School of Engineering and Computing

 
 
 
 

MSc [insert programme title here]

Interim Report

 
 

The role of retail ethics perception in determining repurchase intention in

online shopping
 
 
 
by
 

Name:

Date of submission:

Supervisor:

Moderator:
 Chapter 1
Introduction
 1. Introduction

The internet has created many opportunities for businesses and consumers (Yuniarti et al.,

2022), as it allows businesses to market their brands and products more effectively.

Similarly, it has made the life of the consumers very easy as they can purchase products

online in a single click (Aslam et al., 2018). The facility of the internet has also reshaped the

entire buying decision of the consumers as it offers the interchange of information, products,

and numerous transaction procedures via the use of electronic media (Yuniarti et al., 2022).

For example, it has modified people’s traditional worldwide purchasing habits, which

involved going straight to stores. This shows that individuals are more frequently using

electronic gadgets that are connected to the internet to search for information and virtually

buy goods or services.

The internet has emerged as a compelling substitute for traditional methods of physical

business, and now businesses are actively using the facility of internet in marketing their

products online. This has speed up the notion of “e-commerce” (Aslam et al., 2018).

Businesses are enjoying the e-commerce benefits as this offers better interaction with the

customers (Aslam et al., 2020). But the physical environment of online shopping and offline

shopping differs from each other (Lu et al., 2013). Even for identical products, online and

offline transactions exhibit different surroundings, atmospheres, and experiences. This is a

result of online buying transactions being carried out via the internet using various internet

browsers or mobile software. Hence, customers connect with businesses using technical

interfaces in a virtual environment where they are unable to physically see the products they

might buy (Yen & Lu, 2008). As a result, when buying online, the seller’s information

provided on the online retail site is all that can be used to examine and evaluate the products

(Yuniarti et al., 2022). Moreover, in online shopping, consumers must provide their
information such as name, address, phone number, etc. to order the product. This develops a

perception of risk element in the mind of the consumers (Kaur & Quareshi, 2015). Even

though online shopping brings ease to the user, but they don’t feel comfortable in providing

their personal information. Moreover, they feel vulnerable because of poor quality of the

product they receive, the lack of security, information misused, etc. (Hong & Yi, 2012). Due

to these reasons, consumers feel more risk in online shopping (Yuniarti et al., 2022).

In online shopping, ethical violations are also have been noticed (Pålsson et al. 2017). For

example, retailers violate consumer rights by providing deceptive information, poor product

quality, damaged products, etc. (Yuniarti et al., 2022). Many of the earlier literature

supported the unethical behavior of the retailers in online shopping (Yang et al., 2020;

Elbeltagi & Agag, 2016). Consumers view the ethics of online retailers to their honesty and

duty in defending consumer interests and safeguarding transaction security, information

confidentiality, and fair and honest behavior (Roman, 2007). Meanwhile, because of the

unpredictability of internet transactions, perceived risk could be detrimental (Ko et al., 2004;

Hassan et al., 2006). The hardest obstacles now facing customers who are thinking about

making online purchases are perceived dangers and online retail ethics.

1.2. Problem Statement

The modern world is becoming more digital, and as a result, there are more online users

growing drastically that also changes the business environment. It has been noticed that

excellent customer service helps e-retailer to stand out (Davenport et al., 2020). Additionally,

it impacted people’s global shopping habits, which were formerly done by physically going

to stores (Yuniarti et al., 2022). However, uncertainty arising from online purchasing due to

unethical behaviors like deceptive or false promotion, poor product quality, fraud, and wrong
use of information is one of the serious challenges (Choi & Mai, 2018; Roman, 2017).

Customers hesitate while doing online shopping in some nations despite the development of

internet usage and online sales because of trust issues, privacy, lack of education, perceived

risk, and perceived quality (Sahoo et al., 2018). On the other hand, time savings, lower

prices, convenience, and the price of competitors are driving forces for online purchasing

(Tarhini et al., 2018).

