthetics of web-sites that convey a sense of creativity and uniqueness. This type of aesthetics is likely to serve an important role when shopping for specialty goods. The expressive design is relevant to specialty goods because of their unique characteristics that emphasised the shopping experience. Bauer et al., (2006) have compared the services of online retail service vs. traditional retail services. They have identified that the online retail services are broken into two rather distinct phases: the client interaction phase taking place online and the fulfilment phase taking place offline. They also have suggested that web-site quality is a matter of delivering both hedonic and utilitarian elements.

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List of References www.google.com www.wikipedia.com www.slideshare.com www.filesguru.com

Ernst and Young (2000). Global Online Retailing. [Online], [Retrieved May 27, 2010] Kim, S.Y., Lim,Y. J. (2001): Consumers' Perceived Importance of and Satisfaction with Internet Shopping, Electronic Markets, vol.11, Smith, H., Milberg, S. and Burke, S. (1996) Information privacy: measuring individuals' concerns about organizational practices, MIS Quarterly, 20, 2, 167-196. Malhotra, N., Kim, S. S., and Agarwal, J. 2004. Internet Users Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC),

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