Internet exchanges in the context of hedonic consumption and utilitarian consumption trends: a research on university students studying in Istanbul

Today, increasing competition, rapid technological changes and developments with globalization have increased the importance of shopping on the internet. With different and new service areas, the product range has also started to increase. As a result of the widespread use of capitalism, shopping has turned into a consumption frenzy, the phenomenon of consumption has changed in time, and emotional consumption has become increasingly important. With this change, consumers started to shop not only to obtain rational benefits, but also to obtain emotional benefits, and thus, apart from utilitarian consumption, they started hedonic consumption for purposes such as pleasure, happiness, and emotional reflection. In this context, it is the subject of this study to determine the factors that affect the shopping behavior of university students in electronic environment and to determine whether the motives that drive them to buy are utilitarian or hedonic. In the first part of the study, the concept of consumption, consumption theories and factors affecting consumer behavior are emphasized. In the second part, definition of internet shopping and factors affecting online shopping, definition and comparison of hedonic and utilitarian consumption concepts and studies on hedonic consumption behavior are mentioned. In the last part of the study, the scale developed by Wolfinbarger and Gilly (2001) was used to detect utilitarian buying behaviors, and the scale developed by Arnold and Reynolds (2003) was used to determine hedonic buying behaviors. SPSS 25.0 was used to analyze the research data.