BACHELOR OF MANAGEMENT WITH HONOURS

SEMESTER SEPTEMBER 2020

BBRC4103

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

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 List of Contents

Page
Task 1
1.0 Introduction to Research Process
2.0 Problem Statement
3.0 Research Objective
4.0 Research Objective
5.0 Justification for Research study
Task 2
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Literature Review
3.0 Theoretical Framework
4.0 Research Methodology
5.0 Gantt Chart
6.0 Research Budget
7.0 Conclusion
8.0 References
Task 1

1.0 Introduction to Research Process

Research process needed a few steps to be followed and it is not a linear process which will
enabled one or researcher start wiring their paper bit by bit and adjusting it along the way. As
an example is thesis statement writing and many more. To create a finished product, there are
few steps that need to be followed which is shown as bellow:

1. Decide on the topic

2. Narrow the Topic

3. Do background research toward your topics

4. Create a research Questions.

5. Create a working thesis statement by answering the research questions

6. Determine the suitable material needed for your argument.

7. Creating a bibliography

8. Paper writing.

TITLE: The Factors that Influence Female Online Buying Behaviour in Malaysia.

For E- retailing companies, market segmentation is one of the important

elements of marketing. Products cannot be produced or sold without
considering the demand and needs of potential buyer (Wedel & Kamakura,
2000). One of the most discussed market segment is demographic feature Broad Topic In
of consumers. Demographic market segmentation is convenient as it can Context
create the possible correlation between demographic characteristics and
specialised consumer activities such as shopping and buying. It is also well
defined and the easiest method to measure. As an example, goods such as
personal care and clothing is designed and promoted to specific to specific
group of customers.

Past studies revealed that gender was identifies as an important factor to

understand consumer behaviour toward online shopping especially for
female. This will give a fundamental market segmentation index for Problem/
companies to meet their customers’ needs and wants, marketers should motivation
strive to understand the female’s online buying behaviour before designing
product that aiming females as it target market.
A marketer often comes across the struggle of understanding and handling
the dynamics of female consumer behaviour. Thus, a study on the Narrowing
behavioural issues in online retailed shopping is needed to establish to topic and
determine the factor affected female’s behaviour. Even though the number problem
of female consumer that buying online product is increasing in Malaysia,
there are some E-retailer that failure to generate a high revenue for their
company. Thus this study is done to emphasize the need for analysis in
terms of behavioural issues. Further, what leads a female buyer to shop
online also evoked a lot of interest from both the researchers and
marketers. An understanding of the effects of the demographic,
psychographic and situational factors on female consumer’s decision to
shop online needs further exploration. Research pertaining to behavioural
issues is fragmented and lacking in online marketing. This leads us to the
theoretical framework for the current study.

The Factors that Influence Female Online Buying Behaviour in Malaysia.

A questionnaire will be distributed to a target groups and the data will be Specific Topic
analysed to see the driving force that lead to female customer online And theory
shopping behaviours.
There are two main objective of this study that needs to be accomplish
which are:
i) To investigate the demographic traits of female online shoppers Aim and Scope
ii) To Study the driving factors that lead to online shopping
preferences among female consumers
The data was quantitatively analysed using Statistical Package for Social
Science (SPSS) Version 17. In order to validate the developed scale,
several analyses were performed included Exploratory Factor Analysis,
Reliability Analysis and Bivariate Correlation Analysis.

2.0 Problem Statement

Past studies revealed that gender was identifies as an important factor to understand
consumer behaviour toward online shopping especially for female. This will give a
fundamental market segmentation index for companies to meet their customers’ needs and
wants, marketers should strive to understand the female’s online buying behaviour before
deigning product that aiming females as it target market. This research will address the issue
of the driving motivation and factor that lead to female’s consumer’s online buying behaviour
in Malaysia specifically. On the other hand, despite of the massive development and growth
in the application of technology-based online retailed services, it cannot be denied that it is
difficult to attract, retained and satisfying female’s customers need.

