Does Personality Influence the Frequency of Online Purchase Behavior?

Introduction

Online business, commonly known as e-commerce, refers to the process of selling and buying goods or services via computer networks using protocols specifically designed for that purpose (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2011). However, e-commerce today is not limited to handling only business transactions. It also involves exchanging, sharing, and storing personal information (Dutta, 1997). Unfortunately, such personal data not only are available to the seller but also can be exploited by other parties. Hence, online purchasing has become riskier than conventional shopping, resulting in strong resistance from customers.

Research on factors explaining the willingness of individuals to use online platforms for buying items has progressed substantially in recent years. However, the existing literature focuses heavily on the supply-side factors of the websites themselves, such as perceived enjoyment (Brusch and Rappel, 2020) and ease of use (Xia et al., 2018). Although such studies merit acknowledgement, we still lack an understanding of the impact of personality on e-commerce purchases. Indeed, this represents a considerable gap in the literature because personality has long been recognized as a dominant approach for understanding the subsequent behavior of individuals (Gohary et al., 2014).

While a few studies have considered personality as the determinant of several online shopping dimensions, such as intention to buy online (Dobre and Milovan-Ciuta, 2015) and impulsive purchases (Leong et al., 2017), the effect of personality traits on a specific online buying behavior — that of repetitive purchase — remains under-explored. To fill this gap, this study attempts to examine the effect of the Big Five personality traits (BFP) — agreeableness, neuroticism, extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness — on the frequency of online shopping.

While intention to buy online is mainly tested using predictive models of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) and technology acceptance models (Lee et al., 2003), impulsive purchases involve unplanned, unreflective, and spontaneous purchasing (Piron, 1991). In this study, we focused on repetitive online purchasing as our dependent variable. To measure it, we employed the frequency of online shopping as a proxy to determine how often buyers use websites to make a purchase. The more frequently buyers purchase via the internet, the more frequently they use online platforms for shopping repeatedly. As the internet becomes an important means for conducting many activities, it is beneficial specifically for marketers to ensure that customers buy online and continue to do so in the future (Chiu et al., 2012). In fact, sustainable profits in the e-commerce market depend on how successfully businesses retain existing online shoppers (Hu et al., 2015; Wen et al., 2011).

As a contextual contribution, we tested our model amongst university students, an important social group in marketing research. Although the spending capability of students is often limited, they are well-educated and have a strong exposure to technology (Hu et al., 2009). According to the Internet Users Survey 2018 by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, full-time students represent around 12.1 percent of all internet users in Malaysia. Also, the largest group of internet users comprises individuals in their 20s, who spend about 8 hours a day browsing the internet, half of which is spent in online shopping. Thus, university students provide an insightful context for research exploration.