Factors of Consumer Demand for Apparel Online Stores (By Example of Youth in Moscow)

In the last decade e-commerce, specifically online shopping, has experienced the rapid growth. The robust market expansion can be explained by cannibalization of traditional stores’ market: according to the forecast from emarketer, the share of e-commerce of total retail sales will double from 7.4% in 2016 to 14.6% in 2020. In order to amplify and capture this growth, online shopping companies should better understand their customers and the reasons why they prefer online to offline. However, there is a gap in literature on e-commerce, especially in Russia. This study examines the factors that affect the youth’s choice between online shopping and traditional stores on the apparel market. The main factors revealed from previous theoretical studies are: website, perceived risk, convenience, product variety and price. There was conducted an empirical analysis on the sample of youth from Moscow and Moscow region. Its results show that significant factors that affect the probability of online purchase were: (1) perceived time savings from shopping online, (2) user-friendliness of website, (3) quality of product information on website and (4) difference in prices online and offline in case consumer compares them. These factors are one of major indicators the marketer should pay attention to when developing product, pricing or communication strategy.