Author(s): Rajbir Singh Sethi, Jaspreet Kaur, Deepti Wadera
Shopping online for fashion products is gaining popularity. Online space acts as a platform for shoppers to communicate. By 2020, E-commerce in India will contribute 25% of all sales and grow to $60 billion in gross merchandising value (GMV) in India’s organized retail sector, as per the May 31 report by Google and consulting firm AT Kearney. E-tailing Will Drive 25 percent of Organized Retail Sales by 2020as per AT Kearney (2016). According to the Pew Research Centre (2010), millennials have been living their lives on the internet. These sites have become an integral part of Millennials lifestyle. Online shopping of Indian Millennial is still not well researched upon, specifically in the product category of fashion apparels. Online purchase intention, thus is a very famous topic of research in India today. Hence this study was undertaken to determine influence of online reviews and product variety on purchase intention of millennials in India. This study identified the factors effecting purchases intention of Millennial on an online fashion store. The objectives of the research were to investigate the relationship between purchase intention of Millennials and their attitude towards word of mouth and product variety available on online fashion apparels shopping sites. Descriptive research was considered and a mailing survey was conducted with 298 millennials who had an access to the Internet in Delhi NCR. Data was collected from the Delhi and National Capital Region (NCR). It was collected online using Google Docs. The hyperlink of the survey questionnaire was posted on Whatsapp, Facebook and social groups for 10 days to invite the online shoppers to participate in the survey. The males and females accounted for 88% and 12% of the respondent’s respectively. About 32% of the respondents were students, 38% were postgraduates and 52% had an annual family income above four lacks. Reliability Test for all the constructs were tested for the consistency with the help of Cronbach alpha. The measurement scales were found to be consistent. An Exploratory Factor Analysis was run on the data. The study discloses that product variety and online reviews are two factors which significantly influence the shaping of online purchase intention especially in the case of online fashion stores. It being evident that online marketing is the way to the future, it is important that online store managers take note of the factors which shape the future online customers’ purchase intentions. Managerial implications are derived for the future for companies who want to understand factors effecting ‘purchases intention’ for online fashion stores. Future studies need to consider the role of demographic variables on the independent variables in order to gain a comprehensive insight on the factors which shape the online purchase intentions. A larger sampling area needs to be considered so that findings are more generalized. The research can be carried out on people in the older age groups. This would be helpful in understanding the issues faced by the older people while shopping online.