Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice

ISSN: 1069-6679 (Print) 1944-7175 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mmtp20

Explaining and Predicting Consumer Intention to

Purchase Over the Internet: An Exploratory Study

Ronald E. Goldsmith

To cite this article: Ronald E. Goldsmith (2002) Explaining and Predicting Consumer Intention
to Purchase Over the Internet: An Exploratory Study, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice,
10:2, 22-28, DOI: 10.1080/10696679.2002.11501913

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10696679.2002.11501913

Published online: 07 Dec 2015.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 15

View related articles

Citing articles: 9 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=mmtp20

Download by: [University of California, San Diego] Date: 04 March 2016, At: 05:59
 EXPLAINING AND PREDICTING CONSUMER
INTENTION TO PURCHASE OVER THE
INTERNET: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Ronald E. Goldsmith
Florida State University
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 05:59 04 March 2016

This study tested a model that organizes and presents factors that lead consumers to buy online. The model contained four
. explanatory variables (generalized innovativeness, innovativeness toward online buying, involvement with the Internet, and
frequency ofInternet use) and two response variables (amount of past purchasing done over the Internet and likelihood of future
online purchase). A sample of 107 undergraduates reported their Internet-related attitudes and behaviors in the context of a
longitudinal survey of purchasing behavior. Path analysis showed that a slightly modified model fit the data well. Frequency
of online buying and intent to buy online in the future were predicted by general innovativeness, an innovative predisposition
toward buying online, and involvement with the Internet. Thus, these appear to be important predictors of online buying that can
help profile consumers for marketing strategy.

INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND

As ecommerce grows in size and importance, marketing and
consumer researchers devote more effort to studying
Consumer Internet Behavior or how consumers make the
Internet a part of their consumption lives (Peterson et al. 1997;
Cowles and Kiecker 2000). The topic of this study was online
buying as a key component of consumer use of the Internet.
The study was stimulated by questions regarding the
motivating forces leading to online buying and to future
. intentions to buy online. Part of this concern came from the
needs of ecommerce managers to understand why consumers
buy online so that they can develop effective strategies to
encourage consumers to access their web sites to spend time
and money (Aldridge et al. 1997; Wysocki 2000). Another
concern was theoretical. Consumer behavior researchers and
theorists need to study Consumer Internet Behavior in order to
determine how well existing consumer theory can be applied
to ecommerce and where new theories and models need to be
developed (Cowles and Kiecker 2000; Phau and Poon 2000).
To these ends, a model was developed (see Figure lA)
describing some reasons why consumers vary in amount of
online buying and in their intention to buy online in the future.
The model was empirically tested and modified. Although the
study is exploratory (Diamantopoulos and Siguaw 2000, p.
103), the modified model provides a basis for future model
development.
People use the Internet for many reasons (see UCLA 2000, p.
10). The domain of activities where Internet use and
consumption behavior overlap can be called Consumer
Internet Behavior. These activities include gathering
consumption information through exposure to advertising;
shopping, which includes browsing, comparing products, and
deliberate information search; and online buying of goods,
services, and information (Goldsmith and Bridges 2000).
Most research into consumer Internet behavior has been
descriptive in nature, yielding statistical information on what
is purchased online and the demographic characteristics of
online buyers (e.g., Modahl 2000; Murphy 2000). Some
research has expanded beyond simple descriptions to explicit
hypothesis testing regarding factors that influence online
buying (e.g., Degeratu, Rangaswamy, and Wu 2000; Phau and
Poon 2000). Finally, a few attempts have been made to
develop models of online buying (e.g., Limayem et al. 2000).
The present study takes its place in this domain by proposing
a model of some characteristics of consumers that predispose
them to buy online and their intentions to buy online in the
future and by testing the model empirically.
Causal modeling is an essential feature of marketing and
consumer research for at least three reasons (Kenny 1979, p.
5):
1. Since most researchers either implicitly or
explicitly construct models, a formal development

