A Study on the Relationships between Lifestyle of Female Comsumer and Online Purchase Behavior

[[abstract]]Abstract With the improving education level and economic self-consciousness, women are accelerating their paths into the labor market and playing an important role in economical development more than ever. A number of documents even reflect these trends with the word ”Womenomics”. Both Goldman Sachs and Harvard Business Review have pointed out that women represent a growing market, whose scale is almost exceeding twice the sum of China and India market. Also with the booming e-commerce, a rise in women’s consumption power takes an important part in the Internet market growth. If the characteristics and the needs of different segments can be identified, it will help to promote the opportunities of online shopping market. This study intended to explore the relationships between women’s lifestyle and online shopping decision-making as well as buying behavior. For data collection, questionnaire survey was adopted, a total of 450 questionnaires were dispatched and 436 returned, of which 410 were valid. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, analysis of variance, factor analysis and cluster analysis. It is hoped that the findings of this study could make the e-commerce practitioners to be more aware of the needs of female consumers, and could provide products and service to their satisfaction. The main findings include: (1)the whole sample can be clustered into four groups, including “exploring vogue and enjoying life”, “following fashion but frugal”, “following trend and pursuing joy ” and “being negative and inactive to life ”. (2) “exploring vogue and enjoying life” segment is conducting online shopping more actively than other groups. (3)different segments demonstrate significant difference in trusting the website while conducting the online shopping