Inclination towards Online Shopping - A Changing Trend among the Consumers

Shopping was once perceived as an activity of going out, exploring various stores and shops across the town, shifting through a myriad of options and finally settling down to purchase a product with full satisfaction. Now that the technology is skillfully trying to make a person think smartly, without exerting much physical energy, we see that even shopping has been engulfed under grip of changing lifestyle. With online shopping spreading its wings gradually, the experience of ‘touch and feel’ concept is slowly fading among the consumers. Online shopping or electronic shopping is a part of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the internet. A survey was conducted in the Jorhat town of Assam to know the online shopping scenario among the consumers with the objective to identify the category of population inclined for online shopping and the factors influencing the consumers for online shopping. For the present research work, 120 samples were selected randomly from four wards of municipality area and a multistage stratified random sampling method was adopted in order to select representative sample. The findings of the study revealed that the young generations are very active in the activities of online shopping and most of them are females. The results of the study have given detailed information regarding the change in shopping behaviour of the consumers.