Numerous research has mentioned that consumers’ ethical beliefs and behaviors as well as

their opinions of retailers’ ethical standards are important in the online context (Sharma and

Lijuan, 2014). However, very few have considered the moral dilemmas that customers may

face when shopping online. After having a poor online shopping experience, they lose their

faith in it and they don’t intend to repurchase it, therefore repurchase intention becomes zero.

Additionally, the majority of past research is mostly focuses on concerns of privacy (e.g.,

Palmer, 2005), overlooking other crucial internet-related ethical marketing challenges

including betrayal of trust and commitment (Roman and Cuestas, 2008; Ameen et al., 2022).

1.3. Research Objective

The internet revolution, although bringing the finest of comforts, it also created new

challenges, with the problem of ethics being one of the most serious factors when shopping

online. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify the impact of retail ethics perception

(REP) on trust in retailer and commitment with the retailer and their impact on repurchase

intention (RI).

1.4. Research Questions

• What is the impact of retail ethics perception (REP) on trust in retailer and

commitment with the retailer?

 • What is the impact of trust in retailer and commitment with the retailer on

repurchase intention (RI)?

1.5. Significance of the Study

This study provides insights into online sellers and store retailers. By using the

findings of the study, they can retail upright quality goods to their customers. This

study gives policymakers better clarity of purpose and focuses on their policies to

style their stores safer and more efficiently for a consumer. Findings also help online

sellers to develop trust and commitment to their product in the mind of their

consumers which motivates them to repurchase the items from their stores.
 Chapter 2
Theory, Literature & Hypotheses
 2. Theoretical Background

The goal of the “Customer Perception Ethics of Online Retail” (CPEOR) philosophy was to

safeguard customers' interests, including their security and confidence. The Roman's (2007)

study on the ethics of online retail defined is as the customers' perceptions of how to operate

an online business (Agag et al., 2016). The online business entails numerous consumer risks

and uncertainties and may cause customers to have less faith in the legitimacy of online store

websites. Therefore, visitors may sense less risk and have more faith in the websites if they

believe that online merchants' websites uphold moral standards.

Customers' impressions include the security of online transactions and the protection of their

financial information from unauthorised access (Roman, 2007). Privacy refers to a customer's

perception of personally identifiable information on social media. Developing online trust

and understanding how it affects consumers' purchasing decisions are critical challenges for

online systems (Morgan & Hunt, 1994). Honesty develops when one person has faith in the

dependability (Morgan and Hunt, 1994). Having faith in other people is the cornerstone for

making decisions and commitments (Boersma et al., 2003). In exchange partnerships,

commitment is a crucial addition to trust (Morgan and Hunt, 1994). Moorman et al. (1992)

defined relationship commitment as the steadfast desire to maintain valued connections.

Relationships based on trust are highly valued by business partners, and they remain

committed to them (Hrebiniak, 1974).

2.1. Literature Review

Customers' impressions of the ethics of online retail and the perceived threat posed by

transaction issues were determined to be the main reasons why customers hesitate to make an

online purchase (Yuniarti et al., 2022). Data on consumers who had some experience making

purchases from the marketplace website was gathered through an online survey. Around 469
replies were received from the Indonesian participants by conducting a survey. The findings

of a structural equation model, which was also used to assess the conceptual underpinnings of

the study, showed that customers' perceptions of online retail ethics had positive effects and

perceived risk had negative effects on their desire to make additional purchases. According to

the study's findings, customers' perceptions and intentions to make additional purchases were

somewhat affected by perceived risk. The purpose of this study was to find out how

consumers' views on risk and retail ethics influence their decision to make another purchase.

To further explore how customers' perceptions of risk impact their opinions of the ethics of

shopping and their tendency to make additional purchases after an online purchase. Future

research should focus on specific sample sections that are more conducive to technology and

should focus on a particular commodity, such as clothing, which was thought to have a high

participation in the purchasing method.

