Factors that determine e-customers' hedonic consumption behaviors and a survey

In the survey, it is researched whether there is any difference between ecustomers‟ hedonic shopping motives, which determine their hedonic behaviors, according to demographic specifications such as gender, marital status, age, education, income. Survey results are targeted to gain important favors for both online firms and Internet users. Consumers are defined as individuals who carry out his right of buying and using goods and services, which are offered to be sold by marketing organizations, to satisfy personal desires or to satisfy the needs of family or other similar community. Customer behavior comprises all behaviors, which are carried out during the consumption period, of individuals, groups or organizations to satisfy desires and needs of consumers. Consumption period is defined as a scientific area which analyzes related periods which start from feeling the existence of need, and then researching to satisfy the need; choosing products, services, opinions or experiences among available alternatives; buying them; using them; considering consumption experience and pushing them off, and factors which these periods have effects on consumers and public. Consumers‟ decision-making process has certain phases before and after buying. Phases before buying are problem recognition, information search and evaluation of alternatives. The other phases of decision-making comprise purchase decision and post purchase behavior. E-commerce is defined as buying and selling products or services online, and Internet is the best source to use this tool. E-commerce consists of fund transfer, procurement chain management, and marketing on the Internet. In addition to ecommerce which consists of commercial transactions carried out through telecommunication webs, marketing on the Internet are defined as periods related to improving products toward target markets on the Internet, pricing, publicity and distribution. E-commerce transactions are divided into four categories which are from business to consumer (B2C), from business to business (B2B), from consumer to consumer (C2C) and form consumer to business (C2B). The purpose of from consumer to consumer model which is the area that is used most of e-commerce and which is used to keep potential customers and to find new markets, is to provide customers opportunity to shop on the Internet by availing WWW. Internet commerce has rapidly developed because it has low input cost so it has a guarantee of investment‟s fast return and protecting investment, because it presents connectivity and contact, it satisfies information needs, it creates more users and critical populace who pulls technology provider and it creates constant opportunities as a result of rapid development of electronic commerce technologies. Consumers are looking for favor in the market. And if consumers have positive attitude on the direction of interactive media, when compared with traditional channels, favors of using interactive shopping are more important. These favors the consumer has gained are media‟s interactivity in reaching product information and controlling it, its flexibility and comfortableness, its suitability for 24 hours, reaching information at a lot of locations, saving time, receiving at home, low prices, product performance, service quality. But the other part that differentiates new media from traditional shopping is that it is not possible to examine the product physically before buying. And security and protection level are among the subjects that consumers worry. It is seen that businesses also gain a lot of favors on the shopping that is done on the Internet, as do the consumers. Firms which give service on the Internet gain important favors on the subjects of distributing information, improving customer relations, creating a wide customer base, improving after-sale services.Marketing on the Internet, provide firms opportunity to give service according to personal desires, demands and needs of the consumers. It makes it easier to convey goods and services to the customers with a lower cost and in a short time. Internet consumer is defined as a person who shops on the Internet and who has an unlimited access when browsing through the products, while making this buying and who has shopped online at least once in the last eight weeks. In the shopping value which is summarized in two dimensions as rational and hedonic; rational value is defined as general consideration of functional favors and it is related to using it for duty such as product, service, price, decision of buying which includes specification ingredients before online shopping has been done. Rational value includes cognitive ways of attitude such as comfortableness and timesaving and economical value of money. For example, their shopping on the Internet because of advantages such as easiness of accessibility for the consumers and comparing products, mentioned above, considering price/quality rates shows that they gain pragmatic favor. Hedonic value is defined as general consideration of experimental favors such as fun and escape. Online consumers expect to shop on the purpose of fun apart from their routine experiences which pulls users in itself.40 Rational shopping value reflects obtaining a product and/or information efficiently and shopping is seen as more job-oriented, cognitive and unemotional output according to hedonic shopping value. Hedonic consumption is defined as most consumers‟ taking pleasure not from the product that he has bought but from the intangibles of consuming experience and from the voyage that it has caused. Hedonic value is more subjective and personal in comparison with rational view. It brings results aimed at happiness and fun rather than completing job to mind. So, hedonic shopping value reflects potential pleasure and emotional meaning in shopping. This view comes up because consumers do hedonic shopping experience for the purposes of fun, escape, variety, change, difference, family and socializing. Hedonic reasons which