The relative weights of Internet shopping fundamental objectives: Effect of lifestyle differences

Internet commerce should be viewed as a new way of value creation and provision. To attract consumers to visit Web sites, a critical question is: What are their major concerns in Internet shopping? Nine fundamental objectives to describe the bottom line concerns to Internet consumers have been proposed in the literature. From the perspective of the means-end chain theory and by focusing on the shopping goods, this study proposed that different weights on these nine fundamental concerns are assigned by different lifestyle individuals. Based on the results of a survey of 181 on-line respondents who provided consistent data, this study indicated that privacy, safety, and product quality were the most critical concerns of on-line consumers, contradicting the conventional wisdom that cost and convenience are the key concerns for consumers shopping on-line. Furthermore, for those consumers with active style, privacy factor received significantly more concern than safety and product quality. Respondents who preferred variety and excited lifestyle put more weights on these three Internet fundamental objectives than consumers with other lifestyles. However, principle lifestyle individuals put more weight on other factors, such as shopping enjoyment, environmental impacts, time to receive products, and less weight on cost and convenience. Implications are discussed.