Online Consumer Typologies and Their Shopping Behaviors in B2C E-Commerce Platforms

Abstract

Consumer behavior in e-commerce platforms is one of the extensively researched area. Numerous studies in this field assessed consumer online shopping behavior from various aspects. However, literature review showed that most of the conducted studies do not carry out market segmentation analysis while accessing shopping behavior of online consumers. Therefore, the general conclusions made by these studies about consumer attitude, behavior, and decision-making process might not reflect actual behaviors of different consumer segments. In contrast to previous studies, this study initially carried out psychographic market segmentation analysis and found four different online consumer segments. Later, shopping behavior of each determined segment was assessed by using the developed behavior evaluation model. Findings of this study provide important information to e-retailers about the behavioral characteristics of each consumer segment. E-retailers can utilize this study findings to effectively allocate their marketing resources and design more successful marketing mix for each consumer segment.