Abstract
The study focused on determining the influence of internet retail-service quality on the ability of consumers to make a repeat purchase. The originality of this study was assured through the collection and analysis of primary data from the selected respondents. The objective of this research was determining the influence of internet-retail service quality on consumer repurchase intention. The research used quantitative methods.
The data was analyzed using mathematical tools. The findings revealed that internet-retail service quality plays a critical role in defining the level of customers’ satisfaction whenever they make online purchases. According to the findings, the level of customers’ satisfaction with online purchases is likely to influence their perception of this new retail platform. The perception they develop influences their ability to repurchase products using online platforms. For that reason, online retailers should develop a proper understanding of the factors that influence service quality in the online platform.
Introduction
Electronic commerce, popularly known as e-commerce, has gained popularity in modern society as the emerging technologies continue to define the way of life. About two decades ago, brick-and-mortar was the primary mode through which consumers would purchase what they needed. They had to physically visit the retail outlet, identify what they need, make the required payments, and pick items from retailers.
However, the brick-and-mortar model of business is giving way to a new model, the e-commerce model. Increasing developments in the field of information and communication technology have created a platform where people can sell and buy various products online. When Amazon.com started its operations focusing on selling and renting books, many people did not understand the concept properly. However, the events that followed have demonstrated that the concept was well-timed and very appropriate in modern society. Today, the Internet retail industry has experienced massive growth not only in the developed but also in developing countries. A report by Agarwal, Selen, Roos, and Green (2015) showed that in 2014, online shopping accounted for 7.5% of the total retail expenditure, estimated to be about $1.67 trillion.
In New Zealand, the internet retail industry has become very popular, especially among the middle working-class people. Major retail outlets that traditionally operated brick-and-mortar stores were forced to offer their products in the online platform to expand their geographic reach and lower their costs of operations. As Azevedo (2013) puts it, it has become clear that e-commerce will soon be dominant over the brick-and-mortar model.
According to a report by Galliers, Kim, Shin, Ryoo, and Kim (2012), internet retail industry has achieved massive success around the world because of the changing socio-economic and political forces. The middle class in both the developed and developing economies play a significant role in the development of the economy. They spend most of their time at work, seeking to achieve career development. In modern society, both men and women find themselves in positions where they are family breadwinners.
It means that in most families, the time available to visit shopping malls has been increasingly shrinking as the parents spend most of their time at work. Internet retail industry came at a time when the middle class and the rich needed it the most. It offered them a new shopping experience where the entire process of making purchases can be made at the comfort of one’s living room, in the office, or any other place as long as one has internet connectivity (Ballantyne & Packer, 2013).
Despite the growing popularity of this new retail platform, there have been concerns among the customers about several issues. The increasing cases of cyber fraud, delays in the delivery of products, and delivery of wrong goods are some of the issues that customers have raised in the recent past. The poor quality of the services, which are sometimes offered to them, minimizes their preferences to use this platform (Baack, Harris, & Baack, 2013). Internet retail service quality (IRSQ) defines how well customers achieve satisfaction when using these services.
Internet retail industry has attracted the attention of many scholars around the world, and it was not difficult accessing the relevant literature needed for the study. However, a careful review of the literature exposed a gap in the existing knowledge that needs to be addressed. It is not clear how internet retail service quality affects consumer purchase intention in New Zealand. It is important to note that the socio-economic, geopolitical, and technological environment in New Zealand is different from that in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, or China. The fact that studies conducted in these foreign countries exist does not mean that they can universally be applicable. In some societies, people may register their dissatisfaction but continue to use services that offer them a value below what they desire.
On the other hand, in some cultures, when people are dissatisfied with a given service, they completely avoid it and look for an alternative. That is why it is important to conduct this research in the local context to gain a better understanding of the influence of the internet retail service quality on consumer repurchase intention. The study aims at determining the relationship between consumers’ perception of IRSQ and their repurchase intentions. The following are the research objective that should be achieved by the end of this study.
