Assessing differences in customers’ personal disposition to e-commerce

The purpose of this paper is to determine differences in customers’ personal disposition to online shopping.

The research model was proposed based on two types of purchases (hedonic vs utilitarian) and on personal traits of individuals against technology throughout the Technology Readiness Index (TRI) 2.0. Generation and gender were considered to evaluate their impact on the type of purchases. Consumers’ data were collected in Chile through 788 face-to-face surveys. The partial least squares approach was used to test the research model.

The findings show that optimism and discomfort influence online shopping. Moreover, generation and gender moderate the relationship between the dimensions of the TRI and online purchases.

The contributions of this study are threefold. The analysis of personal traits and the type of purchases contribute to the existing literature on consumer behavior and e-commerce, and provide some insights for marketers to identify segmentation strategies by analyzing the gender and generation of individuals. Second, this study contributes to examining the stability and invariances of the TRI 2.0 instrument, which has not been fully revised in less developed countries. Third, this study adds to the existing body of research that argues that demographic variables are not sufficient to understand technology adoption by individuals by including psychological variables.