Factors Affecting Online Purchase Behavior of Consumers in Bangladesh

The study explored the attributes that affect consumers’ online purchase behavior in Bangladesh. Thirty-one attributes grouped into five categories (Product, Price, Accessibility & convenience, Company website, and Quality issues) are considered in the study. A questionnaire survey of 219 online shoppers has been conducted using non-probabilistic convenient sampling techniques. Foremost attributes noted are buying unavailable products, quality assurance, time saving, selective product purchase, and payment method. Other important factors include delivery time, discounts, geographical accessibility, size/ quantity assurance, response time, flexible shopping hours, and a wide range of product availability. Apart from these there are refund policy, warranty issues, delivery cost, salespeople behavior, relatively high price of certain products, satisfactory delivery system, and inventory availability. The least significant factors include activity of online store pages, smart filtering, and privacy. On the other hand, the non-agreeable significant attributes are personal relationships with owners, availability of used products, and no face-to-face interaction. It is noted that the respondents’ financial risk avoidance is emphasized by their considerations of payment method, discounts, refund policy, warranty issues, delivery cost, high price. As per group indices, the most influencing group in online purchases is quality issues, closely followed by product, accessibility & convenience and price. Comparatively, a less important group is company websites meaning that the consumers are not technophobic.