- To determine the influence of internet retail service quality on consumer repurchases intention.
To achieve the above objective, the researcher developed several questions that were to be answered using both primary and secondary data. The following are the research questions:
- Which of the dimensions of IRSQ (i.e., performance, access, security, sensation, and information) is more dominant in determining the consumers’ perception of IRSQ?
- Does the perception of customers positively correlate with their online repurchase intentions?
- What sorts of subjective factors influence one’s perception of IRSQ average Internet use, online shopping frequency, gender, age, and income)?
- Do the same subjective factors influence consumers’ repurchase intention on the Internet?
It was critical to come up with an effective methodology that could be used in collecting and analyzing data to respond to the above research questions. The research used a quantitative research method. Stratified sampling method was used to select a sample of 305 participants. Most of the sampled participants were the middle-class workers and local tertiary students within Auckland city.
This research project is very important because it focuses on analyzing the factors that affect growth in e-commerce within the country. As a developed economy, New Zealand is one of the countries where internet retail industry has had major impacts on the way people undertake their purchases.
However, it is worrying that the services offered in this new platform have not fully met the expectations of the consumers. This study will identify the factors that have led to the limited level of customers’ dissatisfaction and what can be done to address the issue. The study can help the players in the online retail industry to understand the current weaknesses of their products and what can be done to address them. The outcome of this research will help in promoting e-commerce in the country by making it a safer, more reliable and more effective way of shopping for customers than the brick-and-mortar model.
In this paper, the first chapter is the introduction that provides a comprehensive background of the research and the objectives that it seeks to achieve. The second chapter is a comprehensive analysis of the existing literature on the topic to help in supporting the primary findings of the research. The third chapter is a detailed discussion of the research methods that were used to collect and analyze the data. The next section of the paper is a list of the references used in the study. The last section of this document is the appendices.
Literature Review
In this chapter, the researcher will conduct a comprehensive review of the literature on this topic. E-commerce is a topic that has attracted massive attention of scholars around the world, and it is important to determine their views before embarking on the primary data collection and analysis. As Blythe (2013) notes, every piece of research should add new concepts to the existing bodies of knowledge.
A researcher should be keen to avoid duplicating information that already exists because doing that will have little meaning when it comes to enhancing knowledge in that particular field. That is why it was important to review the existing literature and identify the gap or concepts, which remain controversial. This chapter is organized into six sections. The first section provides a brief review of the traditional brick-and-mortar stores to remind the readers of how things were before the invention of e-commerce. The second section focuses on the concept of e-commerce and how the transformation from bricks to clicks took place.
The next section looks at the factors that have promoted the transformation from bricks to clicks. The next section looks at the internet retail service quality and how consumers’ repurchase intention is affected by it. The theoretical background of the study then follows the section. The last section of this chapter is a review of the existing gaps in the literature reviewed.
The Traditional Brick-and-Mortar Stores
According to Davis, Demirkan, and Motahari-Nezhad (2014), the retail industry had gone through a significant transformation since man started engaging in barter trade. The brick-and-mortar business model gained massive popularity around the world as the retail industry continued to grow. The emergence of supermarkets was one of the main advancements at the peak of the brick-and-mortar retail industry. It offered shoppers a unique experience where they could make almost all, their regular shopping in one roof. They no longer had to move from one store to another when purchasing groceries.
The leading retailers such as Wal-Mart, Kroger, Metro Ag, and Sears Holdings came up with unique floor plans to ensure that every item that a shopper may want to purchase is properly displayed. Epps and Trebilcock (2013) say that the display designs embraced by most of the supermarkets and mega shops promoted impulse buying. A shopper would visit a retail outlet to purchase a specific item. However, he or she would be faced with a beautiful display of other items, which were not in the shopping list. It was common to find cases where a shopper would spend most of the cash they have in the pocket to purchase items they had not planned for before.
