What’s in Your Cart? Infleunce of Individual Differences on Product Class Specific Shopping

In this paper we propose a model of differences in individual characteristics that influence the online purchase pattern for different product classes. We suggest that individual differences determine the kind of products purchased online and the three product classes that we use to test our model are: search, experience and credence products. Specifically, we examine the differences in leadership orientation, innovativeness, brand loyalty and price consciousness as drivers of product class purchase. We also suggest that transactional risk perception will influence the purchase of each product class differently. Income, age and gender are also included in the model as control variables. We use secondary data source to test the proposed model. Each product class is represented by three products each. Structural equation modeling technique is used for model analysis. Since our outcome variable is categorical robust ML estimation method in EQS software is used to deal with the problem of non- normality. Further, we divide the data into two parts by random selection process. The first part is used for prediction and the second is used for validation of our findings. Results suggest that leadership oriented consumers are likely to buy search products online. Experience and search product buyers are likely to be more brand conscious than credence product buyers. And lastly, credence product buyers are more price conscious buyers than experience or search product buyers in online purchases. We conclude by suggesting marketing implications of our findings and acknowledging the limitations of this paper.