Factors that Influence a Buyer's Decision Process of Shopping Online: The Effects of Tradition and Virtual Community

With the tremendous growth of online shopping, this paper tries to figure out what factors influence consumer's shopping decisions online. Following the idea of a customer of both traditional market and e-market, his offline experience and online experience in each community may probably affect his decisions to buy a product in e-market, especially for experience goods. Therefore this paper theoretically emphasized the role of tradition. It then analyzes their influences on consumer's decision processes. in the need recognition stage of decision process, it divides consumer's need recognition into INR(Initial Need Recognition) which is influenced by tradition community and FNR(Final Need Recognition) which is influenced by virtual community. This paper finally proposes seven hypotheses as well as a conceptual model.