A marketer often comes across the struggle of understanding and handling the
dynamics of female consumer behaviour. Thus, a study on the behavioural issues in online
retailed shopping is needed to establish to determine the factor affected female’s behaviour.
Even though the number of female consumer that buying online product is increasing in
Malaysia, there are some E-retailer that failure to generate a high revenue for their company.
Thus this study is done to emphasize the need for analysis in terms of behavioural issues.
Further, what leads a female buyer to shop online also evoked a lot of interest from both the
researchers and marketers. An understanding of the effects of the demographic,
psychographic and situational factors on female consumer’s decision to shop online needs
further exploration. Research pertaining to behavioural issues is fragmented and lacking in
online marketing. This leads us to the theoretical framework for the current study.

3.0 Research Objective

There are two main objective of this study that needs to be accomplish which are:

iii) To investigate the demographic traits of female online shoppers

iv) To Study the driving factors that lead to online shopping preferences among
female consumers

4.0 Research Questions

There is few research questions identified that need to be highlighted in this study:

i) What are the driving factors that influence female buyer behaviour when shop
online?
ii) What are the demographic characteristics of female E-commerce shopper

5.0 Justification for Research study

The result of this research will indirectly help E-retailer industry in Malaysia to establishing
their product line and goods competitiveness in meeting Malaysian female’s buying needs
and wants in specific. The finding of this research also will open up a few new marketing
strategy for local E-Commerce companies to boost their market offering as they knew what
are their customer are looking for and this will help their market positioning. Last but not
least, this study will also enable E-retailer to increase their female consumer loyalty through
the identification of their behavioural intention toward online shopping in general.
Task 2: Research Proposal

Title : The Factors that Influence Female Online Buying Behaviour in Malaysia.

1.0 Introduction

In the last ten years, the retailing industry has encountered with huge marketing strategy
changes due to the development of technology (Dunne & Lusch, 2005). Their old marketing
approaches such as from walk in to store, mail order, catalogue, television shopping, vending
machine had change to the recent one that is called internet shopping (Dunne & Lusch,
2005). The Rising of E-Commerce retailing industry has open up varies windows of
opportunity for consumers to purchase local and imported goods without much hassle. This is
because the customer needs became more discerning sophisticated along with the rapid
development of technology which contributed toward retailed development in the market
(Chuang, 2007).Internet has change and reshaping the landscape of shopping behaviour of
both male and female worldwide. It served as a platform of advertising, shopping and other
commercial activity as mentioned by Hsieh in 2013. An age group of consumers ranging
from 18 to 25 years olds are more used to virtual experience such as online purchases. A
study conducted by Lee and Zhang in 2019 reported that online shopping is the most popular
internet activity after web browsing and social media.

For E- retailing companies, market segmentation is one of the important elements

of marketing. Products cannot be produced or sold without considering the demand and needs
of potential buyer (Wedel & Kamakura, 2000). One of the most discussed market segment is
demographic feature of consumers. Demographic market segmentation is convenient as it can
create the possible correlation between demographic characteristics and specialised consumer
activities such as shopping and buying. It is also well defined and the easiest method to
measure. As an example, goods such as personal care and clothing is designed and promoted
to specific to specific group of customers.

There are few demographic variables that are commonly used to segment consumer
market which included income, age, gender, ethnicity, marital status and more. Among this
variable gender play a significant contribution to the market segment which is proportion of
products and services. There are various studies conducted in the past that study regarding
with gender relates to consumers’ perceptions, attitudes, preferences and purchase decisions
(Fischer & Arnold, 2004; Slyke, Comunale & Belanger, 2002; Mitchell & Walsh, 2004;
Bakewell & Mitchell, 2006).

Past studies revealed that gender was identifies as an important factor to

understand consumer behaviour toward online shopping especially for female. This will give
a fundamental market segmentation index for companies to meet their customers’ needs and
wants, marketers should strive to understand the female’s online buying behaviour before
deigning product that aiming females as it target market. This research will address the issue
of the driving motivation and factor that lead to female’s consumer’s online buying behaviour
in Malaysia specifically. On the other hand, despite of the massive development and growth
in the application of technology-based online retailed services, it cannot be denied that it is
difficult to attract, retained and satisfying female’s customers need.