22 Journal of Marketing THEORY AND PRACTICE

 of the method would assist these researchers.
2. Causal modeling can assist the development,
modification, and extension of measurement and
substantive theory.
3. Causal modeling can give marketing a strong basis
for applying theory to solving marketing problems.
Structural models allow researchers to explicitly incorporate
measurement error into their models to assess its influence on
the model fit. Moreover, developing and testing models
allows researchers to study interdependent relationships among
multiple variables simultaneously, thereby providing a more
. veridical view of the reality of the phenomena of interest.
Models of online buying represent an opportunity to develop
key model constructs and their operationalizations in order to
enhance explanations of this aspect of consumer behavior for
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 05:59 04 March 2016
of the product category (Taylor 1977; Goldsmith 1995).
Anlount of use can be hypothesized to be a function of how
involved (interested and enthusiastic) consumers are with the
Internet (H4) and of how innovative they are in general (H5).
Higher levels of product .involvement are associated with
greater product use in many studies (Flynn and Goldsmith
1993). General innovativeness is positively linked to usage
(Goldsmith et al. 1998). Descriptions of Internet use have
shown. that users. are more open to new technology than non-
users (Modahl 2000; Murphy 2000). Thus, there is a
hypothesized positive path from global innovativeness to
Internet iIinovativeness (H6). Goldsmith et al. (1996) showed
that global innovativeness, conceptualized and measured as a
willingness to try new things, was positively correlated with
innovativeness for a specific product category. Finally, (H7)
innovativeness for a product 'category is highly correlated with

both marketing theorists and practitioners. involvement with that category (Flynn and Goldsmith 1993;
Goldsmith 1995). Thus, the model contains seven positive
A few attempts have been made to model consumer Internet paths.
behavior. Eastlick and Lotz (1999) used logistic regression to
test hypotheses regarding personal characteristics that function FIGUREl
as antecedents of online buying. While not proposing a true A MODEL OF BUYING ONLINE
A: FintModtJ
model of online buying, their research did find evidence for
the influence of key variables predisposing consumers to buy I...O_I_Db_al_ _ _ _tl H5 .06. ~ IlntemetUIO ~
online. A positive relationship between personal .26. Ffl,\.07
innovativeness and intent to shop online was detected, as well H6 ;:&.1r-Onlin-'-D--' HI .66· I LWIy
as a positive influence oftelevision shopping and intent to use
the Internet, implymg that the earliest online buyers were
H4 .04
r"lntem--et-,-..,.....-,/~I·In_ . P' 1.10/
H3
Buying
L.-..:.....::.-.J---_
to)3uy

heavy users of other electronic shopping media. Citrin et aI. ~--------~ m •

(2000) proposed a simple model in which Internet uSe arid
I!it.IDlIiw
personal innovativeness were both positively related to self- C'wlth 7 dearus offreedom - 30.9.p - .00007
Samdanllzcd root mem sguano ....iduaJ - .11 IDa - .2601 -I-·.16Inv +'27.4Ezr. a' - .O({1
reported online shopping. Limayem et al. (2000) developed a GoodnoA ofl'tt-.92 U.. - .0S9Gl -I- ~036lnv -I- 3A&r, a' - .029-
more complex model containing a variety of constructs Ac\jllltoci Cloodneu ofPIt - .76 Bay - .D96YIm ....06BU.. + .6!1Bn-. it' • .30
Nonaeci Pit lIuIox - .79 Like - .66Buy ... .SIijirr. R.' - .43 '
hypothesized to be related to Internet shopping. Again, Ncm-Nonned PIt IDcIcx - .60
Comp~ve Fit lDdIIlC -.82
personal innovativeness was positively associated with
intentions to shop, which were in tum positively associated
with Internet shopping. Thus, although the present study was B: Secimd Model
conducted independently and before these other studies were
published, it contains some of the same constructs and
hypothetical relationships. I OlDbal
Proposed Model and Hypotheses

