Discussion


The results of this study confirm that online innovativeness is positively correlated with the extent of online buying and also mediates the correlation between global innovativeness and online buying. The growth of online purchasing is an important consumer behavior pattern that marketers are eager to understand. Since online buying can be perceived as an innovative way to shop for products, it would seem that those consumers who are more innovative in this domain would play a key role in the ultimate spread of this new way of shopping to other, later adopters. By understanding if online buying is correlated with innovativeness, marketers can better formulate strategies to reach these important first adopters as well as to increase purchases by those who may be more hesitant to adopt this new form of buying.

The current study shows that while global innovativeness is related to online buying, it does so mediated by the domain specific construct, online innovativeness. Thus, managers intent on targeting Internet innovators should avoid thinking of them as global innovators, and instead think of them as innovators in this specific product field, online shopping. The DSI can help them do this. Admittedly, the full model is of more interest to consumer theory, but the specific findings imply that the DSI is a useful way to measure online shopping innovativeness. Thus, it can be used to identify consumers most likely to buy online. Moreover, the more managers learn about the online innovators, the better able they will be to attract them to specific Web sites and develop other aspects of their marketing strategies to appeal to them.

The basic importance of the study is to draw attention to the distinction between the levels of abstraction of innovativeness and to show that the domain-specific level is more useful in practical terms than the others. It also demonstrates the usefulness of the DSI scale in identifying the innovative online buyers . Note that in a widely used approach to segmenting markets, the VALS approach, they advertise the ability of VALS to identify early adopters (see their press release: http://www.sric-bi.com/press/2002-11-18.shtml). This approach will most likely measure innovativeness at the global level, but probably not measure innovativeness very well for the domain-specific level. Another innovativeness measure, the Forrester approach, is described by Mary Modahl in Now or Never (2000). However, this measure is more focused on technology innovators. Both the VALS and Forrester approaches are commercial products that are expensive and not specific to online buying, potential downsides for marketing managers. The DSI, on the other hand, is simple and easy to use in surveys and it is in the public domain for use by anybody.

This study extends previous work on innovativeness in a new product field and shows how this personality trait can be an important factor in online buying. It expands our understanding of online consumer behavior and provides additional support for the proposed model. Additionally, it confirms the hypotheses that there is a correlation between global innovativeness, online innovativeness, and online buying, and that online innovativeness mediates global innovativeness and online buying. This study further indicates that in the context of online buying, gender appears to be a moderator of the mediation process. The relationship between global innovativeness and online buying is mediated by online innovativeness more for men than for women. Thus, it would appear that the personality trait of online innovativeness predicts online buying for both sexes, but global innovativeness is less relevant in predicting online buying for women. Apparently, men buy online based on the innovativeness factor more so than women who may have other reasons or personality traits that motivate them to purchase online. This finding should be explored in more detail since it could alter how marketers approach men versus women in their efforts to increase online buying.

The primary limitation on external validity in the study was the convenience sample providing the data. While this does not impact internal validity and is acceptable for theory testing, a broader and random sample of older adults (non-students) would help to determine if the findings are generalizable, and particularly if men continue to be more influenced by global innovativeness than women. An additional limitation lies in the use of a single product category. Future studies should seek other possible mediators as well as apply this model to other product categories. This would help us develop an important generalization regarding the influence of levels of innovativeness on innovative buying. This may be an especially important topic for e-commerce. With the continued use of the Internet as a new shopping outlet, understanding what motivates consumers to buy online will continue to be a topic of importance to marketers for some time to come. Combined with other findings, it appears that marketers should focus more attention on measuring and using domain-specific innovativeness instead of global innovativeness when they think about and try to reach the earliest online buyers.

Finally, a limitation can be seen in the conceptualization and measurement of the dependent variable in this study: online buying. Rather than purely representing time- of-adoption, the measures assessed amount of online buying, which is similar to but not exactly the same concept. Owing to the remote and casual nature of time-of-adoption, the difficulty consumers would have in recalling their initial online purchase, and the ambiguity inherent in interpreting its meaning in the context of cyber-shopping (time of adoption since when?), we felt that amount of online buying would be a reasonable substitute for time-of-adoption. Note that in a previous study (Goldsmith et al., 1995), the dependent variable was measured as number of purchases of new products from a list as suggested by Midgley and Dowling (1978) instead of time-of-adoption. Substituting this variable may be the reason that online innovativeness (DSI) did not fully mediate the relationship between global innovativeness (HJC) and the dependent variable. This possibility bears further study.




Contemporary Research in E-marketing (Vol. 1)
Agility and Discipline Made Easy: Practices from OpenUP and RUP
ISBN: B004V9MS42
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 164

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