A marketer often comes across the struggle of understanding and handling the
dynamics of female consumer behaviour. Thus, a study on the behavioural issues in online
retailed shopping is needed to establish to determine the factor affected female’s behaviour.
Even though the number of female consumer that buying online product is increasing in
Malaysia, there are some E-retailer that failure to generate a high revenue for their company.
Thus this study is done to emphasize the need for analysis in terms of behavioural issues.
Further, what leads a female buyer to shop online also evoked a lot of interest from both the
researchers and marketers. An understanding of the effects of the demographic,
psychographic and situational factors on female consumer’s decision to shop online needs
further exploration. Research pertaining to behavioural issues is fragmented and lacking in
online marketing. This leads us to the theoretical framework for the current study.

The result of this research will indirectly help E-retailer industry in Malaysia to
establishing their product line and goods competitiveness in meeting Malaysian female’s
buying needs and wants in specific. The finding of this research also will open up a few new
marketing strategy for local E-Commerce companies to boost their market offering as they
knew what are their customer are looking for and this will help their market positioning. Last
but not least, this study will also enable E-retailer to increase their female consumer loyalty
through the identification of their behavioural intention toward online shopping in general.
 Several objectives are outlined for this study which is as follows, to study the
demographic of Malaysian female online shopping behaviour and to study driving factors that
lead to online shopping preferences among female consumers. A few research questions were
constructed for this study which are “What are the driving factors that influence female buyer
behaviour when shop online?” and “What are the demographic characteristics of female E-
commerce shopper”
2.0 Literature Review
2.1 E-Commerce Development in Malaysia

E-commerce is now become a norm in any developing countries and some previous research
had found that the use of E-Commerce was significantly growing in all developing countries
including Malaysia. A study conducted by Hana in 2012 revealed that E-Commerce sector is
rapidly grow in the developing countries compared to developed countries due to several
reasons. The main reason is that, there are potential for the expansion of online business in
the developing country while developed country are more stable and facing revenue plateau
which is disfavoured market expansion of E-Commerce. In Malaysia itself, E-commerce
activities also gaining its interest as being stated by Masaya Ueno, the president and chief
executive officer of Rakuten Online Shopping Malaysia (The Star, 2014, March 29).

Malaysia’s E-Commerce is one of the leading businesses for today’s market with the
Covid 19 pandemic being as the main driving force. The traditional boundaries was replaced
with a whole new technology and mechanism for purchasing good and services which will
eliminate the traditional approached which is more time consuming and labour intensive.
Apart from that, E-commerce also lower the transaction cost as internet procurement will
automates some processes and thus will aid the company to increase the speed and reduce the
cost of purchasing transactions. Customers can reach a company on the Internet globally for
24 hours. It creates new markets and segments, allow customers to make wise purchasing
decisions and increases business competitiveness. Selling online would eliminate the costs
involved in rental or buying a business space or building. Virtual server space would
substitute for the costs of ideally located shop lots.

The positive progression on the development of the E-commerce industry in Malaysia

generally bring a significant and drastic changes to the landscape of customer buying
behaviour especially relating to the transition from the physical store to the online store and
retailer (Kwak, Fox, & Zinkhan, 2002; Raman, 2014). These changes resulted in the
increasing interest of researchers to understand and learn the driving forces that lead
consumer to shop online. On the other hand, According to Chiang and Dholakia in 2011, they
reported that this change is significantly challenging the traditional commerce and
landscaping the new consumer’s online shopping behaviours. Based on the previous studies
conducted, it can be concluded that there are differences between women and man’s buying
behaviour, it is reported that, more men than women engage in online shopping activities and
make more online purchases (Hasan, 2010; Lian & Yen, 2014; K. Z. K. Zhang, Cheung, &
Lee, 2014; L. Zhang, Xu, Ye, & Wang, 2012). Dittmar, Long & Meek (2004) also reported
that men’s attitude is consistent in both traditionally and online shopping formats, while
women’s attitude changing a significantly as they become less favourable toward online
shopping thus a research to study the female online buying behaviour is crucial to investigate
the factor affecting them to online purchase in the E-Commerce platform

2.2. Gender differences in online shopping: women motivations

A various previous study with regard to gender differences in the tendency to purchase or
buying online is still inconsistent but despite of that, most of the study had revealed that that
men is more engage and purchasing more online shopping compare to female due several
reasons (Kwak, Fox, Zinkhan, 2002; Rodgers, Harris, 2003). According to Zhou in 2007, he
reported than men have the tendency in favouring convenience over social contact in contrast
with female that favouring emotional and social interaction when purchasing goods. His
study also revealed that female seem to be motivated in purchasing goods in face to face
communication and walk in to the store.

