Elsevier

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 95, June 2019, Pages 24-30
Computers in Human Behavior

Full length article
Exploring why people spend more time shopping online than in offline stores

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.01.029Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Search effort in an online environment differs from that in an offline environment.

  • Laboratory-based experimental method to imitate real search conditions.

  • The main reason is the difference in perceived search costs and price sensitivity in online.

Abstract

This study investigated reasons for differences in search effort between online and offline environments. To test hypotheses, an experimental method was used to imitate real search conditions in various situations (online: Pchome; offline: Tsann Kuen Co.). We selected two computer, communications, and consumer electronics products as the experimental product. Results indicated that the main reason is the difference in perceived search costs and price sensitivity in online versus offline situations. Understanding reasons for search motivation can help online sellers strategically manipulate these factors to reduce consumers' search effort, thus enhancing the efficiency of consumers' purchase decisions. These results provide future researchers with a direction for related studies to consider the effect of perceived search costs, price sensitivity, and search motivation on search behavior.

Introduction

Information search is a stage of the decision-making process wherein individuals actively collect and incorporate information from both internal and external sources, before making a choice. Individuals engage in this behavior to satisfy their need for information (Browne et al., 2007, Hong et al., 2016, pp. 120–140). Before purchasing products or services, consumers search for and collect relevant information and then compare sellers based on this information to make the best purchase decision (Park, Chung, & Yoo, 2009). Consumers are able to make good decisions by performing extensive research; however, this does not mean that consumers never stop searching for new information. This is because consumers need to pay attention, use their perception, and make efforts to obtain relevant data or information during the search process, which is referred to as “search effort” (Beatty and Smith, 1987, Browne et al., 2007, Hu et al., 2007).

Search effort is the amount of effort invested in information search behavior. Information brings benefits but also entails costs, such as the expenditure of monetary, temporal, mental, psychological, and behavioral efforts (Kulviwat et al., 2004, Peterson and Merino, 2003, Schmidt and Spreng, 1996). Therefore, consumers involved in a search process place a measure of cognitive value on the relevant information they acquire. Once the marginal value of additional information becomes equivalent to the marginal costs of acquiring that information, consumers halt their search behavior (Kannan, 2017, Klein and Ford, 2003, Kulviwat et al., 2004; Lynch & Ariely, 2000).

Consumers presently use the Internet to search for information and are expected to do so increasingly in the future (Afsar, Qureshi, Rehman, & Bangash, 2011). In contrast to offline shopping, consumers in an online shopping environment have lower search costs because of reduction in the costs of negotiating traffic, spending time, and using energy to compare product prices. Therefore, the online environment helps consumers obtain price and product information from various sellers more rapidly and easily than does the offline environment (Park et al., 2009, Shin and Biocca, 2017, Yaylı and Bayram, 2012).

In an online shopping situation, consumers spend just as much time on purchases as they would offline because of their need to continually search for information. For example, consumers may search for and compare information online for approximately one hour on the first day and then spend several more hours searching for and comparing information the next day. Even on the third and fourth days, they may not make any purchase decisions. However, in an offline shopping situation, consumers spend a few hours on price comparisons and then complete the purchase process. Thus, the time and energy spent on information gathering are actually not decreased in the online environment relative to the offline environment.

For a given product, different online sellers provide nearly the same information because of information transparency (Granados et al., 2012, Kung et al., 2002, Ratchford, 2009). Hence, even if consumers spend extensive time researching the product and its price, information search results will not vary drastically. However, consumers are still motivated to continue searching for more information with every new online shopping process. Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate reasons for consumers' high search motivation, leading to high search efforts online. This can provide further insights into influencing factors related to online search behavior and search motivation and provide practical suggestions for planning an online marketing mix strategy. Perceived search costs and price sensitivity are two concepts highlighted in this study and are discussed in the rest of the paper.

Many studies on the field of information search have investigated the relationship between search costs and search motivation (Punj and Staelin, 1983, Schmidt and Spreng, 1996, Srinivasan and Ratchford, 1991). Search motivation refers to the desire of people to collect and process information by expending effort. According to the cost–benefit model for information seeking, when consumers perceive the marginal cost of acquiring information to be higher than the marginal benefit, they may reduce their search intention, which in turn lowers their motivation to search for information (Kannan, 2017, Kim et al., 2012, Punj and Staelin, 1983, Srinivasan and Ratchford, 1991); when consumers perceive the information search cost to be lower than the search benefit, their incentive to search for more information may increase. The present study suggests that because the online environment has the characteristics of information richness and easy access to information, consumers perceive the information search cost to be lower in the online environment than in the offline environment. Therefore, as per the cost–benefit framework, when consumers search for the same amount and same quality of information, they have a relatively higher search motivation and are willing to pay more in terms of search effort in an online environment than in an offline environment.

