Online Shopping Attitude among the Youth : A Study on Alagappa University Students in Karaikudi , Sivaganga District

Online shopping has become a new trend of shopping nowadays and is quickly becoming an important part of the lifestyle. Due to wide spread internet access by people and e-commerce usage by traders, online shopping has seen massive growth in recent years. Young people have been the majority of shoppers online, and thus, this study  nds out the attitude of youth towards online shopping. This particular paper attempted to  nd out whether there is any impact of  ve factors like internet literacy, gender, educational quali cation, website usability, and online product price on online shopping. The study was undertaken among the students of Alagappa University. The results of the survey highlighted that there is a signi cant relationship between online shopping with gender, internet literacy, and online product price. Similarly, the study also highlighted that there is no meaningful relationship between online shopping with education and website usability.


Introduction
Online shopping is a signifi cant part of the overall electronic commerce or e-commerce, an industry which consists of all the selling and buying of goods and services over electronic systems such as the internet and other computer networks by households, businesses, and other agencies. With the spread of the internet, the amount of trade that is conducted electronically has seen extraordinary growth; and has led to innovations and development in areas such as electronic funds transfer, electronic data interchange, and internet marketing. Before the widespread introduction of the internet to the general public in 1994, the term electronic commerce referred to the use of technologies such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), introduced in the late 1970s, to facilitate business practices. With the rise of the World Wide Web, many predicted that e-commerce would soon become a signifi cant economic sector, but security protocols such as HTTPS did not become secure enough for widespread use of such transactions until 1998. During the dot com bubble, which saw the emergence of the internet as a new economic sector, companies catering to consumers seeking to make use of this new tool to buy and sell emerged, many of which collapsed when the bubble burst in 2000 and 2001. Despite this, many traditional, brickand-mortar retailers recognized the valuable markets these companies had identifi ed and took steps to add e-commerce capabilities to their websites. Different methods of sending payments, such as e-shopping carts, electronic payment co-operation, and secured credit card payment authorizations converted more extensively used.

International Journal of Management
The emergence of e-commerce as a viable alternative to traditional retailing models has also had other effects. By signifi cantly decreasing the barriers of entry for the sale of many types of products, e-commerce has allowed sellers to enter the market who may not have had this ability before the advent of the internet. For example, online sale sites such as eBay, or massive online retailers such as Amazon, have allowed small, home-based sellers to bypass much of the costs faced by the new entrants into the market, and let them take advantage of those companies 'exposure The term "Online shopping" is the process whereby consumers directly buy goods or services from a seller in real-time, without an intermediary service, over the Internet.

Literature Review
Panicos et al. (2000) analyzed factors like convenience, competitive prices, security, lack of personal contact, and face anonymity that infl uence online purchases. The study suggested that companies could standardize their communications strategies aiming at allying the fears of internet users with regards to security concerns. The fi ndings indicated that all consumers liked the convenience of the internet. Therefore, companies could capitalize on the healthy attitudes that on-line users held about its convenient nature.
Byeong-Joon Moon (2004) found an exploratory model to understand the factors that infl uence consumers to adopt the internet instead of traditional channels for information search and product purchase. The author reviewed established theories on consumer decision making in offl ine environments and research fi ndings regarding consumer behavior in an online environment. The authors embraced the contingent consumer decisionmaking model provided by Bettman et al. and classifi ed the factors that infl uenced consumers to use online channels instead of traditional channels into three groups; person, problem, and context. The study had concluded that the factors infl uencing online purchases were product quality superiority, price advantage, assortment, time-saving, and convenience.
Chris Forman et al (2007) examined the tradeoff between the benefi ts of buying online and the benefi ts of buying in a local retail store and explored the problem of consumer's physical location shaping the relative benefi ts of buying from the online world using data from Amazon on the top-selling books for 1497 unique places in the US for 10 months ending in January 2006. The study showed that even controlling for product specifi c preferences by location, changes in local retail options had substantial effects on online purchases. The results showed that the convenience of the offl ine channel appears strongly related to online choices for trendy products.

Objectives of the Study
The purpose of this study is to fi nd out the impact of fi ve factors like internet literacy, gender, educational qualifi cation, website usability and online product price on online shopping on a specifi c group of the population, i.e., the students. As such, the objectives are: • To analyze gender has any impact on online shopping among the students. • To Study, the educational, qualifi cation has any impact on online shopping among the students. • To evaluate internet literacy has any impact on online purchase among the students. • To Examine the product price quoted online has any impact on online shopping among the students. • Study the website usability has any impact on online shopping among the students.

Study Period
The study area is confi ned only one month should be taken out from March 1 to 30th March.

Methodology
Data collection and sample description A survey was conducted with target population as the students of Alagappa University, karaikudi, sivaganga district.With a structured questionnaire. A total of 200 responses were collected. Convenience sampling, which is one of the nonprobability sampling methods, has been used in this research because of the ease of accessibility of the sample. Statistical tools such as percentage analysis and chisquare test for independence has been conducted to compute the fi ndings. The hypothesis of the study S

International Journal of Management
Since the study relates with fi nding the relationship of gender, educational qualifi cation, internet literacy, online product price, and website usability with online shopping/purchase., hence the hypothesis of the study can be taken as 1. Ho: Online shopping has no signifi cant relationship with Gender.

Ho:
Online shopping has no meaningful relationship with educational qualifi cation. 3. Ho: Internet Familiarity/Literacy has no signifi cant relationship with Online shopping 4. Ho: Online Product price has no signifi cant connection with an online purchase. 5. Ho: Website usability has no meaningful relationship with an online purchase.