A mixed-method research study was conducted to examine and survey the influence of

perceived sales promotion transparency on young bank customers' (students') inclination to

take part in a sales promotion programme (Agu, 2021). For the three aspects sales promotion

transparency model, information was gathered from 150 students in Nigeria through

structured questionnaire. The findings show that the policy, method, and outcome of sales

promotion openness are significant predictors of intention to participate. Further, findings

show that students' opinions on sales promotion transparency have a large and advantageous

effect on their motivation to participate. The goal was to improve the tool and learn more

about how young customers assess the degree of sales promotion transparency in banks. In

order to establish and maintain ethical sales promotion techniques in the Nigerian banking

sector, the study advises putting an emphasis on openness in these crucial aspects.

In order to offer a valid and reliable measurement instrument, Agag et al. (2016) study the

ethical facets of online buying from the customers' perspective. The study based on a
quantitative survey of 68 Egyptian customers. The responses were measured on a 5-point

Likert scale. The validity and reliability of this six-factor scale are proven using actual data

that was indiscriminately collected from Egyptian internet users. The findings also showed

that the retail ethics is effective at forecasting online customers' satisfaction and tendency to

repurchase. The results have numerous significant theoretical and practical implications for

academic scholars and online retailing in addition to greatly expanding the body of

knowledge in the area of online retailing. Future studies should take into account the

characteristics of the website and the nature of the products to ascertain how various e-

retailing ethics issues influence consumer outcomes.

Hakim and Deswindi (2015) investigate which element of the hospital websites' e-services

escape most significantly influences patients' opinions of the quality of the services. In

Jakarta, a questionnaire with nonparametric data on 285 respondents was utilised to generate

a significant relationship value of the variables. The findings shown that many hospital

management teams in Indonesia, especially those in the South Jakarta area, paid little

attention to carefully and seriously developing and designing corporate websites. The results

indicate that they must be considerably more watchful and careful when creating their

website, which represents the company's brand. Additional factors, such as perceived quality,

could be investigated in this study in order to ascertain what psychological reaction to the

perceived quality is most strongly associated with selecting a service provider.

Perera et al., (2022) examined the impact of social media marketing methods on brand equity

in higher education institutions. Data was gathered from undergraduate students in Sri

Lankan and Vietnamese educational institutions. The elaboration likelihood model was used

to analyse the hypothesis, and the results demonstrated that brand activities through social

media marketing can increase brand equity for higher education institutions. The study's
findings are advantageous to both the department at the school and the students. The author

recommended conducting study at both public and private higher education institutions.

To investigate the effects of client acquisition and purchase intent on customer engagement in

online retailers, Zheng et al., (2022) conducted a study and data was gathered through live

streaming shopping events in China's T-mall. Through regression model analysis, data was

analysed. The findings show that not all specific customer participation metrics are related to

customers' propensity to make purchases and customer growth. The results of this study are

beneficial to merchants, and the authors suggested that for increased customer involvement

during live streaming, retailers could concentrate on some interactive activities. The authors

suggested more research on other social platforms as well because this study is only limited

to e-commerce websites.

De Oliveira Santini et al., (2020) examined customer engagement on social media. For this

data was collected and analysed by using a meta-analytic model. The results revealed that

clients are more likely to engage online as a result of contentment and trust. The study's

conclusions will be helpful to the proprietors of social media platforms. Customers' opinions

of online retailers' corporate social responsibility (CSR) were investigated by Dang et al.,

(2020). The author adopted structural equation modelling approach to analyse the data. Based

on online survey, data was gathered and in total 239 responses were gathered from customers

in China. The findings showed that CSR has a favourable relationship with purchase

intention, and that word-of-mouth (WOM) has a moderating effect on the relationship

between CSR and brand identity as well as between customers' buy intentions and brand

identification. The author advised online resellers to apply CSR in order to boost client

purchase intention and behaviour. Retailers can also create communication strategies that

highlight their involvement in CSR programmes in order to enhance their brand's reputation

and promote positive word-of-mouth from customers.

Darj et al., (2019) investigated the opinions of retail pharmacists and the information was

gathered through in-depth interviews with retail pharmacists in Dhaka. The data suggest that

self-medication, out-of-date prescriptions, and a lack of limits and control have a beneficial

impact on the use of antimicrobial medications and the development of AMR. The study's

conclusions are relevant to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries and exclusively

included male retailer pharmacists as in Bangladesh women are not employed in the

pharmacy industry.