Consumer intentions to behave are an important concept as

they represent the best estimate of future behavior available to
market researchers (Kalwani and Silk 1982). Thus, "likelihood
'of future online buying" appears as the ultimate dependent
variable in the model. Since past behavior is a good predictor
ll1lDdiw...
of future behavior (Bentler and Speckart 1981), the first Cl'withs daJ!l'llll afhcdam -lO.7.p- .OSB
hypothesized relationship in the model is a positive link from Stmsdanllzed lOot IDOII1 oqUIIio naldvl! - .019 ' iDD -.26Gl -I- .loSInv -t 27.4B1r. as ••067
000dD_ ofP'rt~.97 UIO - .0S9GI -I- .036la.v + JABn-. r· .029
current level of online buying to intent to buy online in the Adjllllcd Goociuui ofPk - .87 Buy - .0961n1l'" .D68U...... 69Bn-. R.'-.30
Nazmocl P'JlllIdox - .93 LIke- .OSBIlm -I- .46Buy +.0231Dv -I- .47llzr. a' - .5.
future. Current online buying is hypothesized to be a function Nan-Nazmocl Pit Index - .87
of two constructs: (H2) amount of Internet use and (H3) Comparallve PIt Inclex - .!16

Internet innovativeness. Those who use the Internet more are

likely to buy more online than those who use it less (Feather
2000, p. 300), and how innovative a consumer is regarding a .
product category is positively related to the amount purchased

Spring 20()2 23
 METHOD
The data came from a convenience sample of 117
undergraduate business students at a large southeastern US
university who participated for extra course credit. Student
consumers are an appropriate sample because they represent
the younger end of the market for online buying that cyber
marketers want to attract owing to their long-term potential as
affluent customers (ModahI2000). Lack of randomness in the
sample, however, limits generalizability of the point and
interval estimates to a larger population; but since the main
purpose of the study was to develop a model of online buying,
this is a minor limitation (Calder et al. 1981). To participate
in a longitudinal survey of several aspects of consumption, the
students completed a questionnaire at the start of the semester
in January, a second questionnaire about seven weeks later,
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 05:59 04 March 2016
the consumer deems the product to be. To represent amount
of Internet Use, the respondents were asked to report the
average number of hours per day they spent on the Internet in
the past week. These estimates ranged from 0 hours (only one
person) to 10 hours (three respondents) per day in the last
week. The majority (54.5%) reported using the Internet 1 to
2 hours per day during the week. This usage is similar to that
reported by the Georgia Institute of Technology's Graphics,
Visualization and Usability (GVU) tenth survey of Internet
usage.
TABLE ONE
MEASURES, FACTOR LOADINGS, AND RELIABILITY
Scale Items Factor Factor Coefficient
Loadinf( Alpha
Internet Innovativeness •