Despite of that, Dittmar et al. (2004) propose that women’s behaviours grieves a
significantly change when linking the two environments: offline with online, having a less
favourable attitude towards the second one. Men attitude’s, on another hand, remain almost
the same in both shopping atmospheres. Another motivating result is that the favourite for
physically assess products seems to be a women’s characteristic: they reveal a preference for
seeing and feeling the products before buying them (Dittmar et al., 2004), especially when we
are talking about products with high NFT.
2.3 Factors influencing consumers’ online shopping (Past Research)

Past researchers all around the globe had done various research to study the aspects that
affecting female consumers’ online purchase behaviour from numerous viewpoints
(Bhatnagar & Ghose 2004; Jarvenpaa & Todd, 1996; Vijaysarathy & Jones, 2000); purchase
behaviour from consumer demographics (O'Keefe et al., 2000; Chau et al., 2002; Brown,
Pope & Voges, 2003; Li, Kuo & Russell, 1999; Korgaonkar, Silverblatt & Becerra, 2004;
Park, Lee & Ahn, 2004); cognitive and psychological characteristics (Huang, Schrank &
Dubinsky, 2004; Novak, Hoffman & Yung, 2000; Wolfinbarger & Gilly, 2001; Xia, 2002);
risk perceptions and benefits of online shopping (Jarvenpaa & Todd, 1996; Liang & Jin-
Shiang, 1998; Jarvenpaa, Tractinsky & Vitale, 1999; Jarvenpaa & Tractinsky, 1999;
Solomon, 1999; Bhatnagar & Ghose 2004a; Liao & Cheung, 2001; Featherman & Pavlou,
2003; Joines, Scherer & Scheufele, 2003; Featherman & Pavlou, 2003; Bhatnagar & Ghose
2004a; Bhatnagar & Ghose, 2004b; Garbarino & Strabilevitz, 2004; Huang, Schrank &
Dubinsky, 2004; Kolsaker, Lee-Kelley & Choy, 2004; Park, Lee & Ahn, 2004; Pires, Stanton
& Eckford, 2004); shopping motivation (Novak, Hoffman & Yung, 2000; Wolfinbarger &
Gilly, 2001; Johnson et al., 2004) and orientation for shopping (Korgaonkar & Wolin, 1999;
Donthu & Garcia, 1999; Li, Kuo & Russell, 1999; Swaminathan, Lepkowska-White & Rao,
1999).
Geographical distance, time constrain, restricted or no availability mobility, time
pressure, attractiveness of alternatives and the need for special items are one of the many
driving motivation and factor that affected female’s online buying behaviours in general. The
perks of engaging with online shopping is that it’s provide convenience to its user and easy
accessibility to most consumers to search for products or services that they would like to
(Wolfinbarger & Gilly, 2001). Online shopping choices are also subjective to the type of
product or service. Lack of aid and the absent of physical contact when shopping on the
Internet is one factor that influences this suitability. Female is proven favour the need to feel,
touch, smell or even try the product before making decision to bought it and this key feature
is not feasible when doing online shopping. An individual’s response to a task involving
judgment is based on three aspects viz., individual’s past experiences, the context or
background and the stimulus (Helson, 1964).
 Social media had open up many opportunities and serve as a platform for companies
to introduce, promote and market their product and services to the online words. This will
add customer internet shopping experience which significantly will affect their decision and
behaviour to purchase online product. This is because, trust and risk is becoming the main
factor that influencing female consumer in specific, to participate in the online shopping
activity (Al-Mowalad, 2013). The evolution of business is resulting in the changing of
business relation from a transactional relationship to social relationship. Social media now is
used as a referral site for most female consumer before making any purchase and thus greatly
influencing buying behaviours. In online shopping, buyer’s trust is intertwined with risk
(McAllister, 1995). Thus, Lack or insufficient trust will shrinks the consumer’s perception of
risk associated with opportunistic behaviour by the seller as mentioned by Ganesan in 1994
and decrease the potential of female consumer to buy online purchases.