Others would use their credit card to continue purchasing new items to the extent that they would get into huge debts without their knowledge. The retailers benefited a lot from such impulse buying (French & Gordon, 2015). It explains why the stores were so keen on coming up with very appealing displays.
The brick-and-mortar stores were and still are very popular, especially for shoppers who want to assess the items that they intend to purchase. It offered the customers an opportunity to take full control of the shopping experience. They would only engage the shop attendees when they needed direction. This mode of retail remains popular, even in the developed states (Gbadamosi, Bathgate, & Nwankwo, 2013).
Shoppers still prefer having a physical evaluation of the items they intend to purchase, especially the highly involving goods. Major retailers often identify the strategic locations, especially in busy streets and near bus or railway stations where there is high human traffic. Customers can easily get into these retail outlets on their way home and make the necessary purchases. The convenience of the location means a lot in the success of a brick-and-mortar retail outlet (Hardina, 2012). This is so because most of the shoppers have limited time to make their purchases.
The transformation from Brick to Click
The emergence of e-commerce has revolutionized the retail industry all over the world. As more people become connected to the Internet through various devices such as personal computers and Smartphone, a new way through which customers can purchase items they need has emerged. According to Lefebvre (2013), NetMarket and Shopping Network were the first companies to develop a secure web in 1994 that was capable of supporting online retail transactions. As they continued to develop the concept, Amazon.com picked it up in 1995 and started shipping the products to the destinations stated by the customers. eBay also joined this emerging industry in 1995 (Louw, 2012).
One of the biggest challenges that these pioneers of e-commerce faced was the additional cost of delivering products to the customers, especially those who purchased items of less value. At that time, cases of traffic jam were common, and it affected time and the cost of making the deliveries. Amazon.com developed a unique strategy where customers were encouraged to purchase goods worth a given minimum amount and have their goods delivered at their doorsteps. The initial transactions were not very profitable, but this firm came up with ways of cutting costs and improving efficiency in service delivery. The fact that the retailer had no brick-and-mortar retail outlets also helped in cutting down its expenses.
Improvement in the field of information technology and improved means of transport, especially in the air, rail, water, and road transport greatly favoured internet retail industry. As more people got online through various affordable devices, the target customers for online retailers increased. Currently, the internet retail industry is growing rapidly all over the world (Oplatka & Hemsley-Brown, 2012). Online retailers such as Amazon.com and eBay are now operating at a global level. They have collaborated with international couriers such as DHL to help them deliver their products to their international customers through sea or air transport.
According to Moran (2015), internet retail service has gained massive popularity among the rich and the middle class who have limited time to visit the brick-and-mortar stores. Although recent studies suggest that most of the purchases are still made through brick-and-mortar retail model, online purchase is growing rapidly all over the world (Ravens, 2014). It is a clear indication that more people are finding it more convenient to make their purchases through online platforms instead of going to the physical stores. Most of the leading retail outlets in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan, and China have developed websites where their products are easily available to their online customers (Safko, 2013).
It shows that these retailers have realized that e-commerce is the future of the retail industry. Alibaba is an example of a successful online retailer that recently emerged in China (Tate, 2015). The firm is not only popular in China but also in other parts of the world.
Factors that promoted the transformation from brick to click
According to Zeiser (2015), the busy schedule of the modern-day, middle class leaves them with limited time to visit physical stores. In a typical American family, both parents are likely in gainful employment. The trend is common in most of the developed economies (Sharma & Shilpa, 2013). It means that in such families, the parents have limited time to spend with their families and make purchases of groceries and other items needed in their houses.