and a final one at the end of the semester in April, fifteen In general, I am the last in my circle of .815
weeks after the first. Complete responses to the measures . friends to know the names of the latest
places to shop on the Internet.
were obtained from 107 survey participants. I know more about shopping over the .802
Internet than other people.
Demographic items appeared in the first questionnaire asking In general, I am among the last in my .756
the students to report their age, gender, class standing, and circle of friends to purchase something
race. They were also given six categories to report the socio- over the Internet..
economic status of their families that ranged from "Unskilled Compared to my friends, I do little .706
worker, perhaps unemployed," to "the local elite with inherited shopping over the Internet.
wealth and family tradition." Ages ranged from 20 to 37 years If I heard that a new product that I was .643
with a mean of21.9 years (SD =2.3). There were 58 men and interested in was available over the
Internet, I would be interested enough to
59 women in the sample. Twenty-four of the .respondents buy it.
(20.5%) were juniors; the rest were seniors. The distribution I will consider buying something over the .462 .85
of race categories was very close to that of the university as Internet, even if I haven't heard of it
whole: 89 white (76.1 %),15 black (12.8%), 7 Hispanics (6%), before.
and 6 other (5.1 %). The distribution for socio-economic status
Global Innovativeness b
was: 3 elite (2.6%),19 executive (16.2%), 46 business owners I am generally open to accepting new .880
(39.3%), 34 white-collar workers (29.1%), 13 semi-skilled ideas.
workers (11.1%), 1 unskilled (.9%), and 1 missing. There I am willing to trv new things. .798
were no statistically significant (p < .05) relationships among I tend to feel new ways of living and .726
the demographic variables other than seniors were older than doing things are improvements over the
past.
juniors, and socio-economic status was not independent from I feel that I am an innovative person. .660 .85
race.
Internet Involvement e
Items measuring the six variables in the model appeared in the Excitinf( - - - - - - Unexcitinf( .870
second and third questionnaires (see Table 1). The Domain Mundane - - - - - - Fascinatinf( .832
Uninvolvinf( - - - - - - Involvinf( .687
Specific Innovativeness Scale (Goldsmith and Hofacker 1991) Appealinf( - - - - - - Unappealinf( .628
appeared in the second questionnaire. The items were written Interestinf( - - - - - - Uninteresting .435
to measure how innovative consumers are with regard to Valuable - - - - - - - Worthless .805
buying over the Internet. Summed scores formed the measure Important - - - - - - - Unimportant .776
of Internet Innovativeness. 'Fhe third questionnaire contained Irrelevant - - - - - - - Relevant .632
Needed - - - - - - - Not Needed .503
measures of the remaining variables representing Internet-
Means nothing to me - - - - Means a lot to .399 .89
related buying. A general predisposition to be innovative, to me
be willing to try new things, was measured by four items from • Used a five-pomt "agree-disagree" response format.
Hurt, Joseph, and Cook's (1977) scale. These were summed to b Used a seven-point "agree-disagree" response format.
e Seven response points separated the pairs of adjectives.
represent Global Innovativeness. The ten items of
Zaichkowsky's Personal Involvement Inventory were summed
to measure Internet Involvement. Zaichkowsky (I994) chose Three questions measured amo~nt of Online Buying. The first
these bi-polar adjective pairs to measure two elements of asked "How often would you say that you purchase online?"
involvement with products, (I) how interested and excited the and used a five-point response format where 1 = never, 2 =
consumer is with regard to the product and (2) how important rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often, and 5 = very often. The
second question asked " ... how often do you purchase

24 Journal of Marketing THEORY AND PRACTICE

 TABLE 2
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS AND CORRELATIONS
Descriptive Statistics Correlations

Variable Range Mean SD Skew Kurtosis I 2 3 4 5 6

I. Global 4-28 21.5 4.0 -1.8 4.79 15.7 -.06 .12 .18 -.03 .01
Innovativeness

2. Internet 34-70 61.1 6.4 -.98 2.09 -1.5 41.4 .12 .18 .20* .30**
Involvement

3. Internet Use 0-10 2.1 1.9 2.4 7.51 .88 1.4 3.5 .27** .27** .26**

4. Internet 6-28 17.8 5.4 -.42 -.60 3.9 6.1 2.7 29.4 .55** .60**
Innovativeness

5. Online Buying -1.1-4.2 0.0 1.0 1.9 6.5 -.11 1.3 .50 3.0 1.0 .66**
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 05:59 04 March 2016

6. Likelihood to 1-5 3.5 1.0 -.15 -5.6 .03 1.9 .48 3.2 .66 1.3
Buy
Note: Pearson correlations above the dIagonal, vanances on the dIagonal, and covarlances below the dIagonal
* Correlation is significant at the .05 level (2-tailed).
** Correlation is significant at the .0 I level (2-tailed).

