Buying on the Internet: Gender Differences in On-line and Conventional Buying Motivations

By H. Dittmar, Karen Long, R. Meek. 2004

426 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Two studies are reported that examine gender differences in attitudes toward conventional buying and on-line buying. Thematic analysis of open-ended accounts (n=113) in Study 1 provides a rich, qualitative map of buying attitude dimensions that are important to young women and men. Study 2 is a quantitative survey (n=240) of functional, emotional–social, and identity-related buying motivations in the 2 environments. The on-line environment has an effect on buying attitudes, but more strongly so for women than for men. Whereas men's functional concerns are amplified—rather than changed—in the shift from conventional to on-line buying, women's motivational priorities show a reversal, and less involvement in shopping. In contrast to men, women's on-line buying is associated with barriers (social–experiential factors) and facilitators (efficiency, identity-related concerns) grounded in their attitudes toward conventional buying. This has implications for the ease with which women and men can and want to adapt to the accelerating shift toward computer-mediated shopping.

Subfields: Marketing, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/be2ef1e0d823b03e1937e4f93c8362cf0386bb62

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Citations in the corpus

Revisiting gender differences: What we know and what lies ahead☆ (2015, background): “Females' advantage in correctly decoding facial emotions occurs for both positive and negative emotions (Hampson et al., 2006), stimuli of extremely short durations (Hall & Matsumoto, 2004), among children (McClure, 2000), and it extends to memory for new faces.”
How consumer shopping orientation influences perceived crowding, excitement, and stress at the mall (2012, background): “In a retailing context, scholars have found that men tend to perceive shopping trips as a distasteful task best carried out as quickly and efficiently as possible (Dittmar et al. 2004).”
Exploring gender differences in online shopping attitude (2010, background): “With a few exceptions, explicit research studies to address gender differences in online shopping are scarce (Dittmar et al., 2004).”
Can A Retail Web Site be Social? (2007, background): “Previous research showed that emotional and social experiential concerns when shopping were more important to women than to men (Arnold and Reynolds 2003; Dittmar, Long, and Meek 2004); thus, the arousal due to social cues may provide more fun and playfulness for women than for men.”
The Effects of Personality Traits and Website Quality on Online Impulse Buying (2015, background): “According to Dittmar et al. (2004) the nature of online transactions causes many consumers to overspend because the remote process does not really feel like spending money. This is very important for firms and organizations because they are trying to find ways to motivate individuals to spend or buy”
Tugging on Heartstrings: Shopping Orientation, Mindset, and Consumer Responses to Cause-Related Marketing (2014, background): “to care about functional factors during the shopping process (Dittmar et al. 2004), and make judgments based on”
Consumer Heterogeneity, Perceived Value, and Repurchase Decision-Making in Online Shopping: The Role of Gender, Age, and Shopping Motives (2016, background): “Compared to men, women prefer and enjoy physical evaluation of products [Dittmar et al. 2004].”