Factors Affecting Online Shopping of Luxury Goods

This poster aims to analyze the most influential causes of online luxury shopping and investigates whether image interactivity is helpful for luxury purchases. According to analyze and integrate three studies on online luxury purchases, the results show that online luxury shoppers focus on price and product availability and have a higher level of trust in online customer reviews.

Online shopping is a new way of purchasing. With the rapid development of the economy and Internet technology, online luxury shopping has become an unshakable habit for the consumers, which brings many benefits to the public. However, not only for advantages, when consumers enjoy this convenient shopping method, they also bear some risks in online shopping for luxury items at the same time.

All studies used in this poster have been conducted in the form of questionnaires for further investigation. By following a computer program proposed by Charmaz (2006), the authors calculated the attitude of 55 adult consumers to online and in-store luxury shopping. The result shows that online luxury shoppers put more attention on convenience (42.1%), price (23%), product availability (20.8%), online shopping attitude (10.2%) and online trust (6.5%)

In Study 2, 183 high-income people from Germany visited the official website of a virtual watch brand Vaupré, and the test asked participants to evaluate the described brand based on perceived scarcity, desirability, transaction convenience and purchase intention. Kluge and Fassnacht’s (2015) study shows that online accessibility, transaction convenience, and perceived scarcity have a positive impact on the brand desirability. The image illustrates the conceptual model of study 2, during the investigation, H2, H3, and H4 were confirmed, but H(2) was rejected. 185 consumers participated and experienced interactive or non-interactive online luxury (Gucci) stores and completed online surveys to measure their luxury perceptions. Compared to the same product without detailed viewing capabilities (Non-interactive), products with image interactive features have a higher sensation of luxury, quality, enjoyment, self-interest, and uniqueness. Non-interactive image, which cannot check the product details. Interactive image, which can zoom in to view product details, try different color options and use the 360°feature.

By analyzing different studies, it is known that convenience is the biggest influencing factor in online luxury purchases. In addition, websites with detailed analysis pictures are more attractive to online luxury consumers than websites that are cannot viewed in detail, which means that online consumers pay great attention to the sensory enjoyment. However, the backgrounds of different types of online stores may affect consumer online purchasing behavior. Future researchers can focus on other factors that influence online shopping behavior through extensive research, for example, uses the better online sites and different brand assessment.

Based on the researching from Liu et, al (2013), Kluge and Fassnacht (2015), and Beuckels and Hudders (2016), online luxury shopping provides convenient and fast shopping methods to consumers. Online luxury shopping is bound to become one of the mainstream shopping methods.