online?" using a six-point response fonnat where I = I never
do, 2 = less than once a month, 3 = less than once every two
weeks, but more than once a month, 4 = only about once every
two weeks, 5 = about once a week, and 6 = more than once a
week. The third item asked respondents to record "How many
times have you bought something online since January 1,
2000?" Since these three questions used different
measurement scales, the responses were intercorrelated and
submitted to a principal components analysis. Only one
principal component with an eigenvalue greater than 1.0 was
extracted. It accounted for 84% of the variance in the
correlation matrix. Factor scores were computed by the
regression method to create a composite variable representing
extent of online buying. Only 28 (24%) of the participants had
not bought online when the measure was taken. The high
proportion of online buyers in the sample may have resulted
from two contributing factors: (1) the universal availability of
the Internet to students on this college campus and (2) the
young age of the population, with its accompanying
experience with computers and other technology.
Finally, a single question asked "Regardless of how much you
buy online now, how likely are you to buy online in the
coming year?" and used a five-point response fonnat where 1
= Definitely won't buy on-line, 2 = probably won't buy on-line,
3 = might buy on-line, 4 = probably will buy on-line, and 5 =
definitely will buy on-line. This item measured how Likely to
Buy Online the respondents thought they would be. Over half
of the participants (50.9%) said they definitely or probably
would buy over the Internet in the coming year, while only
13.4% said they either definitely or probably would not buy.
RESULTS
Items from the three multi-items scales measuring global
innovativeness, Internet innovativeness, and Internet
involvement were factor analyzed using the principal axis
(common factor analysis) method in SPSS. Factor loadings
appear in Table 1. These analyses showed the global
innovativeness and Internet innovativeness scales to be
unidimensional. Zaichkowsky's (1994) scale is composed of
two factors, representing interest and importance, and these
were apparent in the factor analysis. For the purposes of the
present study, the involvement scale was treated as a
unidimensional scale. Factor analyzing the 21 multi-scale
items together showed that the items from each scale loaded
on the same factor and not on the factors containing the other
scale's items, indicating good discriminant validity (or no item
overlap) for the items. Computing Cronbach's alpha assessed
internal consistency of the multi-item scales. These results
were sufficiently high for the purposes of the present study
(see Table 1). Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics for all
six variables in the model. Tests ofnonnality showed that few
of the individual items and none of the summed scales were
nonnally distributed. This lack of nonnality and the small
sample size suggested a path analysis instead of a structural
equation analysis. Path analysis is a "method for studying the
direct and indirect effects of variables taken as causes of
variables taken as effects" (Pedhazur 1982, p. 580). The
procedure described by Joreskog and Sorbom (1993, pp. 10-
15) was followed.
The six variables were intercorrelated, and the covariance
matrix was input to LlSREL 8 (see Table 2). Figure IA
presents the initial model proposed to account for online
buying and likelihood of future online buying. The fit indices
show that this first model did not provide a good fit. While
future online buying intentions were positively related to
current and past online buying, as hypothesized, only Internet
Innovativeness (but not Internet use) was significantly related
to online buying. In tJ,lrn, both Global Innovativeness and
Internet Involvement were related to Internet Innovativeness,