The information search process not only increases consumers' product knowledge but also influences their price sensitivity (Huber et al., 1986, Rao and Sieben, 1992). Price sensitivity refers to the extent to which consumers perceive and respond to price changes (Wakefield & Inman, 2003). Each consumer has a different price threshold in mind when searching for product-related information (Kalyanaram and Little, 1994, Shin, 2010, Sirvanci, 1993). When consumers have a low price threshold, they may have a narrow range of acceptable prices and are sensitive to price variations (Kalyanaram and Little, 1994, Sirvanci, 1993), leading to strong search motivation based on the range of acceptable prices. This also means that consumers will continue to search for product-related information to obtain information on lower prices (Wakefield & Inman, 2003) and are likely to pay attention to news of price changes and discounts (Sirvanci, 1993). Compared with the offline situation, consumers can obtain more price and product information in less time online (Park et al., 2009, Yaylı and Bayram, 2012), so they believe that the product price is lower online than offline (Kung et al., 2002, Lo, 2013, Lo et al., 2014). That is, consumers have a narrower range of acceptable prices for a purchase and demonstrate higher price sensitivity and greater search effort in the online situation than in the offline situation.

This study investigated reasons for differences in search effort between online and offline environments. The results indicate that the main reason is the difference in perceived search costs and price sensitivity in online versus offline situations. To identify theoretical implications for online marketing, this study verifies that consumers demonstrate higher search motivation online. The results provide future researchers with a direction for related studies to consider the effect of perceived search costs, price sensitivity, and search motivation on search behavior. Moreover, results related to electronic commerce sellers indicated that consumers have varying perceived search costs and price sensitivity in online versus offline shopping situations. Understanding reasons for search motivation can help online sellers strategically manipulate these factors to reduce consumers' search effort, thus enhancing the efficiency of consumers' purchase decisions.

Section snippets

Perceived costs of information search

Information search can be categorized as internal and external information search (Hu et al., 2007, Liu et al., 2015). Internal information search refers to consumers searching their own memory for information. External information search refers to an external search, especially when an individual has no prior knowledge of a product or service and needs to uncover information regarding that product or service. People usually perform an internal search at the start of their information search.

Procedure

This study examined whether perceived search costs are lower in online situations than in offline ones to evaluate whether price sensitivity in an online situation is higher than in an offline situation and to clarify the influence of perceived search costs and price sensitivity on search motivation (Fig. 1). To test the hypotheses, this study used an experimental method to imitate real search conditions in various situations (online and offline environments).

Participants were recruited through

Results

To test H1, which predicted that consumers' perceived information search costs vary between virtual and brick-and-mortar markets, this study adopted an independent sample t-test. Participants reported significantly lower perceived search costs in virtual markets than in brick-and-mortar markets (recording pen: t = 2.57, p < 0.01; laptop: t = 14.71, p < 0.01). Thus, H1 was supported(see Table 1).

A significant difference in price sensitivity was noted between virtual markets and brick-and-mortar

Discussion

In an online situation, if consumers are interested in a specific product, they will compare until they feel they have adequate information to make a decision that they feel is reasonable. The features of information richness and easy access to information should accelerate consumers' purchase decisions. However, it makes consumers spend more time and energy on searching for and comparing information, thus delaying the purchase decision. The goal of this study was to develop and test the

Yu-Ping Chiu is an Assistant Professor of Advertising at the Chinese Culture University, Taiwan. He received his Ph.D in Marketing in 2014. His research interests include online word-of-mouth, electronic commerce, and computer-mediated communication. He has published articles in Online Information Review, Internet Research, Computers in Human Behavior, Information Development, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.

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    Yu-Ping Chiu is an Assistant Professor of Advertising at the Chinese Culture University, Taiwan. He received his Ph.D in Marketing in 2014. His research interests include online word-of-mouth, electronic commerce, and computer-mediated communication. He has published articles in Online Information Review, Internet Research, Computers in Human Behavior, Information Development, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.

    Shao-Kang Lo is a Professor of Marketing at the Chinese Culture University, Taipei, Taiwan, at Department of International Trade and Master of Science in Marketing. His research interests include online consumer behavior and electronic commerce. He has published articles in Computers in Human Behavior, Internet Research, TECHNOVATION, Behavior & Information Technology, Online Information Review, Journal of Consumer Behavior, Service Science, and CyberPsychology & Behavior.

    Ai-Yun Hsieh is an Assistant Professor for Marketing at Chinese Culture University, Taipei, Taiwan, at Master of Science in Marketing, Her research interests include online advertising, Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), Online Pricing Strategy, Online Auction, and Technology Electronic Products Usage Behavior. She has published article in Online Information Review, Computers in Human Behavior, International Journal of Electronic Commerce Studies, and Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.

    Yujong Hwang is an Associate Professor in the School of Accountancy and Management Information Systems at the DePaul University. He is also a Professor (International Scholar) at the Kyung Hee University in South Korea. He received PhD in Business from the University of South Carolina, and his research focuses on e-commerce, knowledge management, and human-computer interaction. He was a Program Co-Chair of AMCIS 2013 and has published over 60 articles in the refereed journals including Journal of Management Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, and Computers in Human Behavior.

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