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Proceedings of the 9 Symposium on Applied Science, Business & Industrial Research – 2017
ISSN 2279-1558, ISBN 978-955-7442-09-9

A Study on e-Shopping Behaviour Among Sri Lankan Consumers

Withanagamage LVK, Wattegama EJ
Department of Industrial Management, Wayamba University of Sri Lanka
wlakshiwusl@gmail.com
ABSTRACT

Internet usage among world population is increasing day by day. The situation in
Sri Lanka is also the same. Although many studies have investigated about e-Shopping
behaviour among consumers, few studies could be found from Sri Lankan context. Hence,
there is a gap in literature on e-Shopping behaviour among consumers in Sri Lanka. The
purpose of this study is to understand about the e-Shopping behaviour of Sri Lankan
consumers. The data was collected using a questionnaire distributed among randomly
selected 232 consumers. Findings have revealed that the majority of educated and
employed consumers are interested in doing e-Shopping but they hesitate to purchase
expensive/luxury products due to lack of trust towards e-retailers. They have the
willingness to pay an amount between Rs.10, 000 - Rs.25, 000 as the maximum amount per
online transaction. Finally, the study recommends some managerial implications and some
directions for the future researchers to study about e-Shopping behaviour among Sri
Lankan consumers.
KEYWORDS: e-Commerce, e-Consumer, e-Shopping, Internet .

1 INTRODUCTION the consumer’s point of view, the major
advantage of e-Commerce is that consumers
The terms “e-Commerce” and “Online have the ability to visit many stores from
Marketing” are used interchangeably by the their homes and can compare product
businesses and consumers throughout the features and prices before making their
world as there are many potential actual purchase (Karakaya & Charlton,
opportunities for doing commerce in the 2001). From the firm’s point of view, they
online context today (Karakaya & Charlton, too can enjoy the benefits such as more
2001). The e-Commerce can be B2B, B2C, opportunities to develop the market,
C2C or C2B (Rouse, 2016). Moreover, the increased productivity of the sales and
number of Internet users is steadily promotion, simplicity on access, and cost
increasing in the world. The interest of reduction, thereby provides the opportunity
sharing electronic documents among to attract global market as well (Nawaz,
individual users was increased in the 1980s Rashida, & Gunapalan, 2015). However,
and the rise in the usage of shopping most of firms are not doing e-Commerce in
websites such as eBay and Amazon have a proper way due to poor understanding
also caused the growth in the e-Commerce about the paybacks of e-Commerce (Nawaz
industry in 1990s. et al., 2015).
At present the consumers can purchase Although many researches on e-
endless amounts of items via online (Rouse, Consumer behaviour can be found from the
2016). At the same time e-Commerce helps global context, a few number of researches
businesses to find new consumers and were from Sri Lankan context. Moreover, e-
continue the relationship with the existing Commerce is one of the rapidly developing
consumers in an effective manner. However, area of the marketing function, the
every type of business cannot be successful investigations on e-Shopping behaviour of
in the online context, for e.g., the Pets.com consumers, especially in developing
was shut down due to low profits in early countries like Sri Lanka has become a
2000 (Karakaya & Charlton, 2001). From timely topic for a researcher. In order to fill

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