Spring 2002 25
 but neither was related to Internet Use. The modification
indices provided by LISREL suggested changes to improve the
model fit. The first path added was a direct link from Internet
Innovativeness to Likely to Buy. Freeing this path improved
the fit of the model substantially. A second change was
subsequently suggested by the modification indices, freeing
the path from Internet Involvement to Likely to Buy. After
freeing this second path, the model was reestimated, and this
revised model is shown in Figure 1B. The revised model not
only fit the data well, the paths added on the basis of the
modification indices make good substantial sense (Joreskog
and Sorbom, 1993, p. 128; Diamantopoulos and Siguaw 2000,
p. 109). Other models were tested, but none fit the data as
well as the second model; and demographics were unrelated to
any of the Internet variables.
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 05:59 04 March 2016
DISCUSSION
The purpose of the present study was to develop and to
empirically test a model of the relationships among constructs
hypothesized to lead consumers to buy online and to form
future online buying intentions. Data from a survey of 117
student consumers and path analysis were used to test the
model. The results suggest that global innovativeness,
involvement with the Internet, and Internet innovativeness all
playa role in explaining online buying and buying intentions.
These findings agree with discussions ofthe Internet that claim
that consumers who are more innovative and adventuresome,
who want to try new types of technology, and who are
intrigued with the Internet as a gadget or gizmo are the ones
most likely to engage in ecommerce (Modahl 2000; Murphy
2000). The results are also consistent with other studies that
have found similar relationships between innovativeness and
online consumer behavior (Eastlick and Lotz 1999; Citrin et al.
2000; Limayem et al. 2000).
The modeling approach and this study in particular have both
advantages and disadvantages. The model tests the
simultaneous relationships among the set of variables instead
of focusing only on pairs of variables and bivariate analysis.
Thus, it gives us a more accurate picture of the phenomena
under study. Moreover, the model in the present study is
consistent with both previous empirical research and
speculation about consumer Internet behavior. One of its
shortcomings, however, is that it omits critical variables,
which are likely to account for addition variation in buying and
buying intentions, beyond what the limited set of variables it
contains can do (Diamantopoulos and Siguaw 2000, p. 13).
Future theory development and empirical study should
concentrate on adding new variables to the model to give it
greater explanatory and predictive power. One possible
approach would be to add specific attitudes toward buying
online, to represent, for example, concerns with safety and
ease of use, which have been argued to influence consumers'
likelihood of online buying (Cowles and Kiecker 2000;
Goldsmith and Bridges 2000; Phau and Po on 2000;
Vijayasarathy and Jones 2000).
26 Journal of Marketing THEORY AND PRACTICE
Another implication is that amount ofInternet use may not be
a good indicator of buying on the Internet. Three possible
explanations for this present themselves. First, the measure of
Internet use may not be reliable or valid. Asking for estimates
of one week's use may not capture the true information
because consumers can not remember or estimate their actual
use or are unwilling to reveal it. Also, weekly variations in
use may render this specific measure unreliable. Second, the
construct's position in the model may be inaccurate. The
proper causal relationship may be that buying over the Internet
results in more use over time, so the causal order among the
variables should be changed. Third, use may not in fact be
related to buying. Consumers use the Web for many activities
(Nie and Erbring 2000), so amount of buying may simply be
lost in the total amount of other activity. This suggests that the
measure of amount of Internet use should be changed or the
concept removed from the model.
The addition of direct paths from Internet innovativeness and
Internet involvement to future intent to buy, while suggested
by the path analysis, make good substantial sense. It is
plausible that consumers who are both interested in the
Internet and have an innovative disposition toward it may have
formed intentions to buy that are independent of past and
current buying activity. They may not be able to afford what
they want to buy, what they want to buy may not be available
at the present time, they may be delaying online purchase for
some external reason, or there may be circumstances beyond
their control (e.g., season of the year) which delay online
buying. Concluding that these two direct paths are valid,
however, must await future tests of the model with new data.
One surprising finding was the minor influence of Internet
involvement, either in the bivariate analyses or the path
analysis. Past studies (Flynn and Goldsmith 1993; Goldsmith
1995) suggest large correlations between involvement and
both innovativeness and purchasing. The weak path may
reflect a "ceiling effect" in that the overall distribution of
involvement scores was shifted to the high end of the scale,
with a mean of 61.1, close to the maximum of 70 and far from
the theoretical mean of 40. In effect, most of these consumers
indicated they found the Internet extremely involving, so there
was little variance in this measure. Future study of consumers
who vary more in involvement might reveal the strong
correlation between involvement and innovativeness that one
expects to find.
The large, positive path between buying and intent to buy
suggests that online buyers must be relatively satisfied with
the activity. The model could be improved by adding a
