Exploring Consumer Behaviour in E-Commerce: A Research Investigation in Varanasi and Prayag Raj Districts of Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

As e-commerce is growing as a technical market with a lot of features, it attracts customers very quickly, changing the decision-making process of shopping in the modern day of globalisation. Today, e-commerce is increasing the interest of people to purchase goods and services over the internet, which has significantly changed the scenario of the Indian retail market. The Big Billion-Day Sale offered by Flipkart is a perfect example of changing consumer purchase behaviour recently.  This study attempts to understand and analyze consumers’ behaviour based on demographic responses and internet usage frequency. The paper also focuses on identifying the relationship of online purchase reasons and internet usage behaviour in Varanasi and Prayag Raj districts. Based on a wide literature review about consumer behaviour in e-commerce, a structured questionnaire was prepared. The data was collected through a survey of 300 e-commerce customers in Varanasi and Prayag raj districts of Uttar Pradesh. For this study, the cross-tabulation method, chi-square analysis and correlation analysis have been used with the help of SPSS software. The findings of the study indicate that usage of the internet  is significantly different to their gender, educational qualification, age-group, monthly-income and family size. Consumers’ behaviour is also related to the features of e-commerce, like delivery of products, payment security, fair price of products, quality of products, presentation of the products, convenience, and flexible and time savings.