Exploring Factors that Influence US Consumers’ International Online Outshopping (IOO) Intentions at E-Tailers in Developing Countries: Propositions

Outshopping, the physical movement of consumers from their local trade area to a neighboring region or oftentimes to a foreign country with the intention to shop for goods, has been well documented in literature (Herrmann and Beik 1968; Lee et al. 2009). An unprecedented access to consumer goods online has further impacted this phenomenon giving rise to International Online Outshopping (IOO), thereby enabling the virtual movement of consumers to distant global marketplaces with the click of a button. With online shopping increasing by the day among US consumers in search of better deals and products on the World Wide Web, online retailers (referred to as e-tailers from now on) in developing countries are successfully leveraging this opportunity to target these consumers effectively. The resulting IOO effect may leave domestic US retailers, both online and offline, with loss of sales from these outshoppers. Though studies addressing cross-border outshopping exist (Piron 2002), international outshopping through the Internet has been hardly examined. The purpose of this chapter is to identify and develop testable propositions of factors related to US consumers’ intention to engage in IOO at e-tailers in developing countries. This study focuses on exploring factors influencing US consumers’ IOO at developing countries’ e-tailers only, because factors pertaining to other countries’ e-tailers might be different (Lee et al. 2009).