The purpose of our research is to examine differences in e-commerce preferences
between men, women, and mothers with small children (in the US). Various
website factors have been established in previous studies as critical to
e-commerce success. However, there are few studies that investigate how these
factors vary in importance among different user groups, for example men, women,
or mothers with young children. Increased understanding of these group’s
preferences can help companies market themselves more effectively to these
groups.
A survey was distributed to residents of the US, asking respondents to rank the
relative importance of 16 e-commerce features, as well as to provide
performance ratings for the implementation of these features by their favorite
Internet retailer. The data collected from this survey was analyzed to
evaluate significant group differences in their prioritization of importance,
as well as perceived performance, of the features and of three constructs
(information quality, system quality, and customer-relations quality), which
corresponded to more general characteristic groupings of these features. These
measures were used to help identify potential performance gaps, which might
serve as opportunities for companies to better meet the e-retail expectations
of different customer groups.
Differences in the importance of features and constructs within each of the
groups were consistent with previous studies. A number of gender differences
were found in the relative importance of various features, but no gender
differences were found at the more general construct level. There were no
significant differences in importance values between mothers and non-mothers at
either the feature or construct level. However, numerous differences between
the groups were found in performance ratings at both feature and construct
levels. Most significant was the lower level of satisfaction among mothers,
for all features and constructs. Because of a high proportion of respondents
listing Amazon.com as favorite e-retailer, separate analyses were performed of
these respondents and of the other “non-Amazon” respondents. These analyses
showed even greater dissatisfaction among the non-A...