How online consumer’s behavior is different than in physical shops

Online shopping has grown in popularity due to the efficiency, speed and convenience it provides. Both retailers and e-tailers must apply the “psychology of marketing” in order to satisfy customer needs and grow their sales.

Identifying how online buyers think and feel can help marketers to improve existing campaigns and flesh out strategies that can reach consumers better.

But a crucial aspect of ecommerce gets often lost among all informations. Unfortunately it’s not that easy. There is much more to the user buying process than the 4 stages framework commonly discussed:

• Need recognition
• Search for solution
• Evaluation of alternatives
• Purchase

There are also underlying processes that happen during each of those stages. If you are thinking of starting up your store, it’s crucial that you learn about them.

In 2012, two management professors Ujwala Dange and Vinay Kimar proposed a model for online customer behaviour. It is not the first time a model like this has been developed but I found their to be the most relevant to customers of today.

The model representing customer journey to purchase looks like this:

Starting from left, The external factors are the ones beyond the control of the customers. Internal factors are personal traits or behaviours. It is affect consumer buying behaviour.

It then proceeds to discuss various filtering elements customers use security, privacy and trust to filter their buying choices and decide on the final selection of stores they are willing to buy from. In other words, if your store doesn’t pass your customers’ security, privacy and trustworthiness criteria, they won’t buy from you.

Compared to traditional brick and mortar shops, online shopping behaviors carries more risk during the purchase process. Customers recognise online as a high level risk purchase and have become aware of what might happen with their data online.

The last element of the model are call the filtered buying behaviours, a set of expectations and motives revised by the filters we discussed above.

If you want to create an efficient online shop, contact us !