CUSTOMER PURCHASE DECISION PROCESS IN PURCHASING ONLINE FASHION PRODUCT: THAILAND’S PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

E-commerce is one of the most effective ways for fashion retailers to gain more customers and generate sales. Some businesses perform well, and gain high profit from online transactions, while others fail. This researcher believes that studying the behavior of online consumers might help sellers understand customers more as they might have unexpected criteria for purchasing goods that online sellers had not noticed. The researcher has designed interview questions based on Consumer Purchase Decision Process Model by Kotler to extract customers’ experiences in buying online fashion products, and also the reasons behind those behaviors. MustarD, an online scarf shop, was selected as a case study. 9 out of 30 MustarD’s customers were interviewed face-to-face, while 21 out of 30 interviews were conducted by telephone. The findings from this paper show that customers followed the purchase decision steps in buying online fashion products, but there were some differences in some stages. For example, online customers tended to read a lot of reviews from the Internet since it was convenient. Additionally, online consumers use certain important criteria during the Post-Purchase stage, which does not happen in offline transactions. Moreover, the researcher provides suggestions to improve online performance for online shops and indicates interesting aspects that have not been analyzed in details in this paper but is worth studying further. KEY WORDS: ONLINE/ FASHION/ CONSUMER/ BEHAVIOR/ PURCHASE