Gender differences in college students’ online shopping: utilitarian and hedonic motivation approaches

5. Methodology

5.1 Research Participants and Data Collection

A convenient sampling was done among the university students in Guangdong province. The students are form UIC, Beijing Normal University (Zhuhai) and Beijing Institute of Technology (Zhuhai), these three multi-culture universities are expected to ensure our sample from all around the country. Owning to survey is going to define the shopping behavior based on gender; the number of data will be controlled which the scale of male and female will be half and half. We use a questionnaire to collect data from 300 students, a total 205 completed questionnaires was considered for final analysis. The grade of college and region represented in the sample are provided in the following table.

5.2 Measures

To ensure the selection of reliable and valid scales, constructs were developed based on prior research. Measures for perceived usefulness were adapted from Janelle Rose and Gerard Fogarty (2006). Scales for perceived ease of use were adapted from Davis, (1989), Janelle Rose & Gerard Fogarty (2006). The scale items for attitude were adapted from Davis et al. (1992); items for intention were adapted from Ajzen (1991); items for utilitarian motivation were adapted from Childers et al (2001); and items for hedonic motivation were adapted from Hirschman and Holbrook (1982); Overby and Lee (2006).

The survey questionnaire comprise of previously validated items. Participants are asked to provide their demographic information and respond to 24 statements on the five constructs in this study, namely: utilitarian, hedonic, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitudes towards online shopping, and intention to shop online. Each constructs conclude 4 items. Each statement was meas...

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...pation roles, i.e. buyers and visitors.

Last but not least, this study also has the limitation of not including other demographic variables (e.g. region, culture) owning to the sample size limited the dividing groups in terms of variables, which could create a compounding result in this study.

There are some directions for future researches are provided by this survey. First, future researchers could investigate the differences of shopping motivations based on different consumer market segments, for example, education, income, age. Future research should access consumers in a large demography extend but be more specific. Secondly, cross culture can be further investigated. According to Ozen and Kodaz (2012), different cultures have different motives for shopping online. It is worth to see how the result differs from culture or region setting for university students.