With stiff competition at work, these parents find themselves taking overtime at work to achieve career growth. The emergence of e-commerce came as a great reprieve for such parents. It enabled them to make all the purchases they need while at home with their families or at their offices. The convenience of internet retailing has seen it attract many middle-class consumers in most of the developed countries. Today, most of these parents do not have to worry about the need to visit retail outlets regularly because they can make the purchases online and have the products delivered in their offices or at home. Gbadamosi (2016) says that the convenience it offers the customers is one of the main reasons why people are shifting from brick-and-mortar stores to online stores.
When Amazon.com and eBay started actively offering their products in the online platform, their biggest challenge was the payment method. To help promote convenience, Amazon.com started by allowing the customers to pay for the goods upon delivery (Crane & Matten, 2016).
However, this proved challenging because some customers never showed up at agreed-upon locations after making their orders. The emergence of online payment platform was a major boost to the online retailers. It means that shoppers could easily view the products they want to purchase in the online platform before making payments. Goods would be dispatched only after the customer has made the payment for them. It improved efficiency for the retailers. It also eliminated the need for the customers to carry cash to make payments. Elimination of geographic barrier is another factor that has promoted the popularity of brick-and-mortar stores. eBay offers its services in the global market as long as the global customers can access its website.
On the other hand, it forces Wal-Mart to set up physical stores in any location that it wishes to operate in because it still majorly operates under the brick-and-mortar retail model. Albarran (2017) says that internet retail offers customers the ability to visit different stores simultaneously while they are online. It becomes easy to compare the prices of various products in various online stores. Customers can know the websites that offer them the best deal within a short while, unlike before, when they had to visit these stores physically. Trading in the retail internet market requires trust.
Service Quality
The quality of services offered in the online platform can be looked at in three different ways. The core services that a firm offers its customers have significant impacts in defining how customers view the quality of services offered to them. Supplementary services, especially information that customers need to make the purchasing decisions, are also very critical when developing a website as a retailer. The third is the user interface, which is the ease with which online visitors can navigate the website. It is important to discuss each of these three factors in detail to help the retailers understand what is expected of them when going online.
The first factor that must be put into consideration is the quality of the core products offered by the retailer to the customers. Once customers make the payment for a given product, they expect it to be of high quality. Just like in brick-and-mortar stores, online retailers must ensure that they have high-quality products, which are capable of meeting the expectations of the customers in the best way possible (Crane & Matten, 2016).
The quality promised when customers are making their purchases should be the quality that is delivered to them. In most of the cases, retailers have limited control over the quality of the products they carry because they sell what they receive from suppliers. However, a retailer should explain to the customers the difference between various brands so that they can make informed decisions. Supplementary services are also very important in defining the customers’ perception of the quality of service they get from online retailers. Good retail outlets should offer its customers news and information relevant to their purchases. Whenever there are new products, changes in the existing products, or any piece of information that can help customers make a better decision, such information should be made available.
The interface of the website plays a critical role in determining the level of customers’ satisfaction. As Albarran (2017) notes, in online retailing, the retailers do not have the benefit of beautiful displays at physical stores. However, they have the responsibility of creating such a display on their websites so that customers can see what they are purchasing. Ease of use is often considered one of the most important factors. The layout of the website should allow users to go to the items they need without a struggle.
Items should be arranged on the website based on their use and quality. The website should be responsive, just in case a client may need clarification on a given product. Answers to commonly asked questions should be made easily available for the customers (Gbadamosi, 2016). Once a customer has identified the desired product, information about it, such as price, quality, and purpose should be available. Security of online shoppers should be considered an issue of critical importance. Their credit card or bank accounts should not be exposed to cybercriminals when they are making their purchases. A good website should not crash simply because of heavy traffic. It should also be capable of protecting its contents from the access by third parties.
Theoretical Background
Consumers’ willingness to make repeat purchases depend on how well they are satisfied with the experiences of the initial purchases. When the initial purchases create memorable and pleasant experiences, it becomes easy for them to be influenced to make future purchases through the same platform. In defining the behaviour of consumers when making repeat purchases, Gbadamosi (2016) says that Hawkins Stern Impulse Buying Theory is critical.