measure of satisfaction with online buying to assess
empirically the role of this construct in explaining future
intent. Moreover, while thiS study did not include satisfaction,
one can infer that, as many have suggested (e.g., Murphy
2000), dissatisfaction with online buying will drive consumers
away from specific sites and, if pervasive, from buying online
 altogether; so that customer satisfaction should be a paramount
managerial concern. Also, for ecommerce firms, the findings
suggest that current and future buyers are more adventuresome
and innovative consumers. They may be attracted to the novel,
stimulating features of online buying. Those who haven't
bought online and hesitate to do so need different strategies
that appeal to their unique motivations and attitudes. These
should be studied to help ecommerce.
The findings from this study, when added to the growing body
of knowledge of consumer Internet behavior, yield several
implications for ecommerce managers. First, once consumers
have been enticed to buy online, they are likely to continue to
do so. Although the present study did not explicitly model
satisfaction, the evidence clearly shows that satisfied buyers
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 05:59 04 March 2016
will be more likely to return to a web site and purchase again,
REFERENCES
Aldridge, A., Forcht, K., and Pierson, 1. (1997), "Get Linked
Or Get Lost: Marketing Strategy For The Internet,"
Internet Research, 7 (3), 161-169.
Bentler, P. M. and Speckart, G. (1981), "Attitudes 'Cause'
Behaviors: A Structural Equations Analysis," Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 226-238.
Calder, B. 1., Phillips, L. W., and Tybout, A. M. (1981),
"Designing Research For Application," Journal of
Consumer Research, 8 (September), 197-207.
Citrin, Alka Varma, Sprott, David E., Silveman, Steven N.,
and Stem, Donald E., Jr. (2000), Adoption of Internet
Shopping: The Role of Consumer Innovativeness," .
Industrial Management & Data Systems, 100 (7), 294-
300.
Cowles, Deborah and Kiecker, Pamela (2000), Developing
New Theoretical Perspectives for Predicting Consumer
Acceptance and Use of the Internet," Proceedings of
American Marketing Association Winter Educators'
Conference, 43-50.
Degeratu, Alexandru M., Rangaswamy, Avrind, and Wu,
Jianan (2000), "Consumer Choice Behavior in Online
and Traditional Supermarkets: The Effects of Brand
Name, Price, and Other Search Attributes," International
Journal ofResearch in Marketing, 17,55-79.
Diamantopoulos, Adamantios and Siguaw, Judy A. (2000),
Introducing LlSREL, London: Sage Publications.
Eastlick, Mary A., and Lotz, Sherry (1999), "Profiling
Potential Adopters and Non-adopters of an Interactive
Electronic Shopping Medium," International Journal of
Retail & Distribution Management, 27 (6), 209-223.
while dissatisfied buyers will look elsewhere. Thus, web sites
and order fulfillment efforts should focus on enhancing
customer satisfaction. Second, it still seems to be the case that
online buyers are more innovative with regard to ecommerce
than the majority of consumers.
Future studies should test the model using larger samples of
consumers and multiple measures of the constructs to permit
use of structural equation modeling instead of path analysis.
Random sampling from other populations should provide the
data to increase generalizability of the findings. Additional
constructs should be added to the model to improve its
explanatory and predictive ability. Such efforts will result in
a better understanding of this aspect of Consumer Internet
Behavior to the benefit of both consumer theory and
management practice.
Feather, Frank (2000), FutureConsumer.Com, Toronto:
Warwick Publishing.
Flynn, L. R. and Goldsmith, R. E. (1993), "Application of the
Personal Involvement Inventory in Marketing,"
Psychology and Marketing, 10 (4), 357-366.
Goldsmith, R. E. (1995), "The Domain Specific
Innovativeness Scale: Theoretical And Practical
Dimensions," Association of Marketing Theory and
Practice Proceedings, 4, 177-182.
Goldsmith, R. E. and Bridges, E. (2000), "E-Tailing Versus
Retailing: Using Attitudes to Predict Online Buying
Behavior," Quarterly Journal ofElectronic Commerce,
1 (3),245-253.
Goldsmith R. E. and Hofacker, C. F. (1991), "Measuring
Consumer Innovativeness," Journal of the Academy of
Marketing Science, 19 (3), 209-221.
Goldsmith, R. E., d'Hauteville, F., and Flynn, L. R. (1998)
"Theory And Measurement Of Consumer
Innovativeness: A Transnational Evaluation," European
Journal of Marketing, 32 (3/4), 340-353.
Goldsmith, R. E., Eastman, J. K., and Freiden, 1. (1996), "The
Generality/Specificity Issue in Consumer Innovativeness
Research," Technovation, 15(10),601-612.
Graphics, Visualization and Utilization Center (1998), G VU's
WWW User Surveys, <http://www.gvu.gatech.edu>
Hurt, H. Thomas, Jo~eph, Katherine, and Cook, Chester D.
(1977), "Scales for the Measurement ofInnovativeness,"
Human Communication Research, 4 (Fall), 58-65.
Spring 2002 27
 Joreskog, Karl and Sorbom, Dag (1993), LISREL 8:
Structural Equation Modeling with the SIMPLIS
Command Language, Chicago: Scientific Software
International, Inc.
Kalwani, Manohar and Silk, Alvin J. (1982), "On the
Reliability and Predictive Validity of Purchase Intention
Measures," Marketing Science, 1 (Summer),243-286.
Kenny, David A. (1979), Correlation and Causality, New
York: Wiley-Interscience.
Pedhazur, Elazar J. (1982), Multiple Regression in Behavioral
Research, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Peterson, Robert A., Balasubramanian, Sridhar, and
Bronnenberg, Bart J. (1997), "Exploring the Implications
of the Internet for Consumer Marketing, Journal of the
Academy of Marketing Science, 25 (4), 329-346.
Phau, 1. and Poon, S. M. (2000), "Factors Influencing The
Types Of Products And Services Purchases Over The
Internet," Internet Research, 10 (2), 102-113.