Analysis and Findings
Demographic Profi le of the respondent's Demographic profi le has been obtained from the responses, and it was found that majority of the respondents are in the age group of 20-35 years of age, which is evident since the target population is the students. Gender wise 64% of the respondents are male, and the rest are female. Education levels of the respondents are 7% undergraduate, 91% are graduate, and 2 % are postgraduate.
Attributes of Online shoppers Out of a total of 200 respondent students, it was found that 90.5% of the respondents do shop online and the rest 9.5% do not shop online. Among those students who shop online, majority i.e.66.29% shop online monthly followed by 21.54% shop occasionally followed by weekly and thrice a week. Among the student respondents who do not shop online were asked the reason for not purchasing online.
Majority of the respondents i.e.26.31% said that they highlighted their non-purchase of product online due to the inability to touch the products, followed by 21.05% are not familiar with an online purchase, 15. 78% refer to product quality. Other reasons cited were privacy and security, shipment fees, and noninteraction with shop assistants. Among those who shop online, time-saving, and 24/7 accessibility has been cited as the major benefi t of online shopping. About what is shopped online, the majority of the students responded about purchasing books, which is 31.5 %; this may be since the target population is students. This is followed by 20.5 %, who purchase apparel followed respectively by purchasing electronics and e-tickets. 5.3 Hypothesis testing To test whether there is any relationship between gender and online shopping among the target group, the hypothesis being Ho: Online shopping has no signifi cant relationship with Gender. The calculated value of chi-square is 18.14, which is higher than the table value 3.841 at one df and 5% level of signifi cance, and thus, the null hypothesis is rejected. Hence, online shopping has a signifi cant relationship with gender. To test whether there is any relation between education and online shopping among the target group, the hypothesis being Ho: Online shopping has no signifi cant relationship with educational qualifi cation. The calculated value of chi-square is 0.755 is smaller than the table value 5.991 at 2df and 5%level of signifi cance, and thus, the null hypothesis is accepted. Hence, online shopping has no signifi cant relationship with educational qualifi cation.

Educational Quali cation
To test whether there is any relationship between Internet literacy and online shopping among the target group, the hypothesis being Ho: Internet Literacy has no signifi cant relationship with online shopping. The calculated value of Chi-Square is 110.17, which is higher than the table value 3.841 at 1df of 5% level of signifi cance, and thus, the null hypothesis is rejected. Hence, Internet Literacy has a signifi cant relationship with online shopping.
To test whether there is any relationship between online product price and online shopping among the target group, the hypothesis being Ho: Online Product price has no signifi cant relationship with an online purchase.

Familiar and shop online
Price listed is higher compared to traditional purchase Total The calculated value of chi-square is 5.83, which is higher than the table value 3.841 for 1df at 5% level of signifi cance, and thus, the null hypothesis is rejected. Hence, Online Product price has a signifi cant relationship on online purchase. To test whether there is any relationship between website usability and online shopping among the target group, the hypothesis being Ho: Website usability has no signifi cant relationship with an online purchase. The calculated value of chi-square is 2.62 is smaller than the table value 3.841 at 1df and 5 levels of signifi cance, and thus, the null hypothesis is accepted. Hence, Website usability has no signifi cant relationship with an online purchase.

Discussions and Implications
• Since the majority of the respondents shop online, thus this fact can be benefi cial for the corporate sector looking for promoting their brands and doing business over the internet. Majority of respondents shop online, but still, the respondents think the reason of not shopping online is due to inability to touch and see the product physically while shopping It has been found that internet literacy has a signifi cant relationship on online purchase. Thus proper care should be taken to promote internet literacy to promote online shopping. • From the study, it was found that online product price listing has a signifi cant impact on online purchase. Thus if online shopping is to be promoted, then the online price listing should be less compared to traditional market price listing. The online retailers need to provide more competitive price and variety of product to attract customers and encourage them to make a purchase decision. It has also been found that website usability has no signifi cant impact on online shopping, which means that ease of use of the website has no effect on whosoever is internet literate and who shop online. • Another fi nding was that there is no signifi cant relationship between online shopping and educational qualifi cation, which means that qualifi cation has no impact on online shopping, whereas online shopping has a meaningful relationship with gender. Hence e-shopping companies should be distinct in addressing the needs of both males as well as female shoppers while promoting their brands or selling their product in online environment. • The study observed that online shopping is at a satisfactory level among the students of Alagappa University. Taking this as an example, if the e-shopping companies try to concentrate on above recommendations, then it will surely be S International Journal of Management able to increase the no of online shoppers as well as the frequency of online shopping among the students who are the majority online purchaser.

Limitations of the Study
As with most researches, this study also has some limitations. The sample size of the study, which consists of only 200 students, cannot be generalized and applied for the general public. Again opinions are dynamic; hence, the results of the study based on the opinions are likely to differ. The above-mentioned study is carried out only in one particular university, and the data of similar universities were not available for comparison. Hence observations and results may not be applicable for any other universities. Again the result also depends upon the integrity of respondents in giving true and fair opinion and their level of knowledge in the subject under study. Both sample error and nonsampling error may exist in the study, and also biases among the responses cannot be ignored.

Conclusion
The study Conclude that, Despite the remarkable growth in Internet sales, there is evidence to suggest that there are some consumers shopping with intent to buy at retail web sites which for some reason do not complete the transaction. The purpose of this study attempts to examine those individuals who completed an Internet purchase and to compare them to those who just Watch and Browse. Majority of the youth college students are very much eager to purchase online products.