This theory explains the irrational decisions that customers often make when they see items beautifully displayed that they had not previously planned to purchase. It is a common belief that people always act rationally when purchasing items in either physical stores or online platforms. However, the truth is that in most of the cases, customers fail to reason by purchasing items that they do not need. Monitoring online consumer behaviour can help an internet retailer to master the decisions that customers are likely to make when presented with a product that they had not planned to purchase at a given time.
Hawkins Stern Impulse Buying Theory explains that when presented with an item that they once desired, customers can easily purchase such an item even if they had not budgeted for it. The retailer only needs to present it desirably to motivate the consumer to purchase such a product. The internet retailers, therefore, have a responsibility of ensuring that their websites have beautiful displays that can motivate impulse buying.
The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) explains how people come to embrace technology (Moran, 2015). Internet retail heavily relies on the ability of targeted customers to embrace the regular use of internet-enabled devices regularly. The younger generation is more likely to embrace emerging technologies than ageing people are. That is why middle-aged people and young adults constitute the most attractive market segment for online retailers. According to this theory, the ability of the users to embrace new technology depends on its ease of use and perceived usefulness (Ravens, 2014). It is the responsibility of internet retailers to ensure that the websites they develop are easy to navigate even for the elderly members of society. Through promotional campaigns, these companies should try to influence the perception of the targeted customers towards e-market and the benefits that it offers.
Research Gap
The review of the literature reveals that there is information asymmetry when it comes to post-purchase information clarity. Most of the existing literature focuses on the online behaviour of customers before making the purchase. However, limited attention has been paid on how consumers behave online after making their purchases. Their post-purchase behaviour is critical in determining their level of satisfaction and possible repurchase intention. It was also noted that most of the existing literature does not properly focus on the local context of internet retailing within New Zealand. More research is needed that will address these gaps.
Methodology
Internet retail industry has become a major platform where customers get access to various items they need irrespective of their geographical location. That is why scholars have given this topic massive attention all over the world. This chapter focuses on the analysis of the research methods used in collecting and analyzing data (Nestor & Schutt, 2014). It makes it easy for the users of this document to understand the basis upon which conclusions and recommendations were made.
This chapter is organized into six sections. The first section provides detailed information on the research design that was chosen for the research based on the objective set in chapter one. The second section looks at the sampling strategy that was used and the sample size that was finally selected. Then, the instrument used in collecting data from the participants is explained. The section is followed by an explanation of the procedure that was used in the actual data collection process. The data analysis method is the next section that elaborates the approach used by the researcher to process collected data. The final section of this chapter looks at issues related to ethics when conducting the study.
Research Design
According to Bernard (2013), it is critical to define the research design that is in line with the objectives of the study. In this paper, the researcher is interested in determining the influence of retail internet quality on consumer repurchase intention. The chosen design must be capable of helping in achieving the goal. The descriptive research design was considered the most appropriate research design. Using surveys, the researcher was able to collect data from the respondents to help in answering the research question. The quantitative research method was important in determining the level of customer satisfaction with the current online retail services.
Through the survey, the researcher could engage the respondents and determine their views about the quality of the service they get from the online retailers and the likelihood that they would consider making repeat purchases. Quantitative methods made it possible to use statistical tools to quantify the level of customers’ satisfaction and the likelihood that they would opt to make their purchases on online platforms. It is important to note that although this research majorly employed quantitative methods, some elements of qualitative methods were also embraced to help in explaining some of the concepts.
Population and Sample
Internet retail industry has gained massive popularity in New Zealand, and the majority of the middle-aged people, young adults, and teenagers living in urban settings have used online retail services in one way or the other. In Auckland city, many people have had the opportunity to use these services and as such, identifying participants for the study was easy. However, in this academic research, time was of the essence. The researcher had to complete the study within a set timeline. It meant that the researcher had to work with a manageable sample size to ensure that the data was collected from them and analyzed within the timeframe set for the research.
