Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management
   Emerald Article: Attitude toward internet web sites, online information 
   search, and channel choices for purchasing
   Yoo-Kyoung Seock, Marjorie Norton
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   To cite this document: Yoo-Kyoung Seock, Marjorie Norton, (2007),"Attitude toward internet web sites, online information search, 
   and channel choices for purchasing", Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Vol. 11 Iss: 4 pp. 571 - 586
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                   Attitude toward internet web                                                         Attitude toward
                                                                                                            internet web
               sites, online information search,                                                                       sites
                          and channel choices for
                                           purchasing                                                                  571
                                            Yoo-Kyoung Seock                                            Received 10 August 2006
                                                                                                       Revised 22 September 2006
                           Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Interiors,                           Accepted 22 September
                          The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA, and                                           2006
                                              Marjorie Norton
                       Department of Apparel, Housing and Resource Management,
             Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA
             Abstract
             Purpose – This study aims to examine the influence of attitudes toward particular clothing web
             sites, specifically favorite ones, on information search at those web sites and on the choice to purchase
             items from those web sites and from non-internet channels after finding the items at the web sites.
             Design/methodology/approach – Usingsurveydatafrom414UScollegestudentswhohadonline
             shopping experience and favorite clothing web sites that they especially like to visit, hypothesized
             relationships among attitude toward internet web sites, online information search and channel choices
             for purchasing were tested using path analysis.
             Findings – Results showed that participants’ attitudes toward their favorite clothing web sites had a
             direct, positive effect on their intentions to search for information at those web sites as well as
             intentions to purchase clothing items from those web sites after finding the items there. Additionally,
             operating through information-search intentions at the web sites, participants’ attitudes toward those
             web sites had an indirect, positive effect on their intentions to purchase clothing items from
             non-internet channels after finding the items at the web sites.
             Research limitations/implications – Results cannot be generalized to the larger population of
             young consumers and to other consumer groups. Future research should include other population
             groups.
             Practical implications – This research provides insights into how college students’ attitudes
             towardinternet web sites affect their information search at the web sites and their channel choices for
             purchasing. Our results suggest potential benefits of multi-channel retailing for online clothing
             retailers targeting US college students and the importance of building effective web sites to elicit those
             consumers’ positive attitudes toward the web sites.
             Originality/value – This study is the first to investigate young adult online shoppers’ attitude
             towards internet web sites and their information search and channel choices for purchasing.
             Keywords Consumerbehaviour,Internetshopping,Purchasing,Information retrieval,
             United States of America
             Paper type Research paper
                                                                                                        Journal of Fashion Marketing and
             Agrowing percentage of US consumers’ shopping and purchasing over recent years                          Management
             havebeentakingplacethroughtheinternet.Arelatedtrendhasbeenrapidexpansionof                          Vol. 11 No. 4, 2007
                                                                                                                      pp. 571-586
             retailers’ direct marketing to consumers via the internet, with sales growth outpacing qEmeraldGroupPublishingLimited
                                                                                                                       1361-2026
             traditional retailing (Burns, 2005; Levy and Weitz, 2001). The climb in online sales to     DOI 10.1108/13612020710824616
   JFMM     consumers may reflect compelling advantages of internet shopping. Significant benefits
   11,4     to consumers of shopping on the internet versus in other retail venues include the vast
            arrayofalternativeproductsavailableandthequickeraccesstoalternatives.Alongwith
            benefits as a vehicle for purchasing, the internet offers consumers a powerful means for
            searching out product information before making purchases (Doyle, 2003; Gray, 2005).
            The internet’s information-rich, interactive nature can increase shopping efficiency by
   572      improving the availability of product information, enabling direct multi-attribute
            comparisons, and reducing information-search costs (Alba et al., 1997).
              Thesuper-diffusion of the internet has also widened consumers’ channel choices for
            shopping. Consumers can now choose whether to buy from online or offline channels
            after they find information about products in either type of channel. Some consumers
            may only browse internet web sites for product information and use other channels
            (e.g., brick-and-mortar stores) to buy products discovered at web sites. Others may
            sample products in physical stores and then seek better deals online. McKinsey
            Marketing Practice (2000) research has indicated that more than 50 percent of apparel
            shoppers use multiple channels for clothes shopping and that multi-channel
            purchasers spend two to four times more than one-channel purchasers. A
            DoubleClick survey of consumers showed that 56 percent of the 1,270 respondents
            had used multiple channels for shopping and that web site browsing was a popular
            pastimeofthemulti-channelshopperswhichhadledtopurchasesinphysicalstoresby
            45percentofthem(Greenspan,2003).ForresterResearch,Inc.(ascitedinKerner,2004)
            reported that 65 percent of US consumers in 2004 were multi-channel shoppers.