Limayem, Moez, Khalifa, Mohamed, and Frini, Anissa (2000)
"What Makes Consumers Buy From Internet? A
Longitudinal Study of Online Shopping," IEEE
Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A:
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 05:59 04 March 2016
Taylor, 1. (1977) "A Striking Characteristic OfInnovators,"
Journal ofMarketing Research, 14 (February), 104-107.
UCLA Internet Report (2000), "Surveying the Digital Future,"

Systems and Humans, 30 (4), 421-432. <http://www.ccp.ucla.edu> .

Modahl, M. (2000), Now or Never, New York: Vijayasarathy, L. R. and Jones, J. M. (2000), "Print And
HarperBusiness. Internet Catalog Shopping: Assessing Attitudes And
Intentions," Internet Research, 10 (3), 191-202 .
. Murphy, Tom (2000) Web Rules: How the Internet Is
Changing the Way Consumers Make Choices, Chicago: Wysocki, B. (2000), "Need For Profits Pares The Dot-Corns'
Dearborn Financial Publishing. Options," Wall Street Journal, May 1, p. AI.

Nie, Norman and Erbring, Lutz (2000), "Internet Use," Zaichkowsky, Judith Lynne (1994), "The Personal
Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society. Involvement Inventory: Reduction, Revision, and
Application to Advertising," Journal ofAdvertiSing, 23
(December), 59-69.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Ronald E. Goldsmith (Ph.D. University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa) is currently professor of marketing at the Florida
State University. His articles have appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of
Advertising, the Journal ofBusiness Research, the Service Industries Journal, the Journal ofRetailing, Marketing
Intelligence and Planning, the European Journal ofMarketing, and others. His research interests include developing
measures of consumer behavior constructs, diffusion of innovations, and personality in consumer behavior.

28 Journal ofMarketing THEORY AND PRACTICE