The researcher wanted to collect data from two groups of respondents, tertiary students, and staff currently studying at and affiliated with Auckland University of Technology. As such, the stratified sampling method was considered most appropriate.
The sampling method made it possible to select participants from the two groups. Time constraint and response rate concerns informed the decision of the researcher to limit the study population to the Auckland campus. It was easy to reach out to individual participants physically within the confined geographical location.
A sample size of 305 subjects was selected to participate in the study. Although chances of having high response rate because of the limited geographic location that made it possible for the researcher to contact respondents physically if necessary, the researcher acknowledged that it was possible to have a situation where one or more of the participants fail to take part in the study for various reasons (Choy, 2014). The relatively large sample size was selected to ensure that if a few of the selected respondents failed to take part in the study, there would be enough participants who would provide information that can be generalized to the entire population.
Instrument
In this study, the researcher used two key sources to gather data that informed the conclusion and recommendation for the study. The first source was secondary sources gathered from books, scholarly journal articles, and reliable online sources. The information from these sources was reviewed in chapter two of this paper to form background information and identify the existing gap to help guide the process of collecting primary data. The second source of information was the primary data collected from the sampled participants. The primary data was collected using a questionnaire. The instrument was prepared before engaging with the participants. It was meant to help in collecting primary data in a structured manner. The questionnaire used in the study had four sections.
The first section of the questionnaire focused on the background information of the participants. In the second section, the focus was to determine the demography and gender of the respondents. These first two sections of the questionnaire were considered necessary because they made it possible to understand the online purchasing pattern based on gender and age. In the review of literature, it was noted that the younger generation is more likely to purchase items in the online platforms than the elderly people are. To determine if this is true or not, it was necessary to capture the age of the participants. It was also necessary to determine if there is a skew in the online purchasing pattern based on age. It was easy to capture any possible differences in the demographic space of the respondents. The third section of this instrument focused on the academic qualifications of the respondents.
Another issue that emerged during the review of the literature was that academic levels of consumers influenced their purchasing pattern. More academically empowered people to understand the benefits of the online marketplace and are more likely to use it when making their purchases (Brennen, 2013).
Their high academic qualifications mean that they often find themselves in managerial positions; hence they often have a tight schedule at work, the fact that forces them to rely on e-marketplace that offers them convenience. The researcher wanted to determine if there is a pattern based on the academic qualification of the respondents. This section was also motivated by the fact that people of different academic qualifications are likely to answer specific questions differently, especially the open-ended questions, because of the difference in the understanding of the concepts related to the questions. The fourth section of the questionnaire delved into the specific issues directly related to the influence of the internet retail service quality on consumer repurchases intention. It is in that last section that the research questions were answered directly by the respondents.
The questionnaire employed both open-ended and closed-ended questions to help in capturing various issues under investigation (Bryman & Bell, 2015). As mentioned above, the study was majorly based on quantitative methods. Closed-ended questions helped in structuring the answers in a way that made it possible to quantify them. Quantifying the responses was important to enable the analysis using mathematical tools.
By using the closed-ended questions, it was possible to capture the degree of customers’ satisfaction with the services they get in the online retail industry. It was also possible to determine the likelihood of them being able to make repeat purchases in the same platforms. It was important to explain why the respondents felt the way they did when using online retail services. Using the open-ended questions, it was possible for the participants to explain why they felt satisfied or dissatisfied with the services offered to them by the online retailers. It was also possible to capture their views about why they may or may not consider making repeat purchases in the online retail platforms they previously used—using these two types of questions made it possible to come up with comprehensive answers to the set questions. Each of the structured questions was coded for statistical analysis and interpretation on a scale of 1-5, where one meant strongly disagree while five meant strongly agree.