effect shopping decisions from online and traditional shopping channels reflect taking pleasure from shopping period, functional reasons focus on making a good choice. When shopping, consumers have mainly functional motives. Primarily in a profitable attitude, they buy their products with a minimum effort to perform their aims. Contrary to carrying out an aim which has been determined beforehand, consumers who have hedonic motivation for shopping are interested in pleasure and fun parts of the shopping experience. But when shopping, most consumers show both functional and hedonic motivations and think that having fun and taking pleasure in the buying period are the important elements for a positive shopping experience. In Arnold and Reynolds‟ study related to hedonic shopping motivations which are carried out for improving scale, they have explained hedonic shopping motivations in 6 main reasons. They include adventure, social, gratification, idea, role and value shopping.48 And Parsons‟ authority and status scale was used in the survey.In the survey carried out it was tried to determine whether there are differences between hedonic shopping motives according to e-consumers‟ demographic specifications such as gender, marital status, age, education, job group. Samples were consumers who are 18 and above, who were the members of different forums and who did shopping at least once on the Internet in the last eight weeks and consumers who are 18 and above, who live in Istanbul who did shopping at least once on the Internet in the last eight weeks. Questionnaire method was used as data gathering method in the survey. Data were gathered with online questionnaire method and face-to-face personal interview method. It consists of three sections. It has 35 statements. Pre-survey study was done before distributing questionnaire to people, last corrections were made. The questionnaire took its final form. The number of samples was determined 700 with convenience sampling method and 640 questionnaire were obtained after eliminating deficient and false ones. Most of the consumers participated on the survey do the shopping on the Internet at least once or less a month (%77,7), they buy mostly clothes and accessories (%18,1). The Second is electronic devices (%14), the third is magazines, books, films, and music category (%13,1). When looked into demographic specifications of e-consumers, most of the participants are women (%54,5). Most of them are single (%69) and between 23 and 27 (%32,5), more than half have bachelor‟s degree (%59), most of them work in private sector (%55) and they have a salary of 4201 TL or above (%20). Firstly, reliability analysis belonging to scales taken from two articles which are wanted to be answered in 5 point Likert type to determine hedonic shopping behaviors of e-consumers was carried out, then exploratory factor analysis, which would reveal whether every one of these scales is gathered under different dimensions and which would put forward scales‟ validity was conducted.50 When analyzing, data SPSS 20.0 packet program was used. After reliability analysis result, authority and status scale which reduces reliability and one variable of adventure shopping scale were removed, reliability at the rate of 0,898 was obtained. T test and variance analyses were used to measure the difference between factors that were examined in six dimensions in the factor analysis conducted and demographic specifications of consumers. Hypotheses were tested at α=0,05 significance level. Independent t test was carried out to determine the difference between gender, marital status and hedonic shopping motives in the survey. In the t test related to gender, significant differences, most of them are in favor of men, were found in 14 of 22 statements in the six factors but in the t test related to marital status only one significant difference were found in one statement in role shopping factor. In this case H1 hypothesis is accepted partly but H2 hypothesis is rejected. Anova analysis was used to determine the differences between consumers‟ ages, education levels, job groups, personal incomes and hedonic shopping motives. In the Anova analysis, related to age, carried out, when examined Scheffe test‟s results, in the total four statements which are in the factors of adventure, value, role and gratification, mean differences between double groups were determined. As age gets older, it was seen that e-consumers who are 38 or above have more negative thoughts. According to Scheffe test results obtained as a result of Anova Analysis conducted, related to education levels, significant differences, in favor of primary school graduates, and were found in the social shopping‟s two variables between double groups. According to Scheffe test results obtained as a result of Anova Analysis conducted, related to job groups, only one significant difference was just found in role shopping. Finally, According to Scheffe test results obtained as a result of Anova Analysis conducted, related to personal income, 10 significant differences, most of them are to the detriment of high-income consumers, of the variables, which are adventure, value, role, idea and gratification shopping, were determined. In this case, H3, H4 and H6 hypotheses are accepted partly but H5 hypothesis is rejected. On the other hand, due to the fact that authority and status scale‟s reliability are determined low, H7 hypothesis was removed from the analysis at the beginning of the study. As a result, there are significant differences between hedonic shopping motives according to demographic specifications which comprise e-customers‟ gender, age, education levels and personal incomes. E-customers who have different demographic specifications show different hedonic shopping behaviors in these categories. In addition to this, there is no significant difference between hedonic shopping motives according to e-customers‟ marital status and job groups. It is seen that married and single e-consumers or consumers who have different job groups show similar hedonic shopping behaviors