Javed and Wu (2020) conducted a study in China in order to determine the impact of the

customer's sense of satisfaction upon delivery. Data was gathered form 262 respondents from

Sichuan University (SEM) and structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The findings demonstrated that customer satisfaction with services acts as a mediator in the

relationship between after-delivery services and consumer trust in the retailer. The study's

findings are helpful for internet sellers and the author suggested to analyse the post-sale

services for future studies.

2.2. Model and Hypotheses

The figure 1 present the conceptual model of the study. The model portrays that retail ethics

perception develops trust and commitment of the customer. Moreover, trust and commitment

motivate the customer for repurchase online. In the model, retail ethics perception is a higher-

order construct that consists of four dimensions i.e., security, privacy, reliability and service

recovery. This means that retail ethics perception is developed if the online retailer provides

security and privacy, and if the provider is reliable and provides service recover to the

customers.
 Figure 1- Model

Customer
Security Trust

Online
Privacy Repurchase
Retail Ethics
Perception Intention

Reliability
Customer
Commitment

Service
Recovery

Following are the proposed research hypotheses:

H1: Retail ethics perception has a positive significant impact on customer trust.
H2: Retail ethic perception has a positive significant impact on customer commitment.
H3: Customer trust has a positive significant impact on repurchase intention.
H4: Customer commitment has a positive significant impact on repurchase intention.
Chapter 3
Method
3.1. Introduction

The chapter highlight the technique, approach, design, target population, statistical

methods, characteristics of the data collection tools, and data collection practices.

3.2. Research Approach

Mixed methods, qualitative methods, and quantitative methods are the three main types of

research techniques. Choosing a topic for the investigation is the first stage in performing a

quantitative study. Generally, quantitative research methodologies start with a general subject

of study or issue of professional or personal interest. It must be shortened to, or focused on, a

specific research issue that the study might address. This often calls for performing a detailed

analysis of the research literature and developing hypotheses, which frequently incorporate

social theory (Neuman, 2014). The current study's measurable goals and emphasis on

statistical data analysis methods led it to use a quantitative approach.

3.3. Research purpose

The three different sorts of research aims are explanatory, exploratory, and descriptive. The

exploratory research purpose is to identify the important part of a completely unexplored

problem, whereas descriptive research seeks to describe or characterize the topic at

hand. Explanatory research aims to explain the causes and effects of a specific problem.

Exploratory research has many meanings, but in my view, the fundamental purpose of it is to

pursue a study topic while trying to learn something new and exciting (Swedberg, 2020).

Setting up causal relations between variables to explain their relationship is the objective of
causal or explanatory research (Saunders et al., 2009). In a descriptive study, a phenomenon

is presented, and the cause-and-effect links of the phenomenon are to be found in an

explanatory type case study (Yin, 2003). Hence, the study has used explanatory research

purpose to identify the impact of trust and commitment towards repurchase intention of

customers and their perception of retail ethics.

3.4. Research Design

The research design are four types: descriptive, experimental, correlational, and causal study

design. Finding correlations or relationships between or among variables is the goal of

descriptive research design, which systematically and properly describes the facts and

characteristics of a given population or area of interest. There is no random assignment of

participants to treatment conditions in correlational research, which employs quantitative,

multi-subject designs. Contrarily, when doing causal research, one or more independent

variables are always present, as well as their interactions with one or more dependent

variables this is because causal research tries to study causal links. The study's goal is to

investigate how customer perceptions of retail ethics and perceived risk affect consumers'

intentions to make additional online purchases. As a result, both causal and correlational

research methods were used in this study.

3.5. Target Population

The aim of this study is to look into how perception of risk and ethics of online shopping

have an impact on consumers decision to make another purchase, therefore the target

population of the study is online customers.

3.6. Sample Size

To estimate the minimum sample size for the study, an A-priori Sample Size calculator by

Daniel Soper was applied. The results for the minimum sample size for model structure,

according to the calculator were, 116, therefore Data will be collected from at least 300

respondents, because few responses will be excluded in data screening step.