The questionnaire was administered in two different ways to help in gathering the desired data. The respondent identified 100 participants who were engaged in a face-to-face interview within the campus. The researcher considered it important to use this approach because it enhances the reliability of data. It allows the researcher to capture non-verbal cues when respondents are giving their answers. It also reduces cases where respondents provide misleading answers deliberately. In case a response given by the participant was unclear, it was easy to request them to clarify their answers further. The researcher also used cloud-based software, Survey Monkey, to survey the remaining 205 participants. The researcher contacted these participants through Facebook and reminded them to fill the questionnaires in the Survey Monkey.
Procedure
The research started on April 20, 2017, when the researcher started developing a proposal. A proposal was developed to help guide the process of conducting the entire research. Proposal development involved outlining activities that were to be undertaken, such as primary and secondary data collecting, analysis of the data, and writing the final report. The proposal development also involved developing the questionnaire that was used in collecting the primary data from the respondents. The process ended on May 10.
The proposal was handed over for approval on May 12. By June 2017, the proposal had been approved, and the researcher embarked on the process of collecting data on June 5, 2017. It started by collecting and reviewing relevant literature. The researcher went to the school library and other online libraries to collect and review secondary data.
During the same period, the researcher started contacting potential participants for the study. After reviewing the literature, the researcher started the process of collecting primary data from the respondents. Primary data was collected through face-to-face interview and online surveys using Survey Monkey. In the face-to-face interview, it took an average of 10 minutes for the respondents to answer all the questions. The collected data was then analyzed quantitatively using mathematical tools. The entire process of collecting and analyzing primary data will be completed on July 15, 2017. The researcher will then start the process of writing up the report.
The process will start on July 20 and end on August 10, 2017. From August 11, 2017, to August 13, 2017, the researcher will conduct editing and reviews for the paper. The table below shows a summary of the activities and their timeline.
The researcher sought permission from the campus authorities before identifying the participants in the study. There was no need to translate the questions because all the participants could read, write, and speak in English. The researcher did not outsource any labour in collecting or analyzing data. After computing all the data in the questionnaires, the researcher took the files to the school archives. According to the school’s policy, these files will be kept in the archives for five years before they are finally discarded. Within that period, they may be of value to future researchers.
Data Analysis
The primary data collected from the participants will be analyzed mathematically using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) (Amelina, 2012). The researcher will conduct a series of tests to find answers to the research questions outlined in chapter 1 of this paper. The first research question requires mean comparisons, while the second research question requires a Pearson correlation analysis. The researcher will employ independent samples T-tests and ANOVA analysis to answers the third and the fourth research questions.
Ethical Considerations
According to Caillaud, Rose, and Goepp (2016), it is important to observe ethical concerns when conducting research. Academic studies have a set of rules and regulations that a researcher must observe when conducting the study. The first step that the researcher took before identifying the participants was to contact the administrators at the Auckland University of Technology campus to get permission to conduct the study within the institution. The researcher explained the nature and goal of the study in the letter that was written to the administration. The importance of the study was explained, and the administrators were informed that this was purely academic research. It is after getting the approval that the researcher went to the next step of identifying the participant.
The researcher randomly identified participants within the campus to take part in this research project. The researcher had no prior relationship with the participants. They were informed that participation was voluntary and that they had the right to withdraw from the research at any time without any consequences. All they needed to do in case they decided to drop from the study was to inform the researcher of their intention without necessarily giving their justification to do so.
For those who agreed to be part of the study, the researcher took time to explain to them the relevance of the research, how it will affect their lives, and the need for them to participate in it. Those who were not convinced of the need to be part of the study had the liberty to withdraw. For those who were still interested, the researcher explained to them how their identity would be protected. The researcher ensured that the participants remained anonymous by assigning them pseudonyms instead of their actual names.
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Appendices
Questionnaire
Please Consider Only the Online Retailer That You Purchased Something Most Recently While Answering the Below Questions on the 7-Point Scale