Traditional Marketing strategy place trust as a key main factor in its theory in the
uncertainty and risk. In the year of 1995, Mayer, Davis & Schoorman designing and
developing a model which combines the traditional marketing approach on consumer
motivation to buy products and services where the propensity of trust is becoming the main
important predecessor. As an example, a consumer or potential buyer with higher propensity
of trust is more likely to buy the product compare to customer with lower propensity. On the
other hand, there are three main element of trustworthiness which is ability, benevolence and
integrity. According to research conducted by Gefen and Straub in 2002, trust is very crucial
in e-commerce and the lack of it will be a driving factor for consumers to evade online
shoppings (Gefen & Straub, 2002; Emurian & Wang, 2005). In order to decrease social
uncertainty, rules and order was implemented by the government as an act to control human
behaviour toward others and the environment. As social media become the stable and
promising sales channel nowadays, it is really vital for rules and customs to be establish to
increase the level of online buyer in the E-Commerce industry (Gefen & Straub, 2002).

A case study reported by Varma in 2014 reveals that on Kuala Lumpur, female are
tend to do online shopping as a leisure activity that will reduce their boredom .According to
Stone (1954), shoppers are categorized as the economic, personalizing, ethical and apathetic
shoppers. Consumers are motivated by purchase needs or experiential needs or a combination
of both when they shop (Westbrook & Black, 1985).
 The Shopping dynamic in Malaysia is not similar with any other western countries. In
Malaysia in fact can be seen as a family activities and a great way to spend time with their
loves one. According to Safiek Mokhlis in 2009, their research reveals that 70% of Malaysian
Shoppers goes shopping with their families. The family shopping preferences is becoming
one of the most favourite and consistent preferences across all cities and age group in
Malaysia. It is known for a fact that in the traditional shopping world, women do most of the
shopping but it show the vice versa in the online shopping (Dennis et al., 2002; Ballard &
Mander, 2006; OFT, 2007). Research-based evidence proposes that females and in specific,
young adults, favour the social aspect of shopping as an crucial element (Dholakia, 1999).
Internet retailers (e-retailers) face difficulty in satisfying customers’ higher-level needs for
personal interaction. Yet for young females, the Internet is the new social space (Social
Networks, 2007). The researchers suggest that there is a great opportunity waits for e-retailers
to combine e-shopping with social networking.

On the other hand, a study conducted by Mishra in 2007 had reported on the effect of
the demographic characteristics of female customer as well as their attitude toward online
shopping behaviours. The factor that motivate female consumer to use e-retailer website to
buy things online is due to the perceive of its usefulness of the website such that when a
person gain or learn a new information system, one may be more than willing to alter
practices and spend more time and effort to use it (Gefen & & Straub, 2002). To change
someone behaviour and attitude toward something new is difficult as it already fit into a
concrete pattern. Radical adjustment is necessary to be taken in order to change someone
perspective and behaviour (Grant & Graeme, 2005). Moreover, internet user can be classifies
into two main group which is known as internet shopper and internet browsers. Internet
shopper can be define as someone that tend and favour to shop online while internet browser
user are a group of people that browse the Internet for other than shopping tenacities
(Forsythe & Shi 2003)
A previous study conducted by Grant and Graeme in 2005 state the an individual purchasing
behaviours is mainly affected by various factor including:

Factor Sub-factors
Social culture, sub-culture, reference groups, social
class and family
political -
technological -
economic -
personal factors self-image, motivation, personality, learning,
perception, beliefs and attitudes

Rapid development in technological infrastructure will increase consumer

comfortability when shopping on the E-retailer website and this will enable E-retailer
companies to take an advantages of the internet’s influences to market and sell goods and
services online (Brown, Durrett & Wetherbe, 2004). As an example, British consumers
shopping has severely changed due to the swift growth of the Internet since the 1990s
(Hengst, 2001), where the business sector accounts for most of the value of Internet-related
business (Monsuwe, Dellart & De-Ruyter, 2004).

