Understanding female consumers' intention to shop online The role of trust, convenience and customer service

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a model to examine the female consumer's intention to shop online. The rising number of female online shoppers has compelled the analysts and online vendors to believe that understanding the attitude and behaviour of the female consumers is very crucial for their growth. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual model is proposed that expands the theory of reasoned action (TRA) with three additional constructs, namely, trust, convenience and customer service. The proposed model is examined with the help of questionnaire responses collected from 909 online shoppers from India. Findings The paper empirically shows that there is a significant influence of attitude, convenience, customer service and subjective norm on the female consumer's intention to buy online. Customer service acts as the most crucial factor in influencing the attitude of female consumers towards online shopping. The paper also points out that trust does not directly affect the female's intention to shop online but indirectly influences it through attitude. Practical implications - The paper has significant implications for practitioners. First, the results advocate that convenience and customer service are the vital antecedents to both behavioural intention and behavioural attitude. Second, the paper also showcases that trust influences behavioural intention indirectly through attitude, stressing the need for the online retailers to develop consumers' trust in online shopping. Originality/value The paper examines TRA framework in the context of female online shopping, while earlier studies have concentrated completely on efficiency-based software tools like word processing, spreadsheets, etc. The integration of the three constructs - trust, convenience and customer service - in the TRA framework has not been studied in the past. The interaction effect of the different elements of customer services on the female consumer behaviour has never been examined in the previous research works.