Abstract

The research reported in this thesis was on “An Analysis of the Factors Affecting Online Purchasing Behavior of
Pakistani Consumers”. Despite the abundance of literature on buying behavior of online consumers, very little of
it focuses on developing countries. The purpose of this research was to investigate the factors impacting the
online purchasing patterns of consumers in the Pakistani market. The variables included in the proposed
framework were perceived advantages, perceived risks, hedonic motivations, website design and lastly,
psychological factors that included trust and security factors. The primary data was gathered by floating hundred
questionnaires to online shoppers using convenience sampling. The secondary data was collected by consultation
of published research papers, consumer reports, libraries and various internet sources. SPSS software was
applied to analyze data for reliability and correlation. The results were then interpreted by usual principles of
statistics. The findings indicated that perceived advantages, perceived risks and psychological factors were the
significant variables. Perceived advantages and psychological factors had a positive impact on the consumer
attitudes and buying behavior; however, perceived risks had a negative impact on consumer buying behavior.
Website design and hedonic motivation were found out to be the insignificant variables.
Psychological factors had the highest correlation with online shopping behavior, hence it was concluded that
trust towards online vendors and security issues are the most important in determining online purchasing patterns
of Pakistani consumers.
Owing to rising inflation in Pakistan, people often resort to earningasy money through cybercrimes. Since fake
e-stores, cybercrimes and scam websites are very common in Pakistan, people hesitate to shop online. Lack of
accountability and the presence of con artists and vultures in the cyber world have resulted in unpleasant
experiences of online Pakistani shoppers. Hence, e-tailors need toimprove the trust deficit in order to enhance
purchase intention of current and potential consumers.
The paper provides marketers with insights into how knowledge about the factors influencing purchasing
patterns of online consumers can be incorporated into marketing strategies. The study suggests that in order to
enhance the consumer purchase intentions, Pakistan’s online stores should build strategies to better address
reliability and trustworthiness issues instead of merely focusing on website design, aesthetics and content
factors.

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