Rapid growth in the retail sector is pushing retailers to tap into the virtual business
environment. As Schlosser, Shavitt & Kanfer (1999) observed, a common strategy used by
marketers and fashion retailers is tally Internet advertising to the promotional mix and this
method was proven to significantly increase companies’ revenues. Businesses are conducted
both through traditional means as well as online. Technological advancements have led to the
growth in technology-based self-service and thereby impacted the way business is transacted
(Dabholkar, 1994; Moncrief & Cravens, 1999). This has provided opportunities to fulfil
several consumer needs such as detailed product information of different brands, good
bargains, convenience of shopping at home and saving of time and effort-all that leading to
shopping more effectively and efficiently than conventional shopping in the highly
competitive environment (Chen & Leteney, 2000).
 It cannot be deny that there are some pro and cons when doing an online shopping but
this does not deter the fact that females all across Malaysia from buying online. This is
because, internet user base for female is increasing rapidly and more than male user as
mentioned by a study conducted by (Jain, 2014). It can be seen that the information
technology empowering women from Malaysia in specific due to easy access of information
and aiding them to make wise and mature decisions in their daily life. A recent study reveals
that, Malaysian women from the age group of around 18 to 25 years old are the most who is
interested in online shopping due good exposure and knowledge to technology. However it is
really hard for online retailed marketer to understand and managing the dynamic of
Malaysian female consumer behaviour and thus leading to the theoretical framework for the
current study
3.0 Theoretical Framework

This study explains online shopping as “the use of online retailing stores or others available
platform by female up until the transactional stages of purchasing and logistics” (Rao,
2018).A theoretical framework is developed by taking previous research as these study main
references. This theoretical framework mentioned by Internet few past researchers
(Dabholkar & Bagozzi, 2002; Monsuwe, Dellart & De-Ruyter, 2004) are important and
crucial in order to study and understanding female’s purchasing behaviour toward online
shopping and their driving force to shop using online retailers.

The foundation element for this framework to work efficiently is the implementation of
Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). This model is obliging in helping us to comprehend
and understand the use of computer based technologies on the job or even in the workplace.
Apart from that, this model also had been proven to be the perfect theoretical basis for the
adaptation of E-commerce/ online shopping. (Chen, Gillenson & Sherrell, 2002; Monsuwe,
Dellart & De-Ruyter, 2004).

A past research had revealed that the two main influencing factor that driving a person’s
behaviour to use latest technology are due to its productivity and usefulness. According to
Monsuwe, Dellart & De-Ruyter, (2004) , customer believe that the use of technology will
improve services performance and productivity and secondly, they also reported that , the
extent to which a person considers that using the new technology will be effortless i.e. the
“ease of use”. the degree of which the action of using the new technology is supposed to
deliver support in its own right, apart from any performance concerns that may be expected is
added as “enjoyment” construct by Davis (cited in Monsuwe, Dellart & De-Ruyter, 2004).

Control, intrinsic motivation and emotion were also added into the TAM model as the
changing influencing factors (Venkatesh, 2000). By referring to research done by Bagozzi in
2002, two other influencing factors namely consumer traits and situational influences were
added into this framework which resulted in the design of improvised model known as model
of technology-based self-service (Figure 1). This Framework fit this research to study
insentively about female’s behaviour has both a straight and constructive effect on women’s
targets to actually use the Internet for shopping online. In order to study female’s online
buying behaviour, this research will also study six other factors which are consumer traits,
situational factors, product characteristics, and previous online shopping experience, trust in
online shopping and product attributes.
 Service Benefits Situational factors
Service Excellence Usefulness Consumer traits

Experience
Control
Computer Literate
Computer anxiety Ease of Use Attitude toward Intention to shop
Computer online shopping online
Playfulness

Trust in Online Product Characteristic

Escapism
Shopping Product attributes
Pleasure Enjoyment Previous Online
Arousal
shopping experiene

trust in Online
shopping

Source: Hirst & Omar (2007), Assessing women’s shopping behaviour on the Internet

