Koreans’ behavior toward online shopping : a case study of gmarket.co.kr

Abstract

This research aims to 1) study the formats of Korea’s E-Commerce. 2) study the patterns of Koreans’ online shopping behavior and 3) identify the factors influencing people to make purchases via online shopping using the Korean website “Gmarket” (www.gmarket.com) as a case study. This research acquired data from 125 respondents collected by questionnaire from Koreans who have online shopping experience. The statistics used to analyze the obtained data were frequencies, percentages and means to prove the outcome. This study found that most of respondents were university students with an age range between 20-29 years old, with a monthly income less than 500,000 Won (15,000 Baht) and the highest level of education a Bachelor degree. The major factors influencing consumers’ purchase of online products were the offering of a money back guarantee and the inclusion of a fully detailed product description. Consumers also preferred to purchase products from sellers who offered to return a product if the buyer was not satisfied and those that had a low cost relative to comparable products. Conversely, the factor with the least influence on consumers was website promotion. Testing this hypothesis, the results found that different demographics use of online shopping was influenced at different rates by individual criteria. Women were found to be more concerned about product quality and if they are able to return a product compared to men. It was also found that, as predicted, the prices of Gmarket’s products were more reasonable than general offline stores. The assumption that consumers who have used Gmarket place importance on the benefits of being member compared to consumers who have never use Gmarket, however, did not meet expectations.