            JupiterResearch (as cited in Burns, 2005) found that nearly one-half (47 percent) of
            internet users who browse web sites to find products end up buying offline. The use of
            multiple shopping channels by consumers may behoove retailers to employ multiple
            marketing channels in order to be successful in today’s intense competition for
            consumers’ dollars. Indeed, many of today’s leading retailers market through more
            than one channel (The Economist, 2005). Steinfield (2002) and Zhu and Kraemer (2002)
            also foundthatmulti-channelretailing canincreasesales andrevenues. Despiteallthis,
            no previous research on shopping behavior has examined the antecedents of
            consumers’ channel choices for information search and purchasing.
              Research on consumer shopping behavior has shown that consumers’ attitudes
            towardstores influence their store choices (Kim and Lennon, 2000). It may also be that
            consumers’ attitudes toward stores in different retail channels, including internet and
            non-internet, are influential in their channel choices forinformation search and
            purchasing. This issue is particularly relevant because of the evidence indicating
            consumers’ use of multi-channel shopping strategies at the same time that consumer
            shopping on the internet is on the rise. The present study explores the relationship
            betweenattitudesandchannelchoicesbyfocusingontheeffectofconsumers’attitudes
            toward particular clothing web sites on their channel choices for purchasing.
            Specifically, this study examines the influence of consumers’ attitudes toward their
            favorite clothing web sites on their intentions to search for information at those web
            sites and to buy items from those sites and from non-internet channels after finding the
            items at the web sites. The study relies on the notion advanced by Ajzen and Fishbein
            (1980) that behavioral intention is a key predictor of future behavior; for example, the
            stronger consumers’ intentions to purchase at a certain store, the more likely they
            would purchase at that store.
              With the increasing use of the internet as shopping medium, young consumers,
            particularly college students aged 18 to 22, are becoming the internet’s “hottest”
              market and a prime source of future growth in online sales (Silverman, 2000). College         Attitude toward
              students have greater internet access than most other population segments (Kim and                internet web
              LaRose, 2004), with 92 percent of college students own a computer and 93 percent                              sites
              access the internet (Harris Interactive, 2002). Their online spending exceeds that of any
              other demographic group in the USA (O’Donell and Associates, LLC, 2004). Roemer
              (2003) noted that US college students’ online purchases came to $1.4 billion in 2002
              following a 17 percent increase over the previous three years. Clothing is one of their                       573
              most popular internet shopping categories: 25 percent have bought clothing online
              (Case and King, 2003). In this vein, our study focuses on college-student internet
              shoppers 18-22 years old, with favorite clothing web sites that they especially like to
              visit to obtain information about clothing products or stores and/or to buy clothing.
              Ourresearchsampleincludesonlyconsumerswithfavoriteclothing websitesbecause
              consumers with favorite web sites presumably have sufficient online shopping
              experience to have informed beliefs and attitudes about web sites. In addition, the
              construct of favorite clothing web sites was used to give our survey respondents
              familiar referents when answering questions about particular clothing web sites. The
              use of a sample composed of only consumers with favorite clothing web sites was to:
                 .  avoid obscuring the research results by including respondents without enough
                    exposure to internet shopping to have informed beliefs and attitudes about web
                    sites; and
                 .  enable measurement of the effect of attitudes toward web sites on information
                    search at the web sites and purchase from internet and non-internet channels.
              In addition, our research excludes the non-married of these under the assumption that
              married and non-married students’ lifestyles are sufficiently different to result in
              distinct consumer behavior (Nielsen/NetRatings, 2003).
              Theoretical background and research hypotheses
              Consumers’ shopping and purchasing behavior has changed as the number of vendors
              available to them via the internet and other means has grown (Korner and
              Zimmermann, 2000). The internet offers new customer-retention possibilities through
              the management of relationships between marketers and consumers owing in part to
              consumers’ access through the internet to more product and service information and a
              wider range of products than they would have otherwise. Despite the internet’s
              potential utility as a customer-retention medium for marketers, little empirical research
              has addressed the role of internet web sites in retaining customers.
                 Researchhasindicatedthatconsumers’attitudestowardstoresareagoodpredictor
              of their shopping behavior at those stores, including information search (Blackwell
              et al., 2001; Duncan and Olshavsky, 1982), patronage (Monroe and Guiltinan, 1975;
              Moye and Kincade, 2003), and purchase intention (Evans et al., 1996). In addition,
              researchers have found a positive relationship between consumers’ attitudes toward
              online shopping and their purchasing through the internet (Goldsmith and Goldsmith,
              2002; Jarvenpaa and Tractinsky, 1999; Kim et al., 2003; Shim et al., 2001;
              Watchravesringkan and Shim, 2003). In light of consumers’ use of multiple
              shopping channels for information search and purchasing, it may also be that
              consumers with favorable attitudes toward internet retailers’ web sites sometimes use
              the sites solely to find information about products they buy from other channels. The
              attainment of favorable consumer attitudes toward an internet retailer’s web site may