A lifestyles study on purchasing behavior of Malaysian online consumers

With the development of a rapidly growing online shopping market, this study examines how consumers’ lifestyles influence online purchasing behavior. The purpose of this study is to identify e-lifestyle factors of Malaysian online consumers and to understand the effect of e-lifestyle factors on continuance intention to purchase online. AIO (Activities, Interest and Opinions) inventory and Value and Lifestyle (VALs) scale were used to understand the lifestyles of the target population. Data were collected from 678 individual online shoppers by using a structured questionnaire via an online survey. The empirical results show that the 15 items of the AIO lifestyle scale were grouped into four distinct components (i.e. pleasure-driven, socially-driven, concern-driven and interest-driven e-lifestyle) and 20 items of the VALs scale were grouped into seven distinct components (i.e. fashion consciousness, innovators, makers, believers, achievers, i-am-me and experiencers).The findings demonstrated that out of eleven lifestyle factors, only four of them have significant effects on online shopping continuance intention. The results show that consumers who have a pleasure-driven e-lifestyle, concern-driven e-lifestyle, socially-driven e-lifestyle and innovators are more likely to continue purchasing via online shopping. This finding highlights the importance of incorporating consumer lifestyle factors as an additional construct in online shopping research to understand continuance intention. This study extends prior research on behavioral intention by including lifestyle factors that would contribute to the existing body of knowledge on repurchasing behavior within the online shopping context. It is hope that the results of this study will provide insights for future research in this area