Figure 1: Theoretical Framework

3.0 Research Methodology
3.1. Sample and Procedure
A quantitative research methodology was utilized to collect the data. To validate the scale, a
pilot survey of 400 female respondents was used. Female respondents were selected at
random throughout Malaysia. The questionnaires were personally hand-delivered. Female
respondents' aged between 21- 35 years old were the target sample of the study. Females
were selected because women were perceived as the primary purchasing agents for the
majority of consumer products as well as traditional buying agents of apparel for themselves
and family members (Cassill & Drake, 1987; Fuller & Blackwell, 1992). In order to gain well
diverse participants that represented the Malaysian multi-ethnic society, female participants
were selected from both private and public universities. Principal components analysis was
used as the primary purpose was to identify and compute composite scores for the factors
underlying the short version of the items influencing the online purchase behaviour of female
consumers. Indeed, this developed scale was adapted from the theory and modified to
accommodate with the attitude and values of Malaysian females in relation towards online
buying. The developed scale was initially done in the Malay language and then translated into
English for the final distribution of the questionnaire. Close-ended questions were used in the
questionnaire. Responses were captured on a 7-point Likert scale anchored by 1 as "Strongly
disagree" to 7 as "Strongly agree". Demographic information on age, gender, education,
income, marital status, ethnicity, and employment background was obtained by asking
participants to select appropriate category.

3.2 Scale Development

The developed scale included four (4) main variables which are based on the implementation
of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The two variables consisted of six (6) items
evaluated behavioural beliefs and consumer traits, four (4) items measured attitude; five (5)
items on purchase intention, and nine (9) items assessed the situational influences. The data
was quantitatively analysed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) Version 17.
In order to validate the developed scale, several analyses were performed included
Exploratory Factor Analysis, Reliability Analysis and Bivariate Correlation Analysis. These
analyses were conducted to assess the reliability and validity of the scale besides identifying
the number of factors that emerged from the Theory of Reasoned Action. Meanwhile, a p-
value of .05 is employed to determine statistical significance.
4.0 Gantt chart

Activities Week

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Identify the Problem

Proposal Writing
Writing and finalizing questionnaires
Questionnaire Distribution to Selected respondents
Data Collection
Data drafting
Data Analysis (Exploratory Factor Analysis, Reliability
Analysis and Bivariate Correlation Analysis )
Data interpretation
Report drafting by Drawing conclusion, reflection and
implication
Final Report Write up
Documentation and presentation of finding in seminar
5.0 Research Budget

Budget Total (RM)

Personnel
Salary
Budget
Principal Investigator 2500
Graduate Research Assistant 1300
Research Assistant 1200
Subtotal Personnel 5000
Project Participant
Focus Group and Pilot Testing 400
Material and Supplies
Copying, envelope 240
Misc., supplies 1500
Postage 120
Subtotal Project Expenses 1960
Travel 1400
Total Direct Cost 1400
Indirect Cost 120
Total Cost 8780

Justification

Personnel

Mr.Zarkoni, Principal Investigator. He will be accountable to the overall research coordination

and supervision of each and every aspect of the study. This is also will includes the process of
hiring of research assistant, training them, supervising staff, recruiting study participant as well
as coordinating treatment and assessment component. He is also will be responsible to conduct
the orientation session and assist his assistant with statistical analysis. Last but not least, he will
also responsible in recording for reporting this study finding.

Mrs Fadila, Graduate Research Assistant. She will be responsible to for the collection and the
analysis of the questionnaire. Mrs Fadila will also hold the authority to assist in manuscript
preparation.

A. Other Personnel
 Miss Jiana, Research assistant. Miss Jia will be assisting the other recruits to find new
recruitments, ordering supplies needed for the study and intervention materials, assessment,
collection of dietary data, observing and manage daily data and assessment of data entry.

Direct Costs.

Material and supplies.

General research supplies which comprises of printing cost, envelope and also including a blank
DVD and flash drive for data storage as well as all testing materials.

Travel

RM 1400 is requested for travel to professional conferences to present this research findings that
associated with its investigations.

6.0 Conclusion.

Online Shopping is becoming a new norm in this era and this mean that company marketer
need to work harder to understand their female customer’s need for online selling and to
satisfy their customer need. Despite of that, this research helps the marketer to understand the
female consumer’s attitude toward online shopping. Apart from that, the enhancement of the
factors that influences consumer to shop online and working on factors that affect consumers
to shop online will help marketers to gain the competitive edge over others. Therefore, the
attention of this study was mostly focus on factors that affect female consumers to shop
online. E-retailing has different approach of marketing compared to in store marketing. This
research emphasizes the study to determine the driving forces that will influence the
Malaysian female buying attitude in online retailing industry. The Exploratory factors
analysis included comprises of ease of use & convenience, security, utility, time effectiveness,
outbound logistics and feedback as the determinants of female shopper buying behaviour
online.

7.0 Reference