3.7. Data Collection Technique

The data will be collected through questionnaire. A web-based questionnaire is generated,

and the the link is shared and forwarded to the intended audience to gather the responses. The

link of the questionnaire is also posted on social media platform such as Facebook, Instagra,

etc. The questionnaire link is also shared with family members, and friends through

WhatsApp. At the beginning of the questionnaire, it is mentioned that the questionnaire is

only applicable to the customers of online shopping.

3.8. Research Instrument

To get the information, a structured questionnaire will be used. There were two main

components to the questionnaire. The demographics-related first portion is followed by a 5-

point Likert scale rating of the study's constructs, with 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly

agree. In the demographics part, we have questions related to age, gender, marital status,

education, income and preferred retailers of online buyers. Items for the second part of the
questionnaire include the following variables, customer trust (Akbar & Parvez 2009; Agag &

El-Masry 2016), customer commitment (Akbar & Parvez 2009), repurchase intention

(Yuniarti et. at., 2022; Mortimer et. al., 2016) and the dimensions of retail ethics perception

that are security (Yuniarti et. at., 2022), privacy (Yuniarti et. at., 2022; Agag et. al., 2016),

reliability (Yuniarti et. at., 2022; Agag et. al., 2016) and service recovery (Yuniarti et. at.,

2022; Agag et. al., 2016) are adapted from the relevant past studies.

3.9. Research Ethics

In the study, retail ethics is considered therefore no personal information that harms the

respondents are not asked. The respondents were informed that the information they provide

will be kept confidential and for the purpose of research. Moreover, no information will be

misused.

3.10. Sampling Technique

Sampling techniques are divided into two categories: probability sampling and non-

probability sampling (Mohsin, 2016). When every sample has an equal opportunity of being

selected based on randomization, is known as Probability sampling. At the same time, non-

probability sampling is when the researchers purposely pick the sample based on knowledge

or research goals. Since the data was collected only from online customers who often shop

online, therefore, the research conducted is based on non-probability purposive sampling

techniques.

3.11. Statistical Technique

Statistical techniques are used to plan effectively, design, collect data, analyse, and

interoperate the research findings. In this research, for pilot testing, we have used reliability
 analysis and SPSS software is used which allowed us to identify data efficiently and

accurately. Furthermore, for hypothesis testing, partial least squares structural equation

modelling (PLS-SEM) is used (Hair et al., 2011). This SEM method allowed us to effectively

estimate the complex cause-and-effect relationship between the variables. PLS-SEM analysis

has various benefits that include researcher for the specification of the relationships between

the various constructs and the underlying measures, "which may result in simultaneous

analysis of how well the measures relate to each construct and whether the theoretically

hypothesized relationships at the empirical level are true."

3.12. Operational Definitions

● Retail ethics perception: It is the perception of value that helps customers form an opinion

or believe whether the product or service offered by the online sellers will effectively satisfy

or will not be able to satisfy their needs. it is recommended to the online marketer that they

should create informative content that is helpful to online customers which will ultimately

have a favourable effect on purchasing repeatedly. The retail ethics perception is developed

by providing security and privacy, through reliable service and by providing the element of

service recovery.

● Customer’s Trust: It refers to the faith of the customer in the online shopping environment

and its products and services. it can be also understood as customers willingness to trust the

online seller. It allows the online sellers to retain and attract loyal customers.

● Customer commitment: It is a vital customer retention strategy that allows the online

retailers to keep the customers loyal to their websites by providing consistent brand value and

fostering the relationship with the customers.

● Repurchase intention is the process of repeated purchases of customers from the same

online store. Satisfied customer who had good experience with the online store will

repurchase repeatedly. This is significantly affected by the past purchase experience of the

customers.

3.13. Plan for Completion

Chapters March April

1- Introduction Chapter 1 will be finalized till
10th March
2- Literature and Chapter 2 will be finalized till 20h
Hypotheses March
3- Methodology Chapter 3 will be finalized till
30th March
4- Results - Data Collection is in progress, and
it will be collected till 30th March
- Data will be analysed and
reported till 10th April
5- Conclusion and Conclusion and Discussion will be